Sean is from Melbourne, so he starts to shiver any time the temperature dips below 25 degrees C. I'm from Sunderland and I start to sweat any time it goes above 12 degrees C. But Japan has very mild and temperate weather so we've both been mostly OK. The main bone of contention has been the blackout curtains in the hotel room, because Sean likes to have them closed but I like to be woken by the dawn. Stern words were exchanged, so we agreed to settle it like men. I lost the pillow fight and the curtains stayed closed.
In Tokyo things are relatively tourist-oriented, with English signs (or at least Latin characters) accompanying the Japanese squiggles. But Osaka doesn't have many tourists and in some places squiggles are all you see. It's not a problem in bars, because you can ignore the squiggles and just point at the bottle you want. With restaurants, we've had to restrict ourselves to those where the menu has photos accompanying the squiggles. Even then, it's a bit of a lottery. After all, what looks like chicken might actually be pork. Or octopus. Or God knows what.
In one restaurant, a Korean grill actually, there was an English-language menu which listed specific cuts and derivations of beef including 'rectum' and 'sausage'. Given that the Japanese word for 'one' is 'ichi' (pronounced 'itchy'), and given that we were sharing food from the same plate, you can easily see the comic potential of the situation. But obviously Sean and I are both far too mature to sit making crass jokes about itchy rectums all night. Obviously.
Japanese bars are mostly very small - no more than 10 to 15 seats at the bar, and few (if any) tables - but in this case size definitely doesn't matter. Every bar we found was pleasant, friendly and inexpensive, with all the bottled spirits you can think of and plenty more besides. Our favourite was Jack's Inn, where the solo barman doubled as a DJ, spinning vintage jazz LPs on a turntable at one end of the bar. He made my night by playing one of my personal favourite recordings: Ella Fitzgerald's unsurpassable 1960 rendition of 'Mack The Knife', sung live in Berlin, wherein she forgot the lyrics halfway through and started improvising Louis Armstrong impressions instead. All listened to in convivial surroundings through a Cuba Libre haze. We love Japan.
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| Downtown Osaka |
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| View from Osaka hotel room, 20th floor |
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| Osaka Castle |
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| Jack's Inn (see text above). What you see here is pretty much the whole bar, complete with on-bar turntable. |
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| Osaka Aquarium (obviously) |
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| The aquarium has a petting zoo...for manta rays and sharks. We'll give those Asian 'tiger moms' the benefit of the doubt, and assume that the kids are there of their own free will. |
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| Edd vs Food #37 Sonamu They don't have a website or any TripAdvisor reviews. Me and Sean just wandered in off the street. It's actually a Korean place. We were looking for Japanese food... ...but we didn't notice the subtly different-shaped squiggles until after we'd ordered. |
