A Day in Osaka
Don’t know whether it was the excitement about being in Japan, or simply that we hadn’t adjusted to the time difference, but either way we woke up at 7.30am and decided to start our second day early. Our plan was to head out to Osaka and check out the Gyoza Stadium, the Umeda Sky Building and the shops around town. Note: Japan shops don’t tend to open on Saturday’s until about 11am, so getting into town early allowed us to wander around without the usual crowds of people. It also made finding breakfast a little difficult.
Locals around town…
Magazine Delivery
Late Friday night?
After stopping off at a gaming arcade and observing locals line up for open time at Pachinko Parlors we were so hungry by the time we ended up at Naniwa Gyoza Stadium. More of a food court with many Gyoza carts serving different types of dumplings, the area was strangely located on the 3rd floor of the Namco Building – a big gaming arcade near the Shin-Osaka station. Instantly you feel like you have entered a scene from ancient Japan. The décor is made from wood with lanterns decorating many walls and a gate like type entrance separating the smoking and non-smoking dining areas.
The dishes are relatively small from any of the shops in the stadium, with the steamed dumplings being the favourites at the table.
Like a food court you can order from any cart and they bring the food to your table when it’s ready. After finishing our meals and returning the trays to the relevant shops we head off for our next stop.
About a 12-minute walk from Namco Building, Umeda Sky Building is a glass structure the stands at 173 metres and is two towers connected on the 39th Floor by the ‘Floating Garden Observatory’. Best part of this attraction is the lift ride that takes you to the top of the building and onto the sky deck. 700Yen gets you entry to the outdoor skywalk that has great views of Osaka. From here you can also see the garden that is situated at the base of the building, waterfall and all.
The Takimi lane (Takimi Koji) of restaurants at the basement of the Umeda Sky Building is also worth seeing while here. An indoor food court, it replicates downtown streets of the Showa era.
Next stop was shopping time at Yodobashi back near the station. It was here we discovered an exciting thing called ‘Sweets Museum’. Located on the 7th Floor, on arrival we discovered this was actually an entire floor dedicated to desserts! Needless to say, being such foodies we had to stop and try some.
We wanted to spend the evening at Shinsaibashi, just to check out the lights and the night atmosphere there. Heading there it was obvious that Japan had a massive night culture, with the majority of young people in the area decked out in what seemed like club gear. The bridge that is Shinsaibashi was crowded, with neon signs lighting up the street.
A midnight shopping store, Donki is located along the canal that runs underneath the Shinsaibashi, bridge, easily identifiable from it’s roof top ferris wheel – great place to take shelter from light rain late at night and also check out the trend in cosmetics in Japan – also very cheap!
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