DAY 5: Nagoya to Osaka

The time has come for me to take control of all dining decisions. It’s a fair call. Dave can decide historical monuments, museums and even transport routes. But really, after choosing an Australian themed (but American-owned) steakhouse for dinner on Wednesday night, it was time to get back to the real reason for this holiday… eating amazing Japanese food!

There is no shortage of fabulous food in Japan, but there is a shortage of the number of meals you can eat on a 13 day holiday, and so I felt like I needed to make each food decision carefully and with the appropriate level of research.

Our first hotel buffet breakfast of the holiday started our Thursday in Nagoya. The restaurant was on the hotel’s top floor, with a lovely view over the city and the nearby railway station. The buffet offered a mixture of European and Asian foods, including an egg station, quite a few soup choices (I chose Miso), fresh fruit, breads, pickles and an array of other bits and pieces I am not familiar with the names of. The hotel was three star, but the breakfast punched above its weight and was generous, attractively laid out, and as I am getting familiar with saying in Japan, well organised!

A small plastic card was given to us on arrival to put on our table so that no one else sat there while we were visiting the buffet. This was particularly appreciated by me, who lost my table while queuing at the breakfast buffet in a Sydney hotel last week! We were instructed to place it on our table and them turn it over when we were finished. Genius!

Last night, after our long walk back from our ‘Australian’ dinner, we stopped by the Nagoya Japan Rail (JR) station and organised for our pre-booked tickets to Osaka to be put back an hour or so. Shinkansen (bullet) trains travel this direction every few minutes, and my original idea of getting up early to go to Osaka and explore seemed not quite so clever after the exhausting day. The young lady at the ‘change ticket’ counter was extremely helpful and polite, suggesting an 11:03am option, then quickly exchanging our seat reservation tickets to the new train and time. No charge for this, and polite and efficient – not quite the service that I would receive in Australia!

The trip from Nagoya to Osaka is around 180km and on the high-speed Hikari train took a little less than an hour. Just enough time for a couple of chapters of reading, and gazing out of the window at the sights. Now experts at the Japanese rail network (!!), we easily bought tickets and changed trains at Shin-Osaka station to the suburban Osaka metro, arriving a few minutes and four stops later at the station closest to our hotel.

Yet another extremely helpful person helped us navigate the map, and in fact almost walked us to our hotel.

Dave and I tend to take a ‘feast or famine’ approach to hotel booking. So far on this trip we have kept the hotels nice enough to ensure a sound nights sleep, but cheap enough to keep the holiday costs under control. The hotel in Hakodate, for example, was about A$130/night. Although only A$220 a night, Osaka was chosen as our ‘Feast’ accommodation for the trip, with the Royal Park Hotel Iconic being quite luxurious (5 star), close to many local attractions and boasting a bath with a view! For those that know me well, you know I can’t go past a great bath!

We arrived at the hotel just before 1pm, and with check-in not till 3, we left our bags and set off to ‘recce’ Osaka. I googled ‘large shopping mall’ and found an area a bit over a km from the hotel. It turned out to be a fabulous place to visit and in fact an area Victoria and I visited when we were previously here. The 2.6km long covered ‘shopping street’ is in fact very famous (longest in Japan), and meets the equally famous ‘food street’ at the t-intersection at its far end.

After wandering ‘shopping street’ for quite a while, (including a visit to an Army surplus shop) I waited 10 minutes while Dave ate McDonalds and then we headed into ‘Food Street’. Now don’t be alarmed, Dave was actually being very thoughtful here, eating now, so that I could choose my own lunch without having to consider his tastes! After eating a buffet breakfast I wasn’t particularly hungry, so chose a tempura self-serve restaurant where a lightly battered piece of squid, a king prawn and a mixed vegetable tempura set me back less than A$5.

By the time we got back to the hotel, our room was ready and after already clocking up 10,000 steps I was ready to try out that bath!

In order to ensure we had the best food experience possible in Osaka, I had booked a ‘Food walking tour’ a couple of months ago with a company called ‘Backstreets Osaka’, who described themselves on their website as ‘Japan’s best food tour’. Good news – I think they lived up to that sales pitch!

Brian, a 60-year-old Northern Irish ex-pat who has been living in Osaka for 24 year, was our guide and we joined four Americans and two other Australians, exploring the sights, sounds and tastes of the ‘backstreets’ of Osaka. Not only did we taste lots of local delicacies (Takoyaki, Okonomiyaki, Gyoza, Kaarage, Yakitori and more!) we also learned a lot about the underbelly of Osaka life, walked through dodgy back alleys controlled by gangs; saw numerous gambling dens; visited a pinball alley; got a close up look at the red-light area; and heard stories about the Yakuza – a Japanese version of the mafia who control this district. All sounds scary, but compared to lots of places I’ve been, seemed pretty tame to me!

We fell into our comfortable bed around midnight after bidding farewell to Brian and our newest friends – a few of which were heading off to see more of the nightlife!

What a fantastic way to learn so much about this city – through its people, its sights and of course, its food.