Japan 2023 days 9-10: Nara, Kobe, and a little more Osaka
If you asked most people where they stayed for fun in Japan, spending the better part of a week in Osaka wouldn’t be a common answer. Sure, they might stop by for the castle (Osaka-jo) and the food or shopping, but I don’t hear many people camping out here for five nights like we did. But I’ll tell you a secret (that’s not at all a secret): Osaka is the best connected city in the Kansai region.
We chose it partly to check out the food and shopping (and for Super Nintendo World), but also so we could day trip all over the area. So, on our last two days, we did exactly that!
On an unseasonably hot and sunny Wednesday (high 70s in March!), we had a relaxing morning, swung by the Pokemon store for another (failed) attempt to get Pokemon cards, and then headed over to Tsutenkaku tower, the “Eiffel tower of Osaka.”
Okay, this thing is way uglier than the Eiffel tower. We later learned more about when and why it was built, but I’ll save that for later in this post. The area around the tower, called Shinsekai, is fascinating, with a covered road full of shops and restaurants, as well as some more dramatic signs like we saw in Dotonbori.
We had planned to go up the tower for a view, but the sign said it had a 45 minute wait, and after the last couple of days, I was sick of long lines. So instead, we grabbed some Takoyaki (fried balls with octopus inside).
They were tasty!
One suggestion we’ve seen a few times is to feed the deer in Nara, and with a quick check of the train schedule, we were on our way. It’s a slightly longer train ride, about 40 minutes, and once there, it’s a bit of a walk from the JR station to the giant park full of temples, deer, and tourists.
The first thing we did was grab a delicious strawberry, because it was there. Japan thinks strawberry season is from January to May, which is actually accommodated by using greenhouses outfitted with gas heaters. Realistically strawberries should ripen in May-June, after all.
But hey, it was tasty!
We found a couple other fun distractions on the walk, such as a store just for fans (the paper kind, not electric), and a gorgeous cherry blossom tree.
Finally, as we found a 5-story pagoda, we also realized it was surrounded with deer. Ones that were a little snobby and ignored Jerry, unfortunately.
After acquiring some rice cakes, we set out further into the park to find more agreeable animals, and were able to confirm that yes, they will bow to earn their treat. Though some are better at it than others, with bows at times replaced with headbutts or weird twisty head motions.
Anyway, whether well trained to bow or not, they were very cute, and we gave them lots of the rice cracker treats local vendors were selling.
We headed back to Osaka, and got some rest at the hotel.
For dinner, we headed over to a very fancy tempura restaurant, where I think they have about 9 or 10 seats total, all at a counter. Fun fact: we made the majority of the 20+ minute walk there underground, via the network of passageways stemming out from Osaka station.
The food was delightful, and involved lots of things I wouldn’t think to batter and fry, like shrimp legs and whole spring carrot, along with plenty of classics. The batter is much lighter than Americans would expect, so as a whole the meal didn’t feel as heavy as most.
The main dish we used had three different salts, and they also had tempura sauce on the side. Also fun, our chef was right there and super nice, though he had much more to say to the Japanese-speaking family that was there at the same time, of course.
Overall, it was an amazing dinner, and a great end to a fun, but relatively low-key day.
Thursday began dreary, with a forecast for around 1.2” of rain. So, we again decided to take it easy and maybe focus on indoor activities. Step one was to visit a cute coffee shop we’d seen earlier in the week at a time when it wasn’t open yet (because in Japan they think coffee shops are more of an afternoon thing, I guess).
We used the opportunity to research rainy day things to do in Osaka, since we trashed our original plan to go explore Kobe for the day. One weird thing people suggested online is a museum of housing in an older part of town. So, screw it, we headed right over there.
It turns out it’s in another area with a massive covered shopping street called Tenjinbashi-suji.
While there, we stopped for lunch (since we hadn’t really eaten yet) at Komeda’s coffee, which appears to be a chain coffee shop with really strong Denny’s vibes.
Anyway, we made our way into the museum, and boy is it a trip. In the 8-10 floor of an office building, they’ve reconstructed a small neighborhood that should be representative of how people lived in Osaka 200 years ago.
There’s a neighborhood gate (closed from around 10pm until dawn), they fake a day-night cycle via lighting and time-of-day-appropriate background sounds, and you can go into almost every building and see how the interior was decked out.
We even paid for the audio guide and watched the full video presentation about it, which was weirdly shown in the bathhouse.
Finally, there was a bonus exhibit with dioramas of parts of Osaka from various points in time from late 19th century to mid 20th century. This also included a display with how Tsutenkaku (remember my ugly Eiffel tower knock-off from above?) and the surrounding area looked when first constructed over 100 years ago. It had a festive, worlds-fair vibe. The modern area is much less appealing to me, and I wish they’d kept more of the open space around the tower.
There was also a rotating exhibit on modern row houses, but literally everything was in Japanese, so we kinda motored through and left.
At this point, the rain was forecast to let up, so we decided to resume our aborted plans and head to Kobe! We cabbed to Shin-Osaka and hopped on a shinkansen for a 12-minute ride, looking for the non-reserved car… except we couldn’t seem to find it, and Nick decided to pop out the door to look for a sign. Just then, the doors started closing, and a quick push against them did not stop it, so he hopped out of the way for safety.
We watched each other through the glass sliding away like in a sappy movie.
Anyway, there was another train a few minutes later, so we texted and easily met up in Shin-Kobe. And right by the station is a ropeway up to a beautiful herb garden.
We were there close to closing, so we had to work our way through the gardens fairly quickly. But it was great, nonetheless. And so manicured for Instagrammability.
After getting back to ground level, we headed over to Motomachi, the fancy shopping district. It also has a nice covered shopping street, but at this point the rain had ended. On our walk, we wandered through stores under a train track, a small chinatown, high fashion, and finally some old buildings that date to the original foreign settlement (aka foreign concession) here.
We then worked our way to our dinner reservation, a meal definitely centered on beef. In fact, the street with our restaurant was full of steakhouses, and our steakhouse was on the street sign.
We were seated at the counter, in the traditional Teppan style. But this is no Benihana’s; we ordered two different A5 Wagyu cuts as the mains to share. One was local Kobe “championship” sirloin, and the other was an A5 prime rib from elsewhere in Japan (they didn’t tell us where).
We were shown the cuts and their certificates!
The meal was presented in a few courses, mostly cooked in front of us by our chef (basically a personal chef for the evening, as nobody else was at the counter), and it was amazing. Two words for you: meat butter. Just a touch of salt and wasabi or black pepper is all you need.
Tomorrow we leave Osaka to explore an island full of art; stay tuned!
