Arriving in Osaka, Day 1: Dotonbori

The rest of the flight from Manila went as smoothly as could be imagined. Cebu Pacific are a ‘value’ airline so don’t provide movies on their flights so I just tried to sleep a bit, read my book and listened to a podcast. Upon arrival at Osaka Kansai Airport, not the other Osaka airport which I thought (for some odd reason) we were arriving, we made sure we got our passports stamped, successfully picked up our JR Passes* and jumped on a train which dropped us off right outside our hotel. The other airport had a far more complex journey to the hotel and the state we were in it would have been incredibly difficult to decipher the train network, so that worked out well (again more luck than judgement).

We’re staying at a capsule hotel, which is epic. It’s exactly what I imagined a Japanese capsule hotel to be; unnecessarily futuristic, loads of gadgets, really cool lighting and basically sleeping in what looks like an MRI, although my mum described it as ‘not nice’ when I showed her photos. You can’t please everyone I guess. The idea is similar to a hostel where there’s loads of beds in a single ‘room’, I think there’s 80 beds in the male dorm in total, but each is in a little ‘capsule’ which is essentially your bed, that you pull down a blind to when you want to sleep. There’s a separate changing area with lockers showers etc and they provide you with a set of pyjamas, slippers, toiletries and towels (hand, foot and body). You have to wear the slippers everywhere and everyone is wearing the same pyjamas which, combined with the mental lighting and curved surfaces everywhere, makes it look like you’re in a sci fi film. It’s also immaculately clean and tidy (cleaned at 3-5am so is nice and ready for the morning) and finished beautifully. I really like it. We just had a McDonalds for dinner as it’s very close and we both needed to get to bed ASAP. 

Today we explored Dotonbori, historically a theatre district, which is now characterised by the massive number of illuminated signs, restaurants, bars and entertainment facilities. We were up and out at 8 this morning, and both could have done with a few hours longer in bed, which wasn’t even necessary as it seems most of the shops etc in Osaka don’t open until 11. Some even had opening times of 6pm to 3am, and just normal looking shops. Weird. After walking down the Shinsaibashi-suji Shopping Street from the hotel, which is part of a longer covered retail walkway of over a mile in length, we wandered along both of Dotonbori’s principal streets and ended up at a coffee shop for some breakfast. We googled why it was so quiet everywhere and realised that nothing opens early here. What we did find was there is an area just to the West of Dotonbori nicknamed ‘America-Mura’ after all of the retro clothes shops which are mostly stocked with American vintage clothing. As Amelia and I are now being much more conscious about being sustainable, and therefore trying to buy more secondhand clothing, this seemed like a perfect place to start. Although a lot of the clothes were obviously far too cool for us we spent the rest of the morning exploring all the different shops and acquiring two very nice new coats (it’s cold here, very cold in comparison to the balmy Philippines).

What I’ve neglected to mention is we’ve randomly stumbled upon the Osaka Ebisu festival, which is when the Japanese pray to the god of commerce for financial success in the year ahead. For this there was a parade going down many of the streets we were crossing, which seemed to start in the morning as one long entity which then gradually split up into smaller sections to parade along the various different streets of Dotonbori. We didn’t have any idea what was going on at the time so just appreciated the costumes, very repetitive chants and busy crowds which followed the precession wherever it went.

For lunch we headed over to Kuromon Ichiba which is a large food market just to the South of where we were. It’s essentially another long covered arcade filled with street food as well as raw produce. An amazing introduction to the local specialities, though Amelia is dismayed by the amount of seafood. I bought a Yakisoba and Amelia had a caramelised baked sweet potato, which is as sweet at you’re imagining. Afterwards we got a strawberry in a sweet rice bun thing, actually very nice, and headed back to the hotel for a bit of r&r before heading out in the evening, it was about half 4 at this point and we’d been on our feet all day so a pretty good stint. 

We headed out to Dotonbori again to experience the area at night when it’s infinitely busier with innumerable neon lights everywhere and a stage with some dreadful singers belting out some very catchy tunes. A complete transformation from the daytime. We headed straight for Don Quijote a large, 8 story department store which is rammed full of literally everything you would ever need to buy (don’t go in there with a big bag as you’ll knock over every stand). It also has a 77m high Ferris wheel (not actually a wheel, more an oblong) attached to the rear of the building over the canal. My irrational fear of heights kicked in on the way up, but I appreciated it much more on the way back to Mother Earth. The cars were in a sort of glazed bubble which did actually give a pretty great view out over a relatively uninspiring urban view. Just a lot of lights and pretty nondescript buildings, but well worth the experience nonetheless. 

Back on the Main Street we went hunting for dinner. This turned out to be a deep fried mozzarella cheese stick, which many of the street food vendors sell. It looks like a massive croquette but what we didn’t realise is they’re actually covered in sugar and have a frankfurter in one end. So one mouthful is sugar, fried breadcrumbs, melted mozzarella and a sausage. Slightly odd. Very filling. 

We’ve talked for ages about going to see some jazz in London and never have, but apparently there is a strong jazz scene here in Osaka so, post cheese/sugar/sausage coma, we headed over to a building that houses a rock bar in the basement, and jazz bars the rest of the way up. What we didn’t realise is the building is obviously a traditional Japanese terrace, which are incredibly thin, so each of the bars could fit about 5-6 customers at any one time. The first bar we went in had wall to wall records, old record players, speakers, cd’s and other retro paraphernalia. The owner is clearly into his jazz. We had a couple of beers here enjoying the music (only 3 other people were in there at any one time) before moving upstairs to where there was a live band playing, of which there was 5 people in said band, playing to 5 customers squished along the bar and the barman in a space which can’t be more than 2 metres wide. Incredibly intimate, and very very good. We barely talked the entire time we were there (fiiiinally [i joke of course]) because we were all just listening to the very very talented musicians (2 trumpets, guitar, piano and a guy that played the violin and double bass). They even talked to us after their set and attempted to give us recommendations of what to see (not too successfully) and cleared up the mystery of the parades earlier in the days . A very special evening indeed.

We’re both very much looking forward to the rest of Japan, I personally think it’s going to be pretty special and definitely very different to anywhere I’ve ever been before (a million times better than China). The people are incredibly polite and helpful, even though there’s clearly a difficult language barrier to get past. Tomorrow we’re heading over to Nara for a bit of history and a complete contrast in urban setting from today. 

*JR Passes basically provide ‘free’ (as in we already paid for it) train travel across certain lines over the whole of Japan. The bullet trains between cities and certain lines within the cities are included.