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[sbrownfield]

[wanderlustwonderlots]

Japan day 16 - Delicious food, Orange Street, Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan, Dotonburi at night

Today was such a great day! I slept in a bit and lazed around in bed until around 10 before having a shower and heading down to the hostel's shared kitchen to make some coffee and drink a smoothie I bought yesterday. I was looking around confusedly in the kitchen until a staff kindly pointed me in the direction of the guest kitchen (as opposed to the staff one); I feel like there can be a semi-high barrier to entry with hostels because they're simultaneously so casual but also are shared spaces with rules, that you don't necessarily get given the run down for. Regardless, I made my instant coffee and sat at the communal table again to drink it. I can even leave whatever's left of my coffee in the kitchen as a donation, to free up a bit of space in my bag!

As I was drinking my coffee, I got talking with a couple from Holland who was checking out and soon headed to Okinawa, and also a Japanese man who has lived in the neighbourhood for many years and had stopped by for a coffee. He was so earnest in talking to us in English, even if he wasn't fluent and we sometimes had challenges understanding each other! He wanted to know about where we were all from, what we were doing in Japan, what we had tried, etc. He offered to show me around Shinsekai, and I had to find a polite way to decline because I was really looking forward to my plans alone today. It was very kind of him though! By the time I extracted myself from conversation, got dressed, and did my makeup it was around 11:30. My first stop was breakfast, or by now, brunch!

Early on in my Japan planning (Japlanning, if you will), I learned that Osaka is known for being a huge foodie city. I initially tried to look into doing a food tour, but this was very challenging for vegetarian. There was one well-known company that said they had vegetarian options at some stops, but when I reached out to them, they weren't able to give me any examples of what the food might be (but the website had examples of the regular, omnivore food). However, in my searching, I found a blog with a recommended self-guided vegetarian food itinerary. I don't intend to do this full itinerary as I want to spend my days here otherwise, but I did check the locations mentioned for inspiration and potential options! One of the places they had looked like a really great breakfast, so I headed there first. This was Salon de Mon Cher, a 20min transit from my hostel, and I was aiming for the fancy sandwich + cake roll + coffee set. The atmosphere of this cafe was immaculate. They had a storefront selling individual cakes and sweets, or boxed sets, and then the restaurant portion was in the back. They were playing classical orchestral music (baroque or something, I don't know my genres), there were pretty chandeliers, lots of mirrors, nicely upholstered chairs, the whole nine yards. The menu had an extensive tea list, and you could even get a full afternoon tea service. However, the blog had recommended the cake + sandwich set, and I hadn't actually had breakfast yet, so that's what I got!

There were only a few other people there so it was nice and quiet. The egg sandwich was so delicious - the egg itself was thick and more like an omelette than an egg salad, and there was strong mustard either in the egg or the mayonnaise, which added a nice flavour. The bread was soft without being sweet, as a lot of bread here is. Absolutely the highest quality egg sandwich I've had here! The cake roll was so pillowy soft and the whipped cream so rich while still being light. The little rose-shaped thing on the plate was some sort of fruit flavoured cake as well, and the fresh berries were a nice addition to the cake. I felt like I was larping as a rich person eating this, but in truth the set cost like, $15. Very good. Thank you food blog post for this recommendation.

After my fancy brunch (such a vibe shift from the laid back artsy hostel), I headed to Orange Street nearby, known for its fashion shopping. I wasn't sure if I was exactly looking for anything, but it was roughly on the way to the subway station I was aiming for, so thought it would be cool to see! As it turns out, one of the first shops I saw was a 2nd Street, a thrift chain Curran had told me about. Seeing as it's likely impossible for me to get Japanese-made clothes, thrifting here is the only option, so I went in to see if there was anything I liked. I tried on a few things, including a denim dress that I swore I was just trying for the heck of it because it was a bit bulky and might be challenging to pack up in my limited space. Well. Joke's on me. It was super cute, fit perfectly, and was like $14. Soooo that's gonna be a problem for March 2nd Rosemary!

My next destination was Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan, a short train ride away from Orange Street. I had read that this is one of the best aquariums in Asia, and a very large one at that. I conveniently stored my shopping bag and coat in a coin locker, got a ticket, and had just over an hour to kill until my entry time, so I stopped in a nearby cafe for an iced coffee and drafted up my post from the day before! It was a good use of my time. Soon enough it was aquarium hours!!

