11/11 - Tenjimbashisuji

Tenjimbashi-suji [天神橋筋], also known as Tenjinbashi-suji is a mouthful of a name.  Also, it's not something you would find in most travel books, except Asian ones perhaps.  Tenjimbashi-suji is not your popular tourist attraction.  It's a very much typical covered shopping arcade in the Kita ward of Osaka.  The Osaka Museum of Housing and Living is situated right in the middle of the shopping arcade and above the subway station that serves the area. 

One of the draws for N about Tenjimbashi was the opportunity to do the Tenjimbashi 2.6km walk.  They say that it's the longest covered shopping arcade in all of the Japan.  So we went north from the museum and subway station.  N's guide said there was a small pharmacy north of the subway station where we could pick up a piece of paper to prove that we were starting the walk.  H really thought we were walking in the wrong direction.  The pedestrian traffic was really thin in this area and there was no obvious sign pointing us to the start of this infamous walk. 

With the help of N's trusty Chinese-language travel guide, she found the extremely non-descript pharmacy that the book mentioned.  H thought to himself that he would never have found the place on his own.  It was a small, small Japanese pharmacy.  There wasn't even anyone at the pharmacist's window when we stepped in.  We had call out "sumimasen" to get the pharmacist to step out from the back.  He apologized Japanese-ly and N asked him about papers for the walk.  He promptly gave us a tiny sheet of paper for the walk.

Our goal then was to walk south 2.6km to find the other non-descript store.  There, we would hand over our tiny sheet of paper in exchange for a certificate proving we had walked the entire 2.6 km.  It's not exactly the same trial as walking the Great Wall, but we'll take it.

We made our back through the busier sections of Tenjimbashi-suji.  The other thing the shopping arcade is well-known for is the little food stands and restaurants along the way.  Speaking of restaurants, we were pretty hungry by this time.  Our McDonald's breakfast had long been digested and we were looking for sustenance again.  No better place than Tenjimbashi then.

We went into a restaurant called Jiyuken [自由軒].  Jiyuken is a restaurant chain whose specialty is their Japanese Curry Rice with a fresh uncooked egg on top.  Japanese curry is not hot by Indian nor Southeast Asian standards and seems more on the savoury side, but this one left us with a strange feeling.  Whatever the flavour it was meant to be, it seemed to be too strong for both of us.  No regrets in trying, though.

Even though the food wasn't particularly to our liking, the staff were quite friendly and interested in where we were from.  We had to go through the whole we are from Canada, but are Chinese in heritage spiel.  Especially for H, since he is born in Canada, that can be an interesting point in conversation.  N was very excited that she could carry out much of this conversation in Japanese.  Kudos to N.  H helped at one point in figuring out a fave Canadian artist for one of the staff.  He liked Sarah McLachlan.

We continued down the rest of Tenjimbashi-suji.  There were a lot of other food options to snack upon.  There was the ¥130 kyabetuyaki [キヤベツ焼] stall.  Kyabetuyaki appears to be a fried egg and fried noodle combo dish.  However, when we arrived at that stall, there was a TV crew occupying the whole food stand.  There was no way that we would bust in on a Japanese TV shoot.

Further down was a mini okonomiyaki [お好み焼き] stall that sold their food for ¥120.  Whoever said Japan was expensive to travel through?  No TV crew around, so it was safe to queue up and buy ourselves one to try.  Mmm...quite savoury and tasty.

Next on the foodie crawl was the mini potato croquette stall.  This one was in a small industrial style kiosk.  Easily missed if it were not for the obvious line up queuing up to partake in croquettes.  We really enjoyed this croquette.  We're very glad restaurants like Hi-Genki in Burnaby make croquettes locally that we can enjoy at any time.

We neared the end of the 2.6km walk and the level of activity really died down at this end too.  Thanks to N, she spotted which store was the end point of the walk.  We went in, handed over our papers, then he went to the back and printed out two certificates to prove that we had finished the infamous 2.6km Tenjimbashi-suji walk.

Okay, my feet are killing me now.  Where's the subway so I can sit for a while?

[all photos courtesy of N and her camera]