The other were still snoozing, so I slipped out into the quiet Kyoto streets for a walk and hopefully a decent coffee. I was almost instantly rewarded. About 300 metres from our accommodation was a little hipster coffee place called “% Arabica.” This place was the real deal, they roast their own beans, make drip filter and espresso coffee – and they instantly understood my order – bliss. And the coffee – double bliss!
Today we were doing one of the top 3 things on Lou’s Japan list – we were going for a day trip to Osaka. Osaka has a reputation for lots of things – the locals are supposedly brasher and some say it is the food capital of Japan. Anyway Lou had done lots of research and he was super keen. On the way out of Kyoto he fed his disposable camera obsession – and we fed our faces with some super delicious donuts from the uber hip Koe Donuts. But Lou had to wait a little longer. First Jules and I dragged hime to the Kyoto Botanical Gardens. We were expecting big things – and little things including a Bonsai exhibition. The reality was quite different. The gardens were nice with a small “n” – a little run down and quite small. Obviously run on a shoestring by a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers. A shame really in a city with as much class and style as Kyoto. Then we jumped the Shinkansen for the 35 minute trip to Osaka.
Arriving at Osaka station was overwhelming. I wasn’t prepared for how huge and how busy Osaka would be. The station is really poorly signposted – at least if you’re an English speaker, and we wandered round and round trying to find our way out of the fricken place. Eventually we gave up, and gave in – to our hunger. We had lunch at a sushi train place in this huge food hall called Eki Marche connected to the station. I thought it was excellent, Lou thought it was “meh” – tough crowd.
We found out later that the whole Kita (Umeda) area of Osaka (the northern part of the city) is connected via underground walkways. I wish we’d known that earlier – we spent a solid hour navigating across massively busy roads and huge pedestrian overpasses just to cover about 2 kms as the crow flies. But the Crowes were walking and the Hampson was getting super crabby as we tried to find some cool shopping centre or other. We eventually made it (and discovered the underground walkways) – but not before I did my narna. These things happen when you’re travelling.
Things improved dramatically after that, when we caught the subway over to the Minami (southern area) of town. First stop was Amerika-Mura which was an enclave of hip shops, bars, cafes, tattoo parlours etc. I began to understand why people might like Osaka. The crowd was younger – and quite a few locals even had tattoos – a rare sight on the trip so far. We stumbled across what was by far the best record shop we have found in Japan so far – Flake Records. They had an amazing set up. It was easy to sample lots of the Japanese music, they had an excellent range of overseas stuff including truckloads of Australian stuff (even the new record by Amyl and the Sniffers!). And – they sold beer! Lou and I bought up big on Japanese stuff and I attempted to engage the owner in conversation. He wasn’t buying any of my puppy dog enthusiasm though – I’m guessing he sees a lot of tourists. Gotta stop trying to be friends with every record store owner I meet…
Later we walked down into the Dotombori area which is packed with shops, clubs and bars – mostly under covered walkways. And not for the first time I noticed how many Chinese tourists were around. On this occasion there seemed to be thousands of Chinese tourists lugging huge duty free bags full of cosmetics and fancy trainers. Not sure what the deal is – but some of the stores (e.g. the Onitsuka Tiger shoe store) were overflowing with tourists grabbing at shoes and demanding to try things on. It was a little ugly.
We eventually made it to the Dotombori-gawa (canal) which is kind of like Osaka’s answer to Times Square – huge neon signs, masses of people and so much activity. There was an even some terrible boy band doing some kind of promotional concert on the banks of the canal. The sun was setting and I was officially overwhelmed.
Luckily Lou’s research came in handy. He wanted to go to a nearby bar called Craft Beer Works Kamikaze – and we were only too happy to be dragged along. The bar was excellent – 23 local and international craft beers on tap, lovely people and after a couple of excellent beers we were ready to rejoin the fray. We strolled back up towards Amerika-Mura, bought some take away Takoyaki from an allegedly Michelin Star Rated place and sat down to people watch and eat (and drink convenience store beer) in the square in the heart of Amerika-Mura. Does it get any better?
The train home was (as always) on time and super fast. After such a huge Osaka day even navigating the Kyoto buses was a breeze. Sleep.
flyeelookee 