11/7 - Evening in Dotonbori

After an afternoon break back at the hotel, we headed back out into the town.  A great area just hang around at night would be Dotonbori [道頓堀].  It's at the southern end of the Shinsaibashi-suji shopping arcade.  You know you've reached Dotonbori when you see all the bright lights and giant neon advertisements lined up right next to the tiny river.

However, our highlight tonight was not the touristy stuff, but our dinner.  We found an okonomiyaki restaurant that was recommended by one of N's travel books.  To a foreigner, you probably wouldn't pick this restaurant out except for the crowd lining outside the door.  At first, I thought the restaurant was really tiny with only 10 seats right up against the cooking area.  The cooks literally cook the okonomiyaki on the giant flat grills right in front of you.  It's pretty neat to see it all, and to smell it all.

Originally, I thought the staff were trying to tell us that the wait would be another 1.5 hours and were asking us to come back.  However, as we were making our way out of the restaurant, the server rushed out and grabbed us and redirected us upstairs.  Upstairs?  I didn't realize there was an upstairs here.  Upstairs actually had tables with mini-grills in the middle.  Good thing the server came out to grab us; otherwise, we would've missed this great meal.

I felt that the occasion called for a glass of local brew.  Yebisu was the brand they were pedalling so I decided to partake in it.  It was a light lager type of beer, but it was pretty tasty.  I'm not a huge light beer fan, but this one was definitely a good one.  We ordered a set meal consisting of two mini-okonomiyakis and one regular, larger okonomiyaki.

After dinner, there was a really long line up.  We were glad that we had gotten a littler early to the restaurant.  Otherwise, we'd really be waiting 1.5 hours for dinner.  We went back to the Dotonbori Bridge and took in the giant adverts.  Even if you don't plan on spending any money, it's great just to stand and bask in the glow of the commercial lights and watch tourists pose as their favourite snack brand athlete, the Glico Man.

The bright Dotonbori River lights are not the only draw on this stretch.  There's also many larger than life store signs along the pedestrian walk that is directly south of the river and runs parallel to the river.  Right on the corner of the pedestrian walk and the Dotonbori bridge is a giant crab.  It simply dominates this particular corner.  Obviously, the restaurant on which this sign resides sells crab for dinner.  Go figure.

A little further down, there is a variety of other signs.  There's the Red Devil Takoyaki stand complete with red demons adorning the whole front.  There's a giant lit up puffer fish with giant "fugu" hiragana letters noting the presence of a fugu restaurant.  (Every year, a handful of people die eating the poisonous puffer fish).  There's also a Dotonbori icon that looks like a Japanese man with thick round glasses wearing a clown suit decked out in American colours.  A famous landmark and icon to Japanese, but it's not really accessible to those who do not speak Japanese.

We then headed back to river and walked along the quieter riverwalk.  There was a lot less activity here. There was a giant vertical ferris wheel that wasn't in service, but was definitely lit up in bright neon colours.  Even the main Dotonbori bridge had a touch of light built in underneath the span.

Again, just walking around Dotonbori is nice enough.  You don't even have to really buy anything.  We had walked across to the other side of the river to get back to Shinsaibashi-suji.  However, we soon realized that we were in sort of a red light/night club area.  Oops.  Always be careful where you walk off to, I guess.  Japan is a fairly safe country to walk around, but you likely still want to avoid the shadier areas of town.

11/7 - Morning in the Market and an Hour in the Bookstore

After running around Kansai for the first few days since we arrived in Japan, it was finally time to have bit of down time and just hang around Osaka itself. We were back again at the Hearton Hotel Shinsaibashi which is very central and within steps of many major shopping areas.  Today was just a day to walk around and explore the areas around the hotel.

First of all, we slept in this morning.  That was a nice change of pace from our frantic scurrying around of the first few days.  Our first stop of the day was the Kuromon [黒門] Market.  There were lots of fish and veggie stands in this market.  We decided to wander, but my morning hunger was starting to make me "hangry".  So I grabbed a quick snack first.  A small doughnut vendor was making fresh doughnuts right in the market.  It was really fluffy tasting and not too sweet.  I really liked it.  I'd say I would prefer this doughnut over a really sweet Tim Horton's donut.

N's hunger finally started to kick in and we found ourselves in a little seafood place that catered to tourists who wanted to sit down and eat in the market.  From listening to all the guests seated around us, it became quickly obvious that everyone here was Chinese.  There was a quartet of Taiwanese tourists, a group of 8 really boisterous and excitable middle-aged Hong Kong ladies, and two younger Hong Kong women.  The two younger ladies vacated their seats for us.  The middle-aged Hong Kong ladies were definitely the loudest.  For every bit of seafood, they were loudly "oohing" and "awing".  It was pretty funny.  But most Japanese are not so loud, so they really stuck out like a sore thumb.

For our food, we had unagi and rice, sashimi and uni (sea urchin).  I don't think I've ever had so much seafood for breakfast.  First the Arima Onsen breakfast and now this one.  Decadent.

After finishing breakfast, we headed down to a shopping area known as Sennichimae　[千日前].  One small and tight shopping street in Sennichimae is not your usual tourist attraction.  However, it may be of interest to those who like something ordinary, yet different.  This street specializes in kitchen and restaurant supplies.  Some shops were wholesalers for giant grills and ovens.  Some shops sold tableware.  Some shops specialized in selling different sorts of restaurant uniforms.  It was especially interesting to see some of the traditional Japanese style restaurant clothing that they had for sale.

