The best laid plans of mice and men and all that. Turns out, if you’re trying to fish for your dinner on a Saturday night in Osaka you’re either booking in at a restaurant or doing it in the river… we probably should have prebooked 😂
No worry however, my usual trick of “open TripAdvisor and eat” worked out spectacularly well. We were already in the Dotonbori district, so I found us Chibo, a Teppanyaki Okonomiyaki restaurant.
Chibo Okonomiyaki, Dotonburi style for me and plain pork for SC. It was served directly onto the table-top teppanyaki plate which kept it sizzling hot while we devoured it. I got a side of gyoza to start, which were fried crispy and perfect. Not the way I normally have them but absolutely delicious.
After dinner we couldn’t just return to the hotel, there was still so much of the area to explore!
We saw the world-famous Glico man sign and I got a hilarious amount of “dang, he’s huge” stares from the crowds which packed the streets.
After that we walked the length of the Shinsaibashi-suji, a spectacularly long covered shopping space full of high end brands and people squishing in to see all the latest goodies. We had little or no interest in shopping, but the people watching was great. If I’d thought about it, we’d have hit the Pokemon DX store in this area, but it was closed by the time we’d eaten and realised where we were.
The Osaka Festival of light is on this time of year, lighting up the streets with spectacular displays of LEDs in the trees and lights everywhere else. It was pretty hard to get a good photo of it, but the experience was lovely.
Three Suntory strongs into the evening and it was time for me to crash out hard, ready for our Nozomi Shinkansen ride to Tokyo tomorrow 🥳