Foodie Paradise in Osaka

The little "god" here in the postcard photo is a Billiken and they were everywhere in this part of Osaka.  You'll be seeing a lot more of him in this post and I'll tell you about him a bit later.

In order to make sure we were on time for our tour we took taxis from the port into an area called Dobutsuen, at least that's what the subway stop was when we took it back to the ship, but my photos say it's called Ebisuhigashi.  We were meeting our guide outside a gambling hall and across the street from whatever this building was with the animals. :)

This was our guide, Adam, an Aussie who came here 15 years ago to improve his karate skills, which he did until at one point was the karate champion of Japan. He has a Japanese wife and they will someday inherit her family's apple orchards in the north of Japan.  His father-in-law owns it now and carries a baseball bat around the orchard in case he meets a Moon Bear.  True story.  Adam was an interesting guy.

This area was full of narrow alleyways, lots of small restaurants and bars, plus small gaming businesses.

Apparently this small restaurant was a favorite for quick Japanese comfort food, the line outside was loooooonnng.

Here are a couple of the gaming spots, one was arcade machines, another was carnival games.  The area was created to be like Coney Island.

Some of these games are quite vintage.

So here are three more of the Billiken, like the one in the postcard.  He was originally designed as the mascot for St. Louis University, as a symbol of good luck, in 1908.   A wealthy textile company began to use a them in their advertising and patented the Billiken when it became popular.  Now in Osaka the Billiken is known as the "god of things as they ought to be" and it's a beloved character around city.

I think the Japanese do plastic food displays better than anyone else!

Our first food stop was a Tachanomyia, which pretty much means a "standing, eating, drinking bar".

We all crowded in side by side, it was a little early for anyone to be drinking much except coke or gingerale.

"You want to take a picture of me drinking orange juice?"

The first food dish we tried was cooked Daikon radish with wasabi mustard, it needed the mustard to give it some zing.  Next we tried some tompeiyaki, an omlette with bean sprouts and pork.

Next dish was broth that we added some green onion and ginger to before adding a nest of cooked noodles.  It's a dish that served cold in spring and summer.

This was probably the weirdest thing we ate all day, Adam told us to take a piece and eat it, then try to figure out what it was.  It was chewy, with a sweet flavor and a hint of fishy taste.  Turns out that it was sting ray, not the big ones like we swam with in Mo'orea but smaller ones.  It had been dried and then cooked again.  I actually quite liked it.

The actual guy  this  statue is the image of opened up a chain of restaurants in Osaka.  He would get really angry when people would use their chopsticks to double dip so he's standing here to say "No double dipping!", just another quirky spot, but you see him at any restaurant like this one.

This street was supposed to be reminiscent of Paris, the tower was supposed to be like the Eiffel Tower and the street like the Champs Elysees, not really sure they succeeded with this one.

Definitely more of the Coney Island vibe here.

Not sure if this was a sumo wrestler stable or not but definitely sumos on the walls.

Maybe you thought I was kidding about the Billikens being everywhere.

There's even a Billiken shrine.  A side note here, while you find the Billiken all over the city you can find nary a trash can.  We found that to be the case all over Japan, no public trash cans, but no trash lying around..  When we asked Adam about it he asked if we remembered the 1995 Sarin attack on the Japanese subway.  Most of us remembered it but not the details.  Apparently the sarin gas was hidden in trash cans so in order to show that they were doing something to prevent such attacks in the future, Japan got rid of all pubic trash cans.  You can stop at any restaurant or shop and they will happily take your trash for you.  To keep public areas clean every community has volunteers who once or twice a week get up early in the morning to go clean up any trash that has been dropped in their area  I cannot see this concept working anywhere but in Japan!

There were multiple of these shooting galleries in the area.

Just one of the weird and wonderful signs we saw.

I was glad we weren't eating here with lizard, frog, sparrow, crickets, and coconut worms on the menu.

Another giant Billiken on the side of this building.

Next food stop was gyoza.

I really liked the soy sauce and vinegar dispensers here on the left.  You would tip it, then push the button on the top to let it drizzle into your little bowl.  I actually hadn't tried these dumplings with the soy sauce/vinegar combo, it was quite good.

There at the napkin dispenser was a help button.  Karl pushed it to see what it was for and a server immediately came to our table.  Oops!

Our gyoza was absolutely delicious, filled with ground pork and a little cabbage, super fresh and hot.  We each ate about six of them.

One of the lovely manhole covers in Osaka.

We went down this narrow alley to a little seedier side of the area.

Here was a Kabuki Theater, where all the acting parts are played by men.  On Saturday mornings women will line up  to pay to take a photo with the actors according to Adam.

Next to the theater where they showed international movies and porn there were these two  imps, the one on the left, something like Namahagi, is one that kids get threatened with, if they don't behave he'll get them.  The one on the right i a Henya, which entices you to do good things.

Giant octopus above and giant weird food on the lower left.

One of the favorite vending machines in Japan are these that dispense all kinds of beers.

We stopped next at this little spot called "The Whiskey Bar".

There were definitely bottles and bottles and bottles of booze here.

I had a refreshing lemon soda with my sliced root vegetables, mashed potato & carrot, lotus root, and okra.  That last one was a surprise, it was really tasty having been cooked for a long time in a brown sauce so it was soft and tasty.

Before we left the owners of the bar, Nick and Renée, let each of us pick out one of these tiny cranes as a gift of good luck and longevity.

They were an adorable couple who ran this bar just for fun, retired people should keep busy.  They also owned shop with all kinds of funky clothing next door.

Next stop was for some nice fresh Takoyaki, or octopus balls.

We watched this young man fry them up fresh.  It looked a lot like cooking abelskivers.  He would pour the batter over the molds, add some ginger, onion, a small piece of octopus and then turn up the heat.  He used pointed tongs to flip them over.  I tried flipping one and did okay, all those years of making abelskivers paid off!

It was fun to see one of this season's newest Dodgers, Shohei Ohtani,  being interviewed on TV.  He's a favorite here since he originally came from Japan.

Here was our finished Takoyaki with two different flavors of sauce, they were soooo good!

t was surprising to see an actual vacant lot in the midst of this crowded city.

Final stop we had a variety of dishes.  These strips of paper on the wall are the menu.

We had chicken wings here, as well as Kushkatsu, a sticky sweet potato.

I had some lemonade with honey here, Karl's lemonade on the right had some probiotic in it.

We also had some fried shrimp and finished off with sweet pineapple and apple slices.  It was a different kind of tour for us and great fun, we all totally enjoyed it.  Apologies for all the names of dishes that I spelled wrong!

Karl was still in search of inflatable sumo suits so on the way back we got off the subway to find a store called Don Quiote that Adam said might have some.  When we got out on the street all the stores were high end and upscale, Gucci, Burberry, Cartier, you get the idea.  I wasn't too sure we'd feven ind a store called Don Quote along there but we eventually did,.  Unfortunately didn't have Karl's sumo suits.  As we walked back to the subway station we noticed people standing outside Louis Vuitton, waiting to get in with their suitcases.  Seriously!?!? Does Louis Vuitton even have sales?

With Serenade in sight we found a Family Mart and. a Lawson where we could spend the rest of our Yen, and I found some pretty pansies to take a photo of as we said our farewell to Japan.  I think this country is one of the safest on earth to visit, so orderly, so clean, really friendly, definitely a place we'd love to come explore some more.