Robot Claw

We’re in Kyoto now, speeding here yesterday on a bullet train. We spent the afternoon around the station area where there are several malls and lots to see.

We went up this tower and had a goosey gander. We were particularly taken by the mascot ‘Tawawa’ (geddit?); I’ll put one on your postcard!

Kyoto station has a department store in it with a super fancy food department. Even for someone that spent $60 to ride the bullet train for 11 minutes yesterday, $150 for a rockmelon seems excessive ?

Even though we’ve filled our cases to bursting we bought a bunch more stuff yesterday, from toys to books to food. How will we bring this home?

That’s KLS’s dinner, crab omelette over rice, at a restaurant in the station. No spaghetti photos today!

The biggest tourist attraction here is a shopping street called Dotonbori. It’s famous for its restaurants and the elaborate signs that most of them use to attract customers.

The crab is animated, and the fugu lantern is apparently decades old. The most famous sign though is this one for Glico candy:

It’s so famous it’s apparently an icon of Japan to the Japanese! It’s not original though; this is a recent LED replacement. But the art is the same 🙂

We of course visited Dotonbori in daylight, but you can imagine how it would look at night. Sadly we can’t do everything, but see below for an idea of how attractive this street would be with everything lit up.

A short walk away is Osakas electronics/otaku district called ‘Den Den Town’. We spent hours there and sunk more than a few ¥ into the local economy!

And we ate local cuisine 😉

When we got back to the hotel there was a candle festival going on! The streets were lined with ‘1000000’ candles (so said the sign, but I’m deeply skeptical) and many art installations based around candles. It was very pretty.

Here’s a shot of a restaurant just near the hotel to show how beautiful everything looks all lit up! I’ll have to go out and take some photos in Tokyo when we get back…