Further south past Senichimae, we came across a large bookstore.  The bookstore was directly across from a large comedy theatre.  Apparently, this theatre is famous to the locals and Japanese tourists, but it would be useless for us to make a visit to watch Japanese comedy - way over our heads.  The bookstore, on the other hand, kept us occupied for at least an hour.  N was looking at the manga of one Takagi Naoko [高木直子].  She spend quite a bit of time debating whether to buy a couple copies of her books or not.  I was over in the train section. Japanese bookstores literally have a whole bookshelf dedicated to books and mags about their trains.  It's pretty impressive if you're a train fan.

Today, however, what caught my eye was a magazine with a box attached to it.  At first I wasn't sure what this mag+box combo was.  Then I started to realize that there was a DIY camera inside the box.  It was an old style Twin Lens Reflex camera.  This was tres cool, I though.  I looked at the price and it was only ¥2500.  For about CAD$25-30, I thought this was worth the cost.  My only concern when I picked up the mag+box was how to fit it into my luggage.  But what a find!

11/6 - an evening in Kobe

After our post-Himeji Castle lunch, we made our way back to the train station and hopped onto a Sanyo Electric Railway car.  The car didn't leave right away, so I had a chance to wander and take a few photos of the train.  Again, we made sure we were on one of the express trains.  We didn't want to waste our time on the local service train that stopped at the almost three dozen stops between Himeji and Kobe.

We took the trip back to Kobe and slept half of the way there.  The sun was still beating down and we had to draw down the curtains.  Luckily in Japan, most transit comes with some sort of shade or curtains that you can draw in order to block the sun from shining right in your eyes.

We arrived back in Kobe and made our way to the unique neighbourhood of Kitano [北野].  Kitano is well-known for its collection of European-style buildings.  Kobe was one of the early contact ports between foreigners and the Japanese.  So many of the foreign powers had residences and buildings for their representatives.

The neighbourhood was a quick jaunt up from Shin-Kobe station, but we were looking for a particular part of Kitano.  We were looking for small circular plaza overlooking Kobe and in front of an infamouse European-style building, sometimes known as the Weathervain Home because of the weather vain on top.  I think it also goes by a few other names, as well.

As dusk fell, we finally found it after winding up the hill's many little pedstrian alleyways.  It had a nice few of Kobe, but not a very expansive one.  A few people were just sitting around enjoying the warm autumn weather.  We found another one of those stamp stations common to Japan's tourist sites and collected our Kitano stamp.

We wandered more around the old foreign residences, but many were now closed for the day.  So there was no way to see the insides of one of these unique buildings.  Giving up on spending more time in Kitano, we started heading back down the hill to Shin-Kobe Station.

Our next stop was to head to Kobe's waterfront area, sometimes known as Harborland.  At least that was the name of the subway station we got off at.  From the subway station, we had wind our way under a highway overpass and several shopping malls before actually reaching the water.  It must have taken at least 15 minutes from the station to the water.

Kobe has some beautiful buildings along the water.  One is the Kobe Tower which stands like a giant elongated Japanese drum covered in a neon weaving of red lights.  In the shadow of the tower is the Kobe Maritime Museum.  Its giant lattice structure is lit up in a fluorescent green that stands in contrast to the adjacent Kobe Tower's red.  Further down the pier from the tower and museum is the large curvilinear building of the Oriental Hotel in Merikan Park.  These three buildings are quite easily some of the most recognizable buildings in Kobe.

 

We wandered a little more in the Mosaic Gardens shopping area to see if we could find some Kobe beef to have for dinner.  There was a place that had Kobe beef, but only as a part of their ramen meals.  It wasn't a full-blown Kobe beef restaurant.  We were looking for the real deal.  As we walked around, we came across a boardwalk amusement area complete with giant colour-changing ferris wheel and a double-decker merry-go-round.  Also, there was a strange little gazebo where you and a partner were encouraged to shake hand with your right hands and grab onto a fixed stick with your left hand.  Once you shake hands, it looks like the gazebo lights up in a variety of different colours.

We were getting hungry by this point and we hadn't found what we were looking for.  We made our way back to Kobe's transport hub of Sannomiya [三ノ宮].  Our feet were starting to tire of schlepping around looking for Kobe beef.  We settled on a quick dining outfit known as Yayoiken.  It was complete with a vending machine to order and pay for your food after you sat down.  Or you could do it in the other order if you so choose.  I had a tonkatsu meal while N had a croquette meal of some sort.  (I'm getting bad at remembering what we ate).  It was a quick meal and we were about ready to head back to Osaka.

However, we came across a busy little window underneath the overhead train station.  There was a long line up for this tiny little window. It looked like they were selling gyoza and buns.  I am a gyoza freak.  N knows this very well.  So we lined up and bought a box of gyoza and some pork buns to snack on later back in Osaka.  The place was called Ikkanrou.  We later found out that it was a fairly famous food institution in Kobe.  Good stuff.  We didn't miss out on some of the local specialties, then.  Unfortunately, the gyoza was cold by the time we got back into the hotel in Osaka.