food – Food & Fiction

Japan – Our Introduction for Aussie’s – PART SIX (Osaka)

We left Kyoto after two nights and headed back to Shinkansen (bullet train). This time, we had our luggage, and for those wondering, yes, there is an allocated spot on Shinkansen for luggage. We were bound for Osaka, which is one of Japan’s most visited cities by tourists.

As we drove through the streets of Osaka, we saw that it was busy, like Tokyo but over the coming days we would realise that the feel of Osaka is different. I’m not sure if you’d call the vibe more relaxed but it seems to stray a little further from tradition and exhibit a little more fun. If you are looking to party, Osaka is a good choice for you. When we arrived at Swissotel Nankai, we were happily surprised. The hotel was grand and luxurious, the service was spot on and the location was within easy walking distance of Dotonbori. If you want to be in the thick of Osaka, book somewhere near Namba.

We were too early to check in to our room and so, in keeping with our ‘let’s squeeze everything possible into this trip’ theme we asked the concierge what we should go and see. Osaka Castle is a popular spot and a must see in the area, so we headed out. Now, the concierge did try to tell us how to get there by train and we did go down into the subway. We bought a ticket and we had every intention of trying to get there by trainline. We sunk into the sea of people, we saw signs pointing this way and that, we saw different colours and stairs going up and down. We asked a lady behind a desk where we should go. Sweat beaded on our necks, not only because of the warm, stagnant air but because we felt cramped and confused, we needed get out. Out into the air and out where there was space to breathe and think clearly. Once we were out, there was no way we were going back in… back to the ol’ faithful, Uber.

The current Osaka Castle is a rebuild of the 1583 original and is known now as a museum and lookout that houses 16th Century historical artifacts. It is absolutely a site to behold and the view from the top is just amazing. It really was a great thing to start our Osaka adventure with. You get a great overview of the city you are about to dive into. If you were going to give something a miss at Osaka Castle, it wouldn’t hurt to miss the grass garden, it may be spectacular in a different season but at this time of year, it was just grass and trees.

When we got let up to our room at Swissotel, it was a really nice size, unlike our tiny Tokyo apartment. If you are looking for a little luxury and lots of food options, without needing to leave your hotel then we highly recommend this stay. It is close to everything and you can escape when the outside world gets too full on. It was actually a perfect choice for our final accommodation spot for this trip.

The next thing to do was to explore Dotonbori and over the coming days, it was a place we would frequent. Dotonbori is what I like to describe as a market of restaurants. Any and every type of Japanese food is available. Dotonbori is big and loud, not noisy, but loud in that there are lights and moving signs and neon everywhere you look. There are big crabs hanging from walls, Japanese statues grinning at you, dragons coming out of signs and hundreds of glass cabinets displaying so much food, that although you want to, you would never be able to try it all. It is a must see for any foodie or anyone who is really just looking to have a good time.

The next day was Universal Studio’s day, so the first night, we didn’t stay out too late. We knew that like Disneyland day, it was going to be long, hot and hectic. It would pay to get a decent rest before that. We tried the rooftop restaurant at the hotel, which was lovely, and we sat and watched the world below for a while then turned in.

The ride to Universal Studios was about 30 minutes by car from Namba. We had our tickets and fast passes organised, and I really recommend that you get on Klook and look at your fast pass options for this day. It is worth the extra money. Your day is organised and if you select your preferred fast pass, then you are going to get to see all the things you want to see.

Universal Studio’s is home to Super Nintendo World, Jurassic Park, Jaws, Despicable Me and the Minions, Hogsmead (Harry Potter) and lots of other iconic movies and characters. When they are all laid out in front of you, the excitement and the memories of iconic scenes flood your mind.

