Japan Day 2B: Shinsekai & Dotonbori, Osaka

Hello! I am back again to continue my stories of Japan!

Day 2B: Shinsekai & Dotonbori
By the time we finished exploring Osaka castle, it was time for lunch, and we decided to look for food along the streets of Shinsekai!

Streets of Shinsekai

So different to every other street in that area - so colourful! It looked older than I expected - the travel books show it being more glam, whilst in reality it was a lot gloomier. Maybe it was because we went on a sad day (expect the Lins to bring bad weather everywhere) and there weren't many tourists there.

Father bear insisted that we try out fugu/tessa a.k.a. pufferfish - so we visited one the more famous chain restaurants that serve pufferfish, Zuboraya. Look out for the floating pufferfish!

Tessa sashimi

Since that practically only do pufferfish, we went for the most common option, sashimi. It's sliced very thin, similar to carpaccio. I personally prefer sashimi more thick-cut, so there is more bite to it. However, I do see a reason for it to be really thin, because the flesh is very chewy compared to other fish. So it if was cut like normal sashimi, it would be extremely chewy.

We also ordered a grilled version of the pufferfish - which we happened to find tastier (sweeter when cooked I guess), but I can't seem to find a photo of it.....so I'll post it when I find it!

Tempura set

The first of many pieces of tempura we ate during the trip! Despite being crumbed, and not like the usual tempura it was delicious - I could just eat the skin all day! The sauce paring - one was a mixture between BBQ sauce and okonomiyaki sauce, and the other (which was amazingly good) was house-made mayo. I know..mayo doesn't sound like much, but it was so good -- kind of tasted like a creay potato salad, with lots of egg (my fave). One thing was that the miso soup was so salty!!!

Sashimi set

Our goal this trip was to eat all the food (especially sashimi) we could! It was after trying out sashimi here that we decided that we must go to the fish market for our fish. I found the cuttlefish the best, full of flavour unlike the Australian ones. Father bear like the tuna the best -- apparently it was different to anything he's ever had. 

There's not that much to do in Shinsekai other than eat, so we decided to take a look at the electronics shops in DenDen Town, and then to Dotonbori.
I don't have any photos of Den Den Town as it's really not photo-worthy - just grey everywhere...
But for Dotonbori....is another story!

One of the pretty alleyways that lead to a few cute izakayas and boutiques

There's no a mini Glico-man so you can take better photos - the real one is hard to take a photo with.

Takoyaki shop - I decided to buy something at all the shops with large creatures above them.
Notice that there is a pufferfish restaurant next to it!

Takoyaki - 8pcs for 600 yen! Although it was good....I lacked too much patience and ate it while it was still soggy....

大阪王将 gyoza shop - their dumplings are really good...ofc run by Chinese people

Look at that beautiful crust! At a brilliant price too -- 6pcs for 300 yen!

Nomnomnomnom....

After that, we had dinner at a really cheap sushi train place....only 135 yen per plate! We were just really lucky that when we went in there was no line...and after that people had to wait so long...even takeaway was 1hr plus. (I will post photos when I find where they are....it was another restaurant with a giant sushi above it's door)

I also wanted to try out the crab from Kani Douraku so we bought some grilled and steamed ones for us to eat back at the hotel. Talk about late night snacking... 

Dotonbori is an amazing place to visit - it's just that transport is a bit iffy if you travelling only via JR trains like we did. It's around a 20 minute walk to the nearest station, so if you're holding onto heaps of shopping and very drained from a day of walking in heels (ehem.....) then I really just suggest you taxi it to the station (around 760yen, provided there's no traffic). 

One good thing about walking is that you come across all these shops and restaurants that are underground and you would never see in the cab. Also, if you find your way around by recognising landmarks, walking really makes it easier. 

This is the end of Day 2! Day 3 is going to be Tokyo! So look forward to it!

Take care til then~