Kuidaore

Saturday morning, after Ryan and Willow completed their ritual of going out for coffee then coming back to the room for some chicken and rice breakfast, we decided to have a pretty easy day and explore some neighbouring areas and do some shopping. So we soon head out on what was a beautiful day, past Dotonburi and along Shinsaibashi-Suji Shopping Street, a long indoor pedestrian mall with shops of all sorts. We had promised Willow some new shoes and socks, in the hope that she would stop kicking them off all the time if she wore ones that she loved rather than the $4 Kmart special ones she had been wearing most of the time. We first came across a little store called Baby Doll that had cute kids clothes, many of them featuring Disney characters, so we bought some Minnie Mouse socks. Willow was very pleased with them. Tick!

Then onto a shoe shop that had, would you believe, Frozen shoes! Willow knew immediately that she must have these, especially when she saw that they light up when walking around in them. They weren't super cheap (A$50) but I am pleased to report that she has not kicked them off in public in the 5 or so days she has had them. I was excited about visiting the Desigual store, my favourite shop in Europe, but was disappointed to see that the style was a bit different and everything was around $300! So quite different to the ones in Spain... Ryan had managed to bust his second pair of jeans on the trip too, so we went back to Uniqlo and he bought another pair of pants. So, overall, shopping success.

In search of "Kuidaore", a term used in Osaka which literally means to eat oneself into ruin with food, Ryan had been wanting to try omurice, a dish that is basically an omelette and fried rice. A quick Google found a highly rated place not too far away, so in we rolled. It was a cute little place, the food was great (I had a Japanese curry) and I found it adorable that the waiter said to us "Have a good time" before he walked away each time.

Omurice

Some more wandering of the back-streets of Shinsaibashi before heading back to the apartment for what we thought was going to be a nap for Willow. She was nearly asleep soon after we got home, but then woke herself back up and she was good to go for the rest of the afternoon/evening! Giving up on her nap, we headed back out to Dotonburi, which being a Saturday night was even more heaving than normal. Fun and exciting though, and Willow loves seeing the big octopii and crabs etc no the top of all the restaurants to let people know what food they specialise in.

We walked down along the Tombori river, and came across a little bar with tables with coloured lights. It reminded us of the TeamLab exhibits, so we pulled in. The owners were quite taken with Willow (as a lot of people here seem to be - she gets a lot more attention in Osaka than she did in Tokyo!), and gave her a little dolphin ring that lights up, and then later, a glowstick bracelet! So sweet. Japanese do not accept tips at all, so the gifts really are just to be nice.

The famous Glico man

We gave up on Willow having an early nap, so instead just got some takoyaki street food and ice cream for dessert. We came across someone dressed as a wolf playing a melodica, of course, and with Willow's recent obsession with the Masked Singer, she was intrigued by the wolf, but got a bit scared after I gave him some money to have our photo taken with him! So finally we headed home, for a reasonably early night.

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?

Sunday morning, with more stunning weather, we headed to Umeda in the northern part of the city, where we had the awesome okinomiyaki with Steve a couple of days before. There is a big ferris wheel  there that we had been on back in 2010, so I wanted to take Willow on it. We wandered around a large indoor market hall that had lots of shops and restaurants, but it was a bit early for things to be going so we instead stopped for a quick coffee before finding the ferris wheel. There was zero line, which was a nice surprise, because sometimes you see Japanese lined around the block for a bubble tea of a crepe and I really think they just love standing in queues. So we were straight on to the ferris wheel, which went very high, and I freaked out a little bit but Willow held my hand. We had awesome views over all over Osaka, especially on such a nice day.

Back down on terra firma it was high time for some kuidaore, so we set of in search of a place for lunch, which is an easy task in Osaka when every second place seems to be a restaurant. We went back to the indoor marketplace that we had wandered through earlier, and found a place that looked pretty good. And it was!! A plate of sashimi (it was cut so thick - some of the best salmon sashimi I've ever had), some giant clams, some takoyaki and even some delicious spag bol for Willow! The waitress loved Willow, of course, and played lots of little games with her. By the end of the meal Willow was helping her set the tables! So sweet.

We decided to head back to Namb, which involved a random incident with a lady who stopped us, stared at us silently for ages - smiling - but it got a bit weird so I said "English" and then she started typing into her phone which we assumed was to translate, and after what seemed like forever - thankfully we weren't in any hurry - she pointed to Willow and said "I met him before in a storm. Do you remember?" Needless to say, no I don't remember being in any storms with Willow meeting a random Japanese lady. Anyway, we smiled and waved her off and were back on our way.


Back to the apartment for some chill time, and Willow thankfully had a little nap, so we were all recharged to head back out, to guess where - Dotonburi, oh yeah because we love to overload our senses with the bright lights and loud sounds there. Back for a little pre-dinner tipple at the colourful riverside bar we went to the night before (the man ran out to greet Willow again!), and then after some Tripadvisor research we picked a restaurant that had great reviews, Gyozaoh. (As an aside, Osaka has 35,000 restaurants listed on Tripadvisor, compared with Sydney's 5,000.)

Gyozaoh was cute little place and very tourist friendly (not a bad thing in Japan) and the food was amazing - it deserves its #12 ranking out of 35,000 in Osaka. We tried some different sake, then had some delicious takoyaki, karage chicken, chilli cucumber (needed some veges!), and of course, gyoza. Delicious! Again the staff loved Willow! So that capped off a great weekend in Osaka.