Hogsmead was the first stop on out list and… oh, wow! This is an absolute must see for any Harry Potter fan. You walk through the gates and what is waiting for you? The Hogwarts Express, of course. From there, by grey stone streets, you are taken into Hogsmead and yes, it has an Ollivander’s and everything. You can buy a wand and do spells, you can eat Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans and then get a butter beer. This was my number one spot in Universal and I honestly, could have hung out there all day. When it came time to jump on our rides, the virtual reality Harry Potter ride really blew our minds. Ben has never watched any of the movies and wasn’t familiar with the stories but he still thought the ride was good. It did everything from taking you to school to putting you on a broomstick in a Quidditch field to following Harry past the dementors. It was nothing short of incredible. The Flight of the Hippogriff was our other ride there and it was a short but pretty awesome roller-coaster.

We had a little break between our fast pass times and so we took this time to explore Universal more. There were so many stores, lots of themed restaurants and great photo spots. Ben was most excited about Super Mario World but this wasn’t scheduled until the end of our day so we did the Jaws ride, the Minions ride and the Jurassic Park ride, plus we sat in on the Sing stage show, which was really entertaining and got us out of the heat for a while.

The sun was setting on our epic Universal day and we just had one thing left to do… Super Mario World. This place is absolutely ‘off the hook’ when it comes to Nintendo nostalgia. If you ever wanted to be Mario or Yoshi, jumping on mushroom heads, kicking turtle shells, collecting coins and just coming back to life when you got it wrong, then Super Mario World is the place for you. The scenes they have created just ‘are the games’. They are not like the games, they are the games and once you are in there, you are part of it. The rides were okay, there was a Super Mario Kart one and a shooting based game. There is also the mine cart ride in Donkey Kong Country and this one was the best in that area. The Donkey Kong sundae shake was the most delicious banana flavoured cold treat that we had for the day.

The next couple of days contained more exploration of Osaka and a food tour. Unfortunately, our Osaka food tour wasn’t as good as our Tokyo one. We saw some more amazing things like a shop that contained heaps of sporting apparel but also had a skate park for kids inside the store. One of the most interesting places we visited was NIFREL, which is an indoor animal park. This place has three floors of animals and one with this spheric light show that is totally unexpected in the middle of a place like this. The bottom floor is aquatic animals in tanks, then above that there is lemurs, otters, wallabies, penguins and even hippos. There is a white tiger in the same room as the Cafe, just being a good neighbor to some salt water crocs. The enclosures are almost eerily clean and the animals are strangely calm.

Dotonbori bought us more fun the night after our food tour. We found a little bar called Kenny’s. Now Kenny’s is a weird kind of establishment. It is simple, a cart which makes the front of a skinny basic little alley style room. At the back of the room there is a toilet and a fridge. Lining the walls are some bar tables and stools. At the front is Kenny, with his disco lights and cart. He is serving anything from beer to whiskey and even sake. Not just in a sake cup, but in a bowl. From all of the handwritten messages on Post-It notes on his walls, you can see how well Kenny is loved by travelers, and how much they enjoyed his hospitality. Kenny entertains with air guitar and a smoke machine and serves with generosity, making curious travelers very tipsy travelers by the time they are done. We met a German tourist and some Mexican tourists, then joined forces with a Japanese American and his Japanese girlfriend. With Kenny’s liquor clouding our best judgement, we ended up in a Japanese night club where we had more drinks and the night slipped away into more lights, music and dancing.

On our last night in Japan and in Osaka we went to a fishing restaurant. It was an experience we’d heard about from friends. For anyone who doesn’t know Ben, he is a super keen fishman. This was said to be a place that you could catch your own fish and have it cooked for you. It was high on Ben’s list of things he wanted to do. The venue is set out like a boat dock and your tables are on stationary boats. In the blue water, surrounding those boats, there are… yep, you guessed it… fish. You are given a rod and you can catch your fish and eat it too. You simply catch, point at the poster which has all of the cooking options on it and they serve it. This was an experience in itself and if we did it again, we would steer away from the set menu, it was just way too much food for us.

When we were saying goodbye to Japan, our main thoughts were that we did have a great time. The food was great and we made memories we would keep close. There was a lot of city time and if we returned to Japan, we would try to spend less time in cities and more in the countryside.

