...you're not ready for fugu sushi (puffer fish), just yet.
And getting some takoyaki (fried balls of octopus, cheese and gooey stuff) from the popular places in town could easilty take over half an hour:
Now, imagine if on top of that, it started to rain.
Well, in that case, you must head to...
...the giant Ebisu (big-eared, slightly deaf god of fishermen and good business) face:
This shop is known as the Very Heaven Shopping Street.
Hang on - a shopping street?
Inside a building?
Let's check it out.
The queue isn't so bad:
Especially since there is a highly energetic guy telling us about all the salient features of the shopping street.
We get into the wallpapered lift, and go upstairs to...
A genuine fake old-school Japanese shopping street! The walls are particularly impressive, with detailed wear and stains from water running down the side.
The level of detail is actually very good, with even telephone wires hanging down, and public announcement posters in carefully fake-aged colours.
There is even something of a bridge and underpass.
After a while, you forget that it's not nightime.
The shops, or stalls, sell a collection of stuff that makes you remember your childhood...
There is also a "street" museum.
Osaka is the home of the pot noodle ("Kapu Nouduru"). Momofuko Ando had the concept in 1957, and his company, Nissin foods, brought out the first pot noodle in 1971. The first flavour was chicken ramen. Unfortunately, the genius died in 2007 in Tokyo. Apparently, there is a genuine pot noodle museum somewhere in Osaka.
It seems that kids were somewhat less demanding than nowadays.
Is it just me, or are all these robots basically the same? Nowadays, there is a Ninento DS game that is the modern equivalent, but a bit more convenient. If you've ever eaten a whole pickled onion in a London chippie, then that is mild relative to the squid. I can see this being used as an effective (and cost-effective, only $0.45) way to stop people from falling asleep. Now, they do sell Takoyaki here, but we're going to look into that in the next post. So, how about a... ...birthday newspaper printout vending machine !
You can also buy packets of sweets, in which there is one rogue (mega spicy) one. This used to be really popular amongst Japanese kids a long time ago.
I tried some of this, pickled squid.
Actually, it is dried vinegar that once made a passing acquaintance with a squid.
Instead, we are going to check out what vending machines there are on offer.
As for what happened on my birthday in Japan - actually, not a great deal. I should have known as much.
There was an article about whether Japan should follow the US in boycotting the olympics since Russia invaded Afghanistan. The atheletes wanted to go, but the politicians wanted to follow America.
Another article about the shocking retirement packages that government officials were getting at the time, and that retirement pay for members of the parliament will get chopped by 10%.
But the most interesting was an article about Chirigami collectors. At the time, since inflation in the US was high, the price of chip pulp (the raw material for paper) had gone up 60% in half a year, to 29Yen per kilo. Chirigami, or "Torn Paper" is paper for recycling, mostly old newspapers. Due to the price rise, there was a boom in chiragami collection, and there were actually more people doing this than driving taxis.
There is also a bunch of adverts for books, including "The 4 Best Nudes", part of the World's Best Nudes Series, published by Giyaruzu Nau ("Girls Now").
fake nighttime with shops and food, sounds like odaiba, the up-to-date version of what you've been to here. It's faketastic!
ReplyDeleteoh yeah, you have to do the monorail ride over rainbow bridge to get there as well, it's fun.
Sounds interesting. Its going in the intray.
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