You may know of Yayoi Kusami, the Japanese artist. Purely by coincidence we are going to see her exhibition in Manchester in a couple of months.
We were walking through Osaka and looked in the Louis Vuitton store windows and there she was! She is doing a collaboration with them and so she spends a few hours each day watering the plants for them.
No, not really, it is a Yayoi Kusami robot and it is incredibly lifelike. You wouldn’t imagine it wasn’t real. She looks at you, smiles, blinks, it’s quite freaky.
Watch the video, it was too big to post on the blog so just tap on the link below. It might take a minute to load but it’s worth it.
We planned to get up early this morning to go and see the tuna auction at the fish market.
I was having some blog technical issues last night so Brigitte had fallen asleep and luckily I googled the time of the tuna auction – it started at 4am, 😱
I therefore made a management decision and decided to secretly change the alarm clock for a lie-in. Good plan.
After a nice ‘western’ breakfast, we took the tube across town to the Osaka Aquarium which is quite spectacular. I could bore you with pictures and videos of whale sharks, hammerheads, sunfish, rays, penguins, seals etc etc but I’m sure you’ve seen them before so just one video for you.
Okay, I lied, I did decide to bore you!
I got lucky and saw this jellyfish as the light caught it perfectly. A minute later it swam away from the light and when Brigitte arrived at the tank she didn’t know why I was staring at a dull jellyfish – until she saw this video…
I swear I heard a lot of lip-smacking from the Japanese as they viewed the tanks. To them the sea is just a huge cold store and they visit the aquarium because it is food porn to them. Or that’s my thinking anyway.
It is an amazing place and I have no idea how they built such a huge sea aquarium six floors high.
The aquarium is constructed from acrylic glass panels up to 30cm thick.There are 103 of them weighing 314 tons in total, which is 1.5 times the worlds total output of acrylic glass!
After the fish, we rushed across town as I had had a timing accident and we had a river boat to catch.
We literally sprinted up escalators, across bridges and onto the boat with exactly one minute to spare. Phew.
We were then told we couldn’t board as we didn’t have tickets🤬 The confirmation email was entirely in Japanese so how was I supposed to know you had to collect them first?
Another sprint to the ticket office, a bit of queue jumping, a sprint back, and we were on the boat, sweaty and wet. 26 degrees today.
We shouldn’t have bothered as the cruise was extremely boring. The worst thing we have done in Japan. The only highlight was the guide’s terrible pronunciation. It took ten minutes before we noticed she was actually speaking English and we spent the rest of the cruise trying to work out what she was saying.
I know it may sound racist (and it probably is, sorry) but at one point she actually said. “ The eria around Ryan bridge was frudded in ninenteen firty-free. It is called Ryan bridge because it has a feece Ryan guarding each of its four corners”. Oh yes she did!!
If you’re ever in Osaka, give the river boat a miss, unless you like to see bridges from underneath and need a bad view of the castle.
Osaka is all about food and shopping. They are the two main pastime of the locals and you can tell by the hundreds upon hundreds of stores and restaurants.
In order to ensure uninterrupted shopping they constructing the longest shopping arcades in the world. This one is 4.5 Km long and another nearby is 5.3!
Kit kats here are a mystery to me. Invented by Rowntree in York, they are a huge hit in Japan and, since Nestlés takeover of Rowntree, they have become the top selling chocolate bar in Japan!
There have been more than 300 limited-edition seasonal and regional flavors produced, many exclusive to the country and not produced elsewhere. Go figure – it’s one of my favourites as well but I can only think of milk, plain and Orange and that’s it.
As it was our last night in Osaka we went out to a nice restaurant.
It was a tempura tasting menu and the only reason I’m telling you this is because the third course was fugu!! This is the puffer fish I mentioned yesterday that can only be served by a licensed chef because if it’s not prepared right and you eat the wrong part then you die.
Tempura FUGU!!!
We had our own chef, he seemed pleasant, it’s an hour since we ate. We are still alive.
If this is the last blog you receive then at least you’ll know what happened.
A double helping of blog today, which is several less than we had on our food tour which was incredible, both for the food bonanza and the crazy sights, more of those later but do watch the videos at the end!
Our guide for our food tour was Yann, a Frenchman who came to Japan for a week and has stayed 15 years so far!
What a great experience. The area we are in is called Dotinbori which is named after the canal it surrounds and it is full of hundreds and hundreds of small restaurants and stalls. These often only seat a few people, usually less that a dozen, but they don’t spend much time there before they move on to the next one.
It’s a bit like tapas but instead of having lots of small dishes in one place, you have many different courses at many different places.
We started with Mochi, which is a dessert consisting of fresh fruit coated in sweet sticky rice. The white strawberries are a Japanese delicacy.
The reason we bought these first was because they are all freshly made, in limited quantities, are very popular and when they are sold, she shuts the shop.
Our first course was at Genroku sushi. There’s lots of revolving sushi restaurants around the world now. The most well known is maybe Yo-sushi! They were actually invented here in Osaka and this place is one of the first, founded in 1950…
Lots of different raw fish to try including sea urchin and whale. You just pull what ever you want from the conveyor belt and eat it, or ask the chef to make you something if it’s not there. When you’re done they count up your plates, each colour is a different price category sushi. You pay and then off to the next restaurant…
Which was Kushi katsu – meaning ‘fried skewer’.
The two below are ‘shoshito’ which tastes like and may actually have been a padron pepper. and a chicken gizzard, just like my granny used to put in her chicken soup (pupic!). Look it up if you don’t know what it is. We ate this at a famous shoshito chain which has an effigy of its founder outside..(he’s the one in the middle!)