To those who have followed my Japan blog through, thank you. I really hope you enjoyed it and got something out of it. If you have any questions, I am more than happy to answer them, just send me a message.

Top Tip No. 6:

You really can do Japan as cheaply or as fancy as you like. It is a ‘choose your own adventure place’. You can eat very cheaply and stay in cheap accommodation and still be very comfortable or you can live it right up to the extreme. For us, we went somewhere in between. In regard to Fast Passes for Universal, if there is one thing to spend some extra dollars on, then this is it. It will make your day when you get to skip the queues and do the best rides with very little wait time.

Japan – Our Introduction for Aussie’s – PART FIVE (Kyoto)

Shinkansen, when you are looking for your ride between cities, you will quickly learn that this is the Japanese word for bullet train. Now, as I have already explained, the train system in Japan, gave both Ben and I a little anxiety. I am happy to report that the experience of getting to the right platform, finding the right Shinkansen and getting to the right car was actually easier than we expected. The ease of it was largely due to Ben’s excellent research on where to go, and what side of Tokyo Station we needed to be on and also to the Klook app, which allowed us to very easily book Shinkansen tickets, without having to visit a ticket booth. It simply issued us with QR codes, which we scanned at the gates and our tickets popped out the other side. Bullet trains only visit large main stations, so you won’t be able to catch one from a local subway station, without catching another train or two or more… to the main station. For us, again, Uber was the easiest way.

Before we knew it, we were boarding this iconic mode of transport. We were very much looking forward to seeing something other than the busy, shiny city that is Tokyo. We chose to sit in the green car with allocated seating on the bullet train. Klook is very good at explaining your options in regard to this. The inside of the train was furnished more as a comfortable, spacious aircraft than any train I’d been on.

I know that many Aussie’s go down the path of getting a JR Pass before they get to Japan, for us, because we didn’t brave the local subway’s and only took a couple of bullet train rides, it was much cheaper and easier just to book our rides on Klook. The decision is yours, but if you are not planning on travelling the trainlines at least daily, I would look at Klook before buying a JR Pass.

Shinkansen is travelling fast, between 260 and 320km/hr, but if the world outside wasn’t whizzing past the windows, you wouldn’t know you were moving. It’s a smooth, comfortable ride. Better still, you get to see so much along the way, even if it is only for a second. City, more city, buildings, more buildings, then finally trees and mountains, which were an extremely welcome sight. We did go past the spot where Mount Fuji is, but unfortunately, like many days, it wasn’t visible due to cloud cover.

When we exited Kyoto station, the vibe was not dissimilar to Tokyo, in that, it was still a city. Not as busy but a city all the same. It was quite a walk (about half of an hour) to our hotel and it was hot, but it gave us a chance to see how Kyoto had more little lanes than Tokyo. It felt older, more traditional and smaller. At this stage, we were extremely glad that we’d organised a transport company to take our luggage from Tokyo to our next hotel for us, which meant we weren’t dragging any bags, besides the trusty backpack, around Kyoto. We had some time to kill and so we discovered some markets on the way to the hotel, where I got some traditional kanzashi (Japanese hair stick) put in and we found some cold Kyoto beer, gyoza and sushi.

We also discovered the Samurai & Ninja Museum, which I have to say was one of the most interesting experiences we had. The tour, which is part of your ticket was a great way to learn about Samurai, ninja and Shogun traditions. Ticket prices are around $30 AUD and you can pay extra if you want to do some of the experiences, like Ninja training and dress up or do a tea ceremony. We were happy enough just to have a look around, and hang out in the air-con for a while. During the tour, you will learn that the artifacts and different armors have some extremely interesting stories behind them. You also get to hold real (but unsharpened) weapons to get the full feel of what they carried around. It’s a place that you can spend a lot of time at or a little, depending on how deep you want to get into the experience.

