Category: Trip

We visited Tenhinbashi-suji today, a covered pedestrian shopping street that is the longest in Japan. At 2.6 km in length with 600+ shops, it’s quite a place to shop, although today being New Year’s Eve a good portion of the mostly ‘mom and pop’ stores were closed.

There’s still a lot more evidence of Covid here than in the USA, and as one example the street still has periodic hand sanitizer available. I found it charming that it was served by standees of young women holding signs that advise social distancing:

The street runs alongside a shrine that we had identified as a new years celebration location, so after an afternoon/evening siesta we returned to the shopping street late at night and found it considerably more active:

The festival stands had set up and all sorts of unusual food was for sale, including fried eggs served on shrimp crackers, roasted chestnuts and ‘castellas’ (cream-filled cakes). We even saw a stand where you could catch fish like the one I tried in Asakusa last week. It was very popular with young women!

I always love the mask-sellers, and I was a fool for not buying any of these:

And look at these insane chocolate bananas!

As it turns out the shrine was actually closed despite (or maybe because of) the increasingly large crowds and since midnight wasn’t for about 90 minutes and we were tired (and I have laryngitis) we grabbed a quick bite and headed back to the hotel:

Happy New Year! Happy 2024! Happy Year Of The Dragon! Let’s hope it’s a good one 🙂

Today we visited two of the more touristy parts of Osaka: the shopping districts of Dotonbori and Shinsekai.

The crowds in Dotonbori were bonkers. A sea of people everywhere you looked, it was almost difficult just to walk around! I imagine this is part new years and part the overtourism that Japan is struggling with. We’d been here before so it wasn’t a bother, but I imagine were you a tourist with only a day in Osaka and chose to spend it there today you’d be a bit frustrated!

Shinsekai is a mile or so south, and while it was busy it was far from as popular as Dotonbori. I visited this part of town when I was here myself years ago but it was early in the day and almost nothing was open: today we got to see the lit signs of the landmark kushikatsu restaurants in all their glory.

Shinsekai is a bit low brow, a bit run down and seems proud to keep one foot in the past. The amusement arcades there have shooting games for instance, and there’s a pachinko parlour using very old fashioned mechanical games. There are lots of tiny pub/restaurants – many of which allow smoking – and some establishments a bit far from the norm like one in which you can eat fried gecko! It’s fun to walk around, and I imagine gets very rowdy at night. If you’re ever in Osaka, I’d recommend this part of town even over Dotonbori.

That happy inflatable man is enticing you to go in and play the shooting game (which in retrospect I should have!). But by this time we’d been strolling for many hours and it was time to head back for dinner and some relaxing (perhaps past time in fact since I’m feeling a little unwell).

I’ll end with a mention that I purchased an extraordinary retro-game-related item (or two) in Denden town as we walked through it on the way to Shinsekai… but those details can wait for a future post 🙂

We traveled to Osaka today, where we shall spend the longest time of this trip. We’re a bit tired and I may have caught a mild bug, so we’ll try to dial back the activities a bit for a while.

Kristins bento on the train was very traditional Japanese food. Don’t ask what half this was: we don’t know! As usual the packaging was meticulous.

Osaka is extremely busy probably due to new years travel. The amount of people downtown in the Umeda area is bonkers. Our hotel is smack bang in the middle of the city, and we have a wonderful view from the 34th floor.

Tomorrow will be the first day in a while we don’t set an alarm. What’s the bet we’re up with the sun anyway? 🙂