I took a truly overwhelming number of photos, so I put a bunch in a separate post. I took a ton of videos too but since Tumblr hates videos, those will stay unposted. I gotta get my video editing skills together and do a supercut to some frutiger aero music or something. We'll see if that ends up happening.

Immediately upon entering the aquarium I found a stamp station (the beginning of many! It was a whole stamp rally! Now I understand the museum stamp rally in Animal Crossing...)! Even just the first tunnel into the exhibit area was amazing, with fish and rays surrounding us on all sides. Based on how long I stayed in just that tunnel I knew I was in for a full day at the aquarium.

The path took you through exhibits of different parts of the Ring of Fire: the Pacific Ocean, Japanese forests, Aleutian Islands, Monterey Bay, Gulf of Panama, Ecuador rainforest, Antarctica, Tasman Sea, Great Barrier Reef, Seto Inland Sea, Coast of Chile, Cook Strait, Japan deep sea, Arctic, Falklan Islands, a jellyfish exhibit, an exhibit on corals and the aquarium's construction of their reef exhibit (the aquarium website is actually fantastic and explains a bit about each exhibit!). Like, a bonkers amount of tanks and fish and other creatures. The design of the path through the aquarium was great! You took an escalator up and then spiralled your way gradually downwards through the different exhibits, huge tall tanks, and you could see the fish and mammals that liked to hang out at different depths. And you didn't just follow one exhibit down, because of the layout as you descended by layers you still mixed around through the Pacific, the Great Barrier Reef, etc., keeping you constantly excited (with stamp stations along the way). The Pacific tank is their largest, 9 metres tall (deep?) (5,400 cubic metres of water) with two whale sharks, huge rays and skates, hammerheads, dogfish sharks, blacktip sharks, a bunch of other sharks, a mola mola, and many, many fish ranging in size. The aquarium is known for the whale sharks, but honestly watching the rays was just as incredible and entertaining to me. They really liked coming right up to the glass and bonking into it!

The aquarium had different music playing quietly in different sections, just melodies with no lyrics, kind of indescribable in genre other than "kind of music you'd expect to hear in an aquarium." Somehow, it all suited the different sections very well. I learned when researching the aquarium more for this post that it actually changes based on time of day (hello again Animal Crossing) and is all from an album called "Acoustic Cafe Underwater Walk - Sky Dreamer" by a band eponymously called Acoustic Cafe. Feel free to listen to that as your soundtrack while reading along and looking at the photos, to truly transport you to the vibes I experienced. It's hard to really convey how much fun I was having at the aquarium. The joy of going by myself meant that I could stay for as long as I wanted at each section, sometimes squatting down just captivated by all of the creatures swimming by. I really, really enjoyed watching the white-sided dolphins zip around! They were so energetic! I have never seen a dolphin before, and while there were lots of things at the aquarium I had never seen before, there was something so charming about the dolphins being so excited and playful. They had some toys they were playing with too, I couldn't see any treats, so I think they were just playing for the sake of play! This was one of the tanks that you kept coming back to as you swirled around the building, for which I was grateful. They also had a handful of sea lions that were doing tricks for their caretakers as I was passing along, an extremely cute display to watch for a while. Things like opening their mouths on command, waving, scrunching their heads down and back up, slapping their sides, all sorts of tricks!

It was also cute to watch the penguins walking around and huddling together. There was multiple kinds of penguins from the different regions of the world, some of them more active than others. I didn't do a great job at reading what every animal was, some of the signage was in English but not all of it! You could scan QR codes or go on their website for guides in different languages, but tbh, to me that sometimes takes away from the experience of just looking at everything. Even at aquariums in Canada I don't tend to read everything! However, I can say, a number of the fish I recognized from catching them in Animal Crossing. It is 100% an educational game.

I could have spent the entire afternoon just watching the big Pacific tank with all the sharks. It was really interesting seeing some of them swim at a leisurely, gentle pace, whereas others were just zipping around. There were a few benches set up at the various depth levels but it was busy enough with all the people in front of the tanks that even so I don’t think I’d be able to see very much just sitting down. Hence why I sometimes just crouched right in front of the glass! The only thing stopping me from truly spending even more hours there was the fact that I had been on my feet for a long time, so my knees and back were getting a bit sore, and I was also getting hungry. Partway through the aquarium there was a cafe (called the Ring of Fire Cafe), and I absolutely could not resist stopping in for one of their themed treats. Believe it or not, I had not had any soft serve yet since coming to Japan, even though it’s all over the place. So, I got their whale shark soft serve. It was Ramune flavour, which is a citrus soft drink, and it was almost startlingly sour! At the cafe you could look out over the port, and even though it was gray outside and starting to get a bit darker, it was still cool seeing the boats on the water.

