Day: July 26, 2023

The second and last full day in Osaka was very cool. For multiple reasons.

We ventured out first thing to the Cup Noodle museum on this cool refurbished old train. Yes you read that correctly, a cup noodle museum. From the early 70’s the pot noodle style dish has been manufactured by Nissin and there is a museum where you can see the history and you get to make a custom pot noodle with your selection of ingredients and sauce. They then package it around the cup you designed and shrink wrap it just like you would get at home. It was jolly good fun and while the queue was long, it was so worth it. Here is what we made.

We dashed back to rest at the condo before heading out late afternoon. The destination was Osaka castle with an onward look at the neon lights around Dotonbori. The blessing was that a huge stripe of low cloud had come over which brought wind and shade! Oh the delight! So we mooched around the castle grounds much more relaxed and without hunting shady routes before grabbing a cross town metro to Namba and Dotonbori. The food stop we made looked better from a decor point of view than the ultimate food belied. We all wanted to “hot foot” it out of there ASAP. My issue was I didn’t read the menu correctly but several of the family didn’t enjoy theirs as much either. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Anyway the lights were fantastic as were the street performers. Top marks went to three chaps who had teamed up to do basketball tricks with a beatboxer introducing each “play”

Today was mostly a travelling day but the distances were short so there was time to fit some cool stuff in. We dived back on the limited express train to Osaka which was alright once we had found the right train to match our reservations. I thought we were on Shinkansen but that was false. When we got to Osaka the walk was blistering and tricky as there were lots of of town planners dreams in play at once. Overhead walkways, traditional roads with complex crossings and two levels of subterranean walking options. Google maps does not handle more than one vertical level well.

We found the condo we were scheduled in for and left our bags in a container at the back locked with cycle locks. This left us with day packs and a hunger for lunch. Noticing the big ferris wheel we couldn’t resist a view of the city that starts on the 7th floor. The views were incredible! After that we stumbled across, under the railway arches, a Korean restaurant and Jenni ordered Italian from the menu. It was not the best 🙂 however the rest of the food tasted alright and it was an air conditioned break. We found our next pursuit right outside. Big Echo is a chain of karaoke were you can hire a room for a couple of hours and sing your heart out. This was very much on “the list” and I might have got a bit carried away. Sorry to the folk in the surrounding cabins 🙂

This evening was one of the highlights we had been looking forward to and the reason there was no blog last night. We didn’t get home until 11:00 and I was mashed.

The fireworks and boat festival sees nearly 1.3m people descend on Osaka for an event of gargantuan proportions. The river is lined up on both sides for about 1.5km with food stalls and just about everyone in Japan it feels like. You can get noodles, toffee apples, shaved ice, dumplings, drinks and then watch the boats and floating floats process up the river banging drums and shouting/dancing etc. This is the end of the mid-summer festivals and we happened across a seating area that was filling up for the fireworks. The compromise was that you couldn’t see the river but the fireworks view was spot on. Since we had seen some of the boats and the were perambulatory we thought this was right. It was a good call – the fireworks were great and so many. Eventually we were exhausted and tried to start back but the roads and bridges were closed to even pedestrians as the festival was still in full flow.

We ventured back into the crowd to get more food and I fell/tripped over a giant rock in the near dark. What a dummy. Never mind. As I said at the beginning we got back really late but we also felt very much part of it all.