Yesterday, Erin & Mayu took us to an okonomiyaki restaurant for lunch. Erin said there’s another place not far away that is a modern interpretation of okonomiyaki, and has lots of different options, but it was good to visit a traditional okonomiyaki place. The tables here had hotplates set in the middle, and the okonomiyaki was cooked in front of us by the same woman who served our drinks. On a side note, to ask for cold water, you say to the waiter/server ‘ohiya’, which Erin told us literally translates as ‘cold’.
The okonomiyaki was delicious. Tim had his with cheese, Mayu & I had mochi with ours, and Erin ordered a Hiroshima-style. I had only had mochi as a sweet (mostly with red bean paste inside) and I wasn’t sure what it would taste like savoury-style, but it was excellent. The best thing about mochi is the texture. It’s chewy and stretchy and weird, and doesn’t really have much of a flavour on its own.
The lobby of our hotel is on the 22nd floor of the building and has a chapel in it. It has a glass roof and the other end of the chapel is on the outside of the building. The architectural concept is designed to imitate Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace (Austria), which you can’t really see from inside the building.
Our room is on the 30th floor and has pretty decent views across Osaka city, though not as good as the views from Tsutenkaku Tower, where Mayu & Erin took us yesterday. The elevator to get to the top of the tower has glass sides, and so Tim experienced some vertigo and didn’t enjoy it as much as we did.
There is a huge network of underground malls/walkways in Osaka. When we leave our hotel, we can take escalators down to the Namba Walk, which connects to the subway system, without ever stepping outside.
It’s a strange feeling walking around in the underground malls and not seeing any other Caucasian faces anywhere. In Tokyo, there was an obvious mix of Japanese and foreigners. Here, that is less apparent. I don’t know where the other tourists are, which is actually kind of nice. It also seems like less people speak English here. We’re getting better at interpreting questions without knowing what exactly is being said. It’s getting easier to pick up the Japanese that I do know out of all that I don’t, whereas before it seemed like an uninterpretable staccato. It helps that people are so friendly here.