Reading about how the aquarium's expedition team conducted their work in Antarctica was really interesting, they went into detail about how they got there, how long it took, what they needed to wear, what kinds of research they did and the samples (read: critters) they took, how those were temperature controlled and transported back to Japan... I think it said they took over 200 samples, and all of them made the journey successfully! As we descended an escalator to one section, the room below was fairly dark, with hundreds of small, pale round lightbulbs suspended from the ceiling. I could see four kanji on the wall at the bottom of the escalator, one of which I recognized as the kanji for moon, and when I realized I gasped! We were about to see some jellyfish! Indeed, I was correct.

I did have the thought that the tanks they were in were kind of small... but also... who knows what jellyfish think about or how they feel... they don't have brains... Always so weird to think about.

I ended up staying at the aquarium for fully 3 hours. I made sure to take a bunch of photos and videos particularly for my sea creature loving friends. Shoutout to Tasha and Rachel for making me more excited to experience all these lil guys for their sakes! I browsed the gift shop and picked up a couple little things, particularly for my nieces, given how much my older niece loves the Vancouver aquarium! I hope she will be tickled pink to receive something from an aquarium across the world. For my baby niece, well, it's a story I can tell her when she's older. I reluctantly admitted it was time to leave and get some dinner, by this point nearing 6pm. Until next time, Kaiyukan! It had started raining while I was in the aquarium so I hurried to the coin locker to retrieve my coat and umbrella without getting too wet.

My dinner destination was around the halfway point in the transit between the aquarium and my hotel, a place Matthew actually found for me: a vegetarian and vegan okonomiyaki place!! The dish is particularly popular in the Kansai region. It's a savoury pancake made with batter and cabbage, filled with your choice of ingredients and cooked on a griddle. I was determined to have it in Osaka and had browsed a few restaurants that assured they had vegetarian versions, but this restaurant Matthew sent me was dedicated to veg/vegan/gluten free options. The English name was OKO Fun Okonomiyaki Bar, and it was located just at the edge of the Dotombori neighbourhood. And they're not kidding! It was super fun! As soon as you walk in you are bombarded with extremely eclectic and artsy decor, with writing and drawings all over the walls, in super bright colours. This restaurant was truly made for me. (I put more photos of all the signs around the place in another post, separate from the aquarium one!)

Even though they just opened at 6 and I got there around 6:30, it was pretty busy already. There was a considerable wait, but totally understandable, since the entire affair is run by just the owner, Shiho! Despite being crazy busy immediately, she was so cheerful and excited. She took 4-5 orders at a time and then cooked it all up, calling out numbers to the crowd of eager customers. There was so much to look at and the tunes she was playing were absolutely bumping, so I definitely wasn't bored while waiting (just a little sore in the knees). She made the ordering process super easy by posting menus throughout the queue, and spoke fluent English, asking if I was okay with egg and mayo after I asked for a vegetarian okonomiyaki. For add-ins I went with potato, carrot, spinach, green onions, and mushrooms (you could choose 5 at the base price), with cheese, and then a side of Japanese pickles. The restaurant also had a super unique self-serve drink station. You deposited ¥200 in a bucket (that's $1.75 CAD), squeezed a hanging rubber chicken (I guess to let Shiho know you are correctly participating in the honour system), and then grabbed a glass to make a cocktail. She had a ton of liquor bottles, like any you'd see at a North American bar, Japanese shochu (25-35% distilled liquor made from rice or barley or potatoes etc.), beer dispensers, sour syrups, tonic and soda water and other mixes like grapefruit or tomato juice, sake bottles, and other pre-made drinks. It was bonkers. And so cheap. She runs a very, very smart business. I am sorry to say that I didn't go too hard on the alcohol and didn't mix anything fun (I'm not here to get drunk), I stuck with one beer and a couple plum wine cans. HOWEVER, the plum wine was actually a jelly drink??? You shook the can a bunch before cracking it and then, yup, you're drinking jelly wine. It was so delicious and I am never going to stop thinking about it.

