Osaka is a popular destination for food - in fact, historically it was a merchant city, and has been known as the "nation's kitchen" (tenka no daidokoro). "Osaka wa kuiduore" (Osaka people eat till they drop) was a famous saying, and Osakan's love of culinary culture is also demonstrated in another old saying "Kyotoites are financially ruined by overspending in clothing, Osakans are ruined by spending on food". It was interesting to note that in Osaka I found many more chinese tourists especially around the food areas, than caucasians (which was the reverse in Kyoto).
Osaka is the birthplace of okonomiyaki, a Japanese pancake that has egg, cabbage and various other things in it, topped with bonito shavings and mayonnaise. The restaurant hubby wanted to go, Mizuno, was listed as being one of the best okonomiyake restaurants in Osaka on many foodie blogger sites. It's so popular that people start queuing half an hour before the restaurant opens.
Dotonbori was a short walk from our hotel. This part of Osaka is famous for its food, bright lights and busy night life.
Mizuno is small, and has 2 floors, the downstairs has 8 bar seats, and upstairs has 5 booths. You can sit 4-6 in one booth and there is a cook top, teppanyaki style in the middle of the table.
We ordered #1, #2 and #4. They spoke English and were very polite, and there were tons of awards on the outside of their door.
There is a seat at the top floor where you wait to go into the next free table. I can imagine some people feel pressured to eat faster when there is someone sitting there watching you eating, but I had no such qualms. Besides, I was having fun watching other people eat. So here are the steps to making okonomiyake as done by the Mizuno staff.
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| A finished okonomiyaki |
Taste wise, I do love mountain yam so the first one (Yamaimoyaki) was my favourite, and it was also the most popular. The kids enjoyed the second one (Mizunoyaki) because of the prawns, and #4 (Modanyaki) felt lighter because there was less meat in it compared to the previous two. It was good okonomiyaki and I'm glad we waited around for it!
We then headed off to Umeda Sky Garden, which is another one of those tall buildings in Osaka where you can get a good view of the city. It was a nice sunny day (another hot day) and we did get good views of the city from there.
It's not as easy to get to as some places, but it's not that hard, especially since it's so BIG you can't miss it when you get above ground. We took the JR to Osaka station and then walked for 10 minutes or so from there. It's 700/350 yen to go up to the top and look around, and it's a little bit more romantic up there than Abeno Harukas.
These are escalators leading from the edges to the sky garden. I thought they were rather impressive from the ground but seeing them from the top added some perspective.
Great view! I did have difficulty trying to find Abeno Harukas though.. it turns out it was being blocked by a pillar.
In one section there was a fenced off bit and locks covering all parts of the fence. This was the lover's corner and there was a cute little love heart cut out in front of some seats to take some cheesy love photos.
Cuuuute! After that there wasn't much to do around Umeda Sky Building so we walked to the other side of the station to visit a this cake shop, famous for the "Dojima roll".
The cuteness of this shop, with it's Parisian outlook probably started the Osakan fascination with this benign looking dessert. The Dojima roll looks like a swiss roll cake with cream in the middle. In fact, this egg-custard roll, with cream from Hokkaido, and dusted with a light covering of fine sugar, the cream is not overly sweet and quite light. Apparently it's a popular gift.
They also make an ice cream version now too - the "Ice roll", where the cream is replaced by ice cream.
So, we sampled a few of these delightful desserts and they did not disappoint. The other dessert at the bottom is an egg custard, topped with a light souffle like top.
We then headed for some shopping at Kintetsu mall in Abeno Harukas - I just wanted to show our friends the largest mall in Japan - and then we spent too long there because we got back to Dotonbori at about 730pm to try to get into Kanidoraku honten, and the crab was sold out. This famous crab restaurant opened in 1960 and I had been there previously ten years ago. I was sad we missed out!
In fact, many restaurants already had a one hour wait time, or were not taking any more customers due to wait times, and so we ended going to a quiet little restaurant that served simple food (and had LOTS of tables), and just ordered an oden (a winter pot dish with stewed ingredients) and a soba tempura set.
The oden was nice, the soba was average but at least the kids ate it. We filled the rest up with some chicken nuggets from Maccas and some takoyaki and gyoza. Dotonbori at night is quite impressive.
We walked back via Shinsaibashisojo, an arcade parallel to the street our hotel was on filled with shops. Phew, the crowds were still out that late!
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