After the rural scenic beauty of Hakone, we were ready to
experience some big-city sights. Since Sakura season was in full swing, we
decided to do as the locals do and have a picnic under the cherry trees. Hanami
is the Japanese tradition of welcoming the spring by gathering with friends and
family to celebrate the cherry blossoms. Our first order of business was to put
together a picnic lunch, so we stopped at Hankyu in Umeda Station, one of Osaka’s
most famous department store basement food halls (depachikas).
We were overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of food being
sold, all of it beautifully arranged in cases. In addition to bento boxes,
there were steamed buns, noodles, tempura, sushi, and all kinds of other savory
dishes. But the dessert cases were truly works of art. I wish a picture could
convey the size and scope of this food store – imagine if your local grocery
store was laid out like a high-end designer department store.
We opted to go with a couple of bento boxes and set off for
one of Osaka’s most popular hanami spots, Sakuranomiya Park. The park is
stretched out along the banks of the Ogawa river, and has been planted with
5000 cherry trees. There were hundreds of Japanese picnickers out enjoying the
sunny weather and cherry blooms. We found a great spot to sit where we could
eat our lunch and people-watch.
After lunch we strolled along the river down to Osaka
Castle, another beautiful place to see cherry blossoms.
Osaka is a food-lover’s paradise, so we definitely wanted to
enjoy the foodie scene. We took a walking food tour in the Tenma and Kyobashi
neighborhoods. Our guide took us to several restaurants and bars where we tried
local delicacies and had a few drinks as well.
We also went to a tiny restaurant that had maybe enough
seats at the bar for ten or twelve people. The chef grilled up a small plate of
kobe wagyu beef for us to share, along with oysters and a drink called chuhai
(a highball made with shochu rice alcohol and flavored club soda).
We did a few daytrips from Osaka to Himeji and Nara, which I
will write about in a separate post, but for the most part our evenings in
Osaka were spent exploring the food scene. We burned the heck out of our mouths
trying takoyaki (a kind of doughnut ball stuffed with an extremely hot, almost
molten, diced octopus filling).
On the sweet side of things, we had some white strawberries
(which tasted like regular red strawberries at three times the price…)
And at one street food market we saw these beautiful glazed
fruit sticks, so we bought a couple to try.
It turned out that instead of a sticky glaze the coating was
actually a hard candy shell as crunchy as a jolly rancher – not what we had
expected at all! It's a good thing nobody broke a tooth!
We also made sure to hit a sake tasting room. This one had
hundreds of different ones to choose from, but the friendly shopkeeper did not
speak English. Instead there was a multi-language touchscreen that listed the
different sakes.
You made your choice and the machine spit out a card that
you handed to the shopkeeper so that he knew which type of sake to pour for
you. High-tech and clever!
On our final night in Osaka, we took a stroll with about a
thousand other tourists through the very crowded Dotonbori area.
I was fascinated by the elaborate signs over the
restaurants. Even without being able to read Japanese, it made it easy to tell what kind
of food was being sold. For example, on the left is a takoyaki place and on the
right is a place specializing in fugu (pufferfish with all the poison/toxic
parts removed…hopefully).
Having already tried takoyaki and being too chicken to try
the fugu, we opted to have what I thought would be a less-lethal dinner of okonomiyaki (a savory pancake made with cabbage). If I
had known better I would have just gone with the fugu since the okonomiyaki
gave me a terrible case of food poisoning the next day. I blame the chef (who was actually me – you cook your own).
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