Seating was upstairs, surrounded by even more wonderful and unique decor, this time many signs explaining the health benefits of okara (the batter base), asking for kindness in cleaning up after yourself and understanding that it's just Shiho running the place, and heartwarming messages about loving and caring for each other. The okonomiyaki was fucking amazing too, and huge. I ended up taking about 1/3 of it back to the hostel (which I haven't eaten yet but it's there waiting for me just in case). The side of pickles provided nice crunchy and fresh bites in contrast to the fried and soft okonomiyaki. This is definitely the coolest restaurant I've been to on my trip. I put some more pics in my photo post. I would recommend this place in a heartbeat, even if you're a meat eater (I think the "meat" options she has are soy meat but came highly reviewed by people on google maps). Hell, I'd come there just to drink, at that price. Wild.

Being right near Dotonbori/Dotombori (depends on how much you care about consonant assimilation), a very famous area of Osaka, I took a stroll after dinner, helping to walk it off since I was so full. I honestly think seeing Dotombori in the rain made it even better. It's well known because one of the rivers snaking through the city is surrounded on both sides by a plethora of neon signs and very busy shops, with tour boats going up and down the canal. It's popular to pose in front of the Glico sign in the same pose as the athlete, which I didn't do having no one to take my photo, so I made my Ddeongbyeoli doll stand in for me. If you think the neon landscape is overwhelming for the senses, the street just parallel to the canal is even more so, crowded with restaurants selling all manner of cuisines and street foods, many of them with giant food signs above the entrance (none of which I got a photo of, sorry), and with staff our front shouting to entice you in.

I didn't get any food there, still full, but I will probably be going back in search of a specific pudding stall (if I do, you'll hear about it later). I didn't take a ton of photos here since I was fairly overwhelmed and mostly trying not to be in the way. I didn't stay long, and soon headed back to the hostel to wash up and rest. No socializing for me tonight, just right to bed!

It was a really full day with a variety of vibes, from artsy hostel to fancy cafe to underwater adventures to quirky restaurant to neon nightscape. I feel like I saw so many sides of Osaka in just one day! And thoroughly tired myself out! In a good way, but I do have to admit, I am glad my trip is coming to a close. It's a lot to be doing as a mostly-introvert.

But! I must stay strong for the rest of my time in Osaka! And I must keep blogging about it! I am now consistently one day behind, and I'm trying my best, just so tired by the time I get back for the evening. So, stay tuned for my next few days!

[wanderlustwonderlots]

Japan day 16 photos part 2 - LEGO giraffe, OKO Fun restaurant, Dotombori, more of the hostel. See my full post for details!

[wanderlustwonderlots]

Japan day 16 photos part 1 - Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan edition. See my full post for details!

[x751206]

[pipipi32768]

「地球が誕生してから現在までを1日にすると」という考えは誰が言い出したのですかとチャットAIに聞いたところ特定の誰かではなく欧米の科学者や啓蒙家によって考案されたと言われた。いやだとしても言い出した最初のひとりはいたはずでしょ。その辺は答えてくれないのだよな。いやよく調べたらまず宇宙のカレンダーというものを考えた人物がいるらしくそこから派生して1日に例えた話が広まったらしい。そうなんだ〜という感じですね。チャットAIは何でも答えてくれるからどんどん質問してしまう。最近軽い気持ちで「右翼が小型機で突っ込んだ家の主」ってグーグル検索したらAIが「児玉誉士夫」って答えてくれた。いや便利すぎる。ちょっとは自分で答えにたどり着いたほうがいいのではと思う。「右翼が小型機で突っ込んだ家の主」なんてベイカーベイカーパラドクスそのものじゃないですか？もうちょっと考えればわかったでしょ。と思ったけど「児玉誉士夫」って名前が微妙に難しいから正確な答えにはたどり着けないかも。なんかロッキード事件？の関係者？よく知らない。NHKのドキュメンタリーでしかこの話題に触れたことがない。右翼の小型機もこの番組で知った。あとよく知らない昭和の事件ってあさま山荘事件に関わる組織の？一連の？出来事？とか？これは山本直樹の漫画で少し知っているけど。ハイジャックとか爆破事件とかもこれと関係しているの？知らなすぎる。生まれる前のことだししょうがない。当時を知っている人ってかなりの老人とかじゃないの？最近までずっと隠れていて死んだ指名手配犯って誰だっけ？こういうのを自力で思い出さないと頭によくない。う〜ん…。普段は偽名で周りからは「よねやん」みたいに呼ばれていたような。藤田…？いや…。思い出したけど「桐島聡」だ。漫画家の吾妻ひでおの失踪生活と比べて語られていたのを考えていたら思い出せた。自分でたどり着けてよかった〜。終わり。