Check in time approached, so we made our way to the hotel. Our Kyoto hotel was the Kamanza Hotel and talk about some space… this place was the polar opposite of our cramped Tokyo apartment. It had a large room containing a traditional dining area, a wardrobe (also looked traditional), our big bed, a desk and plenty of luggage room. It also had an entire shower room off the bathroom and separate toilet room. The staff kept to themselves and this stay was very comfortable.

To top off our day, we decided to look for a meal and a drink and I am glad we did. At this point, we did have a few negative feelings floating between us but I will explain this in the last paragraph of this blog, so read on. We found a little bar, manned by a chef from out of town. He was polite, courteous and his food and drink knowledge was wonderful. It was here that we experienced our number one dish of our trip. Surprisingly, it wasn’t meat. It was lotus root and although we had been eating it in Tokyo, this was different. It had was cooked in the chef’s own sauce and served with salty cheese, it was just umami and mouth-watering. In fact, every dish and mouthful of clean sake we tried here, was a winner.

The next day was set to be a ‘free’ have a look around Kyoto day and as we were only here for two nights, again we wanted to make the most of it. Ben looked on Klook and found a 4 hour walking tour featuring Tenryu-ji Temple, Arashiyama Bamboo Forest, Nonomiya Shrine and the monkey park. This was honestly one of the best things we booked of our own accord. The tour guide was great and the other people on the tour were really friendly. We spent most of the day with some Texan’s we got along with, even having a nice meal with them after. The tour guide provided us with some really interesting history, without being too formal about it and we even learnt that some koi fish are over 100 years old. The bamboo forest is an amazing sight and a great photo opportunity. There is some tasting to be done of some local foods and spices at the small Kyoto shops and then you climb. You climb some more and you keep climbing, until you see monkey’s. The road to the monkey mountain is some stairs but mostly upward path and I, for one, did struggle a little but it is worth the hike. The view of Kyoto from the big banana at the top is picturesque and the monkeys are very well behaved and so interesting to watch. You can feed them with food they provide, from inside a hut, but we didn’t.

We couldn’t leave this part of Kyoto without sampling a little more sake. So, we walked back to a sake shop we’d seen earlier. We sampled some local sake on it’s own and some with a beautiful plum liquor mixed in. True to our style, we ended up with a bottle of each to take home, yum.

Now, I don’t want to end my Kyoto blog on a ‘low’ because it was probably our favorite place of the trip, but the thing about blogging is that sometimes truth, although hard to officially say, is needed. We loved our Japan trip and we would take none of it back and yes, we agree with people when they say the Japanese are polite people. In most cases, they were, but there were a few times where we either felt like we were being ignored, mocked by people on other tables at restaurants, or we were being ushered to places where tourists are clearly welcome. It seems that there is a degree of facade, put on for tourists, that may be covering the fact that some locals just don’t like tourists. We tried to walk into a bar in Kyoto and although there were only two or three people in there, with plenty of free tables, the barman or chef or owner (not sure which), waved us out saying they were full. We walked past the same place a while later, and it still held very little people. It was a lie to get us to leave. An American we met in Tokyo described a similar experience in some of the places he’d tried to eat in. It was not something we were expecting to experience, given what we had heard from Australian’s who had been to Japan, and it was a bit of a shock because in Australia our culture has evolved to be extremely inclusive. Ushering someone out of a venue because they are not from here, would just never be done or at least never be done without criticism. Anyway, I’m giving you the information, I’ll let you decide what you think but it is just how we felt.

Next Up: It’s back on the bullet train to head to our last top… Osaka.

Top Tip No. 5:

Essential apps list for a Japan trip and you have probably heard of a few. We found the most useful to be Uber, Klook, Google Translate and Google Maps.

Japan – Our Introduction for Aussie’s – PART TWO

Are you an Aussie, looking to go to Japan for the first time? My husband and I did just that, follow my blog for helpful info and entertaining stories about our itinerary.

