May 30: Kyoto to Osaka

May 30

Time to leave Kyoto. That morning we walked around, over to Nishiki market, and ended up getting a knife at the kitchen store there. This place was hardvore -- knives for every imaginable animal and function. We got a 8" chef's knife, stainless with carbon, and this thing is freakin' sharp. I'm almost scared to use it. They would also write your name on it in Japanese, which is cool.

I then saw this, which defines me lately:

We wandered around the city taking our time walking to the train station (it’s only like 20 minutes from Kyoto to Osaka, our next stop, so we didn’t reserve a train in advance). We stumbled upon some sort of bike festival/race, and thought this very fortuitous. The photos are on the Shutterfly link, which I will post; to be quite honest it's a giant pain in the ass posting photos on here so I try to do as few as possible. I'm not really into bikes (and by not really I mean "couldn't care less") and I'm the one posting, so I'll leave it at that.

Oh wait, there is this cool video of this bike trick guy: [that didn't post. weird.]

Justin’s stomach was bothering him (surprise! despite surgery, no burps and no beer, it’s still an issue! ain't life grand!) and while he tried to describe what Tums were to a Japanese pharmacist, I found this:

Make your own caption up.

Shimogamo shrine is right next to the train station. Justin asked if I wanted to go in. I demurred. I was hot, sticky, and shrined out, honestly. And it was under a shitload of scaffolding. But here's a photo:

Then we took the train to Osaka.

I don’t know why, but I was totally excited for Osaka. Oh wait, I know why. It’s because the whole city, at least according to what I’ve seen and read on it, is all about eating.

After a longer than expected train + subway ride to hotel, we collapsed in our room for a little while. And then it was time to eat and explore.

(You can tell I’m getting tired of writing this, right?)

We found a Tokyu Hands, looking for gifts. Justin was absolutely enamored of this store’s huge hardware section, complete with wood!

Osaka has the most shopping arcades of any city I have EVER seen. I think it might beat Tokyo in sheer number and it's no way as big a city.

Or maybe it’s just because we spent more time wandering through them here; we didn’t have a guide, and left to our own devices we do what I want to do, which is walking until your feet tingle and thighs throb and people-watching and eating random food in random places. So I guess in Osaka that exploration meant we walked through a hell of a lot of shopping areas.

Kudos to Justin for navigating our way through it; after a while they all start to look the same and I have a feeling I would still be wandering around there if it weren’t for him.

Osaka at night is much nicer than Osaka in the day. It’s a decent city, but doesn’t have what Tokyo and Kyoto have. In fact, it's really not that attractive. But who cares. I liked it. It definitely pushed the bar on weirdness density.

(I do want to go back and see more of the countryside that we had initially planned but couldn’t afford in both money and allotted vacation days. Sigh. I think we’d like that even more.)

We ate a lot of street food. First we found taiyaki, and I was soooo excited. They were soooo good. But first we had to try the takoyaki, which are fried dough balls that have octopus in them. I tried to like them, I want to like them, and Kurata in Lake Oswego does a good version of them. But I didn't like these. The guy had a long line, too! But the takoyaki were rubbery and undercooked. It was like having a pancake that isn't cooked in the middle--and is also filled with octopus. Gross, right? These are the specialty of Osaka. Maybe cooked a little better. I'm pretty much done with them.

But another specialty is the (let's see how badly I can do the spelling) is okonomoyaki, which is really good -- it's like a savory omelet/pancake thing with eggs, shrimp, fish, and a bunch of other crap that I probably don't want to know about. Oh and I also ate some fried sesame things. Those were real good. This was dinner.

Believe it or not, I woke up feeling fine. Maybe gluten doesn't affect me when I cross the date line.