It was washed down with ‘Calpis‘, a popular children’s drink made with calcium, which is what the ’cal’ is….and I have no idea about the’pis’ 😱. They traditionally rarely had dairy here. Cows started coming in after the war from America so no calcium except from fish bones, which maybe explains the average Japanese person being smaller than westerners due to less calcium for bone development. They are now getting bigger. (and fatter as American fast food becomes more popular 😩)
Once they got the cows there was no stopping them though and, inventive as ever, they developed high quality (wagyu) beef of which Kobe is the most famous. They massage the cows and give them beer to drink. The beer produces fat to create the extreme marbling, the massaging keeps the muscles (meat) relaxed. No wonder they believe in reincarnation, they all want to come back as a Japanese cow 😀)
That’s what we had next
Next it was Yakitori, chicken on skewers cooked many different ways and ordered an the table…
Then out for macha ice cream
We decided against going in here for puffer fish also known as Fugu the most infamous sushi. It is poisonous and it has to be prepared by licensed chefs. If they get it wrong you die. Think of it as fish roulette!
Then, as we wandered this vibrant, colourful, noisy, crowded area…
we saw some unusual sights…a Japanese lady playing French accordion, rather well it has to be said….
…and, as for this… I really, really don’t know what to say, but it’s a good place to end the night as I write this and nibble my delicious mochi that we bought at the start of the evening. Mmm….
After ten days I’m starting to get a really cricked neck which I can only attribute to all the bowing.
I have become a victim of JBS or Japanese Bowing Syndrome. I’m formally appealing to the Japanese authorities to set up nationwide centres and a fund to assist all western tourists, whose neck and back bowing muscles are not as highly developed as those of the Japanese to help ease the suffering. Please give generously.
A Japanese barber shop – they each have a vacuum cleaner attachment so as they cut, the hair gets sucked straight up the tube. No hair on the floors!
Every time I have ever travelled, and I’m lucky enough to say it’s been many times, I’ve always come home realising that you never use half of what you pack.
We both agreed on this and decided to test this theory for Japan. We both literally just packed one side of our suitcases.
It didn’t work-we could have halved it again and still had enough.
Having said that, Brigitte has three daughters, the same number of son-in-laws and six grandchildren and, despite my insistence that a pair of chopsticks each was a brilliant space-saving yet authentic gift, she didn’t take my advice. We may need to buy another suitcase today as ours have now reached bursting point.
Osaka is just a short fifteen-minute hop on the Shinkansen (bullet train). We were supposed to take our suitcases with us to Osaka today and then use the excellent Japanese luggage forwarding system to teleport it from there to Tokyo airport.
However, Brigitte has used all the available space rendering our suitcases useless, sonthere seemed no point schlepping them around with us. Therefore, we have sent them straight on to our Tokyo airport hotel where we will meet them in five days; just before we fly home. Hopefully.
I’m sure they will be there when we arrive, but I still find it difficult to trust public transport services. Maybe the UK’s delivery services are not a good benchmark to use.
Every hotel has toiletries and toothbrushes and most other necessities so we just stuffed a few day’s clothes into our rucksacks and set off. We are now officially back-packers!
True to form we went into the hotel, dumped out small bags (which had grown in number due to shopping whilst in transit) and went to explore.
Osaka has a great vibe. It seems young and vibrant, noisy and colourful. A different feel entirely to the more conservative and relaxed Kyoto.
Lunch of Gyozo (Japanese dumplings) was followed by a visit to Osaka castle.
The Japanese, like many other peoples who live in typhoon, tsunami and earthquake zones have traditionally constructed their buildings out of wood.
I can only assume that, for the rich building castles, it’s a resources issue – ie no local stone – and for the poor, a cost issue. Otherwise it’s a very shortsighted decision. If you cook by fire or light by flame, then at some point something will cause your building to burn down.
It has resulted in many older buildings having been destroyed and, what early wars or natural disasters didn’t demolish, the Americans incendiary bombed in WW2.
Consequently, nearly all of the historic castles, temples and shrines have been reconstructed in the last 100 years. In fact, when you look at old Tokyo what you’re really looking at is a carefully reconstructed 20th century replica of itself.
The magnificent Osaka Castle is a prime example. Originally built in 1570, destroyed by war, rebuilt in 1583, destroyed again in battle in 1615 and rebuilt in the 1620’s. In 1665 the main tower was struck by lightning and burnt down. Repeat a few times until 1931, when whoever was paying for all the rebuilds must’ve had a eureka moment – use stone! It has subsequently survived nearly 100 years with the added benefit of decent wiring and plumbing, a lift and Japanese toilets!
Views of Osaka castle
Few people realise that the one-man-band originated in Japan, as did the didgeridoo.
We visited the castle on this completely ridiculous train.
Ridiculous not, as you’re assuming, because it looks like it’s for kids which, weirdly it isn’t, but because it was entirely suspension-less.
I was looking at my phone, clinging on to the train armrest for dear life with my teeth being smashed together in my mouth. I assumed the driver was being a lunatic but, when I looked up, we were travelling at less than walking pace. Old ladies were overtaking us! No idea why.
I think this is one of the teleportation devices they use to transport luggage around the country.
Need the toilet? Got a small child? Don’t know how to manage? Simple, just slot him or her into the baby holster..,,
Osaka is known Japan’s kitchen and famous for some of the best street food in the world so tonight we’re doing a guided fooodie tour…
It’s going to be a late finish so, as they say in the movies….
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Osaka is a large port city and commercial center on the Japanese island of Honshu. It’s known for its modern architecture, nightlife and hearty street food. The 16th-century shogunate Osaka Castle, which has undergone several restorations, is its main historical landmark. It’s surrounded by a moat and park with plum, peach and cherry-blossom trees. Sumiyoshi-taisha is among Japan’s oldest Shinto shrines.
Andrew and Brigitte’s Japanese Adventure 