The hotel we stayed in for our 5 days in Tokyo was the Richmond Hotel Shiba in the Minato City region. The hotel was nice enough. Like many Japanese hotel rooms, the space was very tight but it did offer a queen bed, which isn’t easy to find in some parts, and does have a coin laundry you can use, which we learnt AFTER we went for a bit of a stroll one day to find some washing machines 😛

What did we like about the Minato City region?

It was within walking distance to some iconic landmarks like Tokyo Tower
It felt less crazy that staying right in the heart of the city, for example where scramble crossing is
Everything we couldn’t walk to, was a fairly short Uber ride away
The Hub, which is a British style Pub was within walking distance, which we found ourselves resting at here and there
Food options are plenty, without being too overwhelming

Our itinerary in Tokyo had us booked in to do our first food tour of our trip. This was the Tokyo After 5 Experience (by Intrepid Urban Adventures). This experience took us to Ginza, to meet our guide and boy, oh boy… Ginza really is a place of it’s own. Think anything branded, expensive and flashy… then upscale it to unbelievable proportions, add shiny, multi-floored buildings lining each side of the streets. You may then be close to seeing something like Ginza. Ben pointed out at the exterior of the buildings were tiled, rather than bricks or blocks, giving them that shininess. Every store is Louis Vutton or Gucci or Chanel, or it has concept cars in the windows for everyone to imagine themselves in. Boutiques, watch shops, fine jewelry, if you are looking to spend some serious dough, head to Ginza and even if you’re not, it is well worth a look.

Our tour guide took us to the bottom floors of a fancy department store and what it held was very impressive. It was an upscale food market, where everything from bento boxes to sushi to intricately made desserts were on show and available for purchase. The sheer amounts and the number of choices there are just make your jaw drop. The Japanese have absolute precision when it comes to presenting their food, this is one of the best places to experience that. We didn’t eat anything from that food market, because it was the very start of our tour and we had a feeling copious amounts were still coming to us. It was more of a chance for our tour guide to point out some different dishes, explain what was traditional and what wasn’t and encourage us to try certain dishes that they really like.

With our tour guide, we did experience the ‘much talked about’ local subway system in Tokyo. It was busy but it was fine, when you are with someone who knows what they are doing. For more on our take on further train trips, see my next blog.

Our first stop on the food tour bought us into an okonomiyaki restaurant and this ended up being one of our favorite culinary experiences. For those who aren’t aware, okonomiyaki is a Japanese style savory pancake, often containing cabbage, meat, seafood then topped with delicious okonomiyaki sauce, Japanese Mayo, seaweed and bonito flakes. In this restaurant, they cooked it on a teppan (basically a flat barbeque) in the middle of your table. We scraped it with little metal spatulas onto our plates and enjoyed the umami, crunch and occasional surprises inside.

After this our tour guide took to the streets, winding and ducking, walking long ways, as they do. We found alleyways that one would never find unless they knew, and finally found a small restaurant with an extremely local feel. It felt tucked away, not fancy but so interesting and the food… well, it just kept coming. Our tour guide ordered… and ordered and then ordered again. Did we know what we were eating all of the time? Um… no, but did we enjoy it… absolutely.

This food tour was great because of the variety of dishes we experienced. There were some other Australian’s on the tour and also a couple from Wales, who we got along with really well, and happened to run into again on the busy streets of Osaka, later in the trip. What are the chances? In a place with this many people, without going ‘all Sheldon’ and crunching numbers, I can tell you they are very slim.

More on Osaka in a later blog… for now, there is still more Tokyo. See PART THREE.

TOP TIP No. 2:

Ben and I aren’t big ‘tour’ people but I have to say that doing a few while you are in Japan is a good idea. It gives you a chance to speak with a local, who speaks decent English and what you learn can really help you as you continue your travels. This one in particular was also good for meeting other travellers. HOW you book your tour is completely up to you, it is quite easy to find them on Klook (the app), or if you have a great travel agent, like we did, ask them for some advice.