Day One in Osaka

The Namba Washington Hotel Plaza is better than we expected, although we did arrive with modest expectations. The rooms are small, but big enough. The beds come with small hard pillows (filled with beans or similar!) but there are also soft ones in the wardrobe. We arrived very hot and sticky but once the air conditioning in the room started we did cool down.

Today we started with buffet breakfast in the hotel, in the "China Table" restaurant. At 4800 yen ($80) for four it was expensive but easy. The food on offer included soup, tofu, pickled vegetables, salmon, scrambled egg, croissants, and tea and coffee and juice, so we found enough to keep us happy. We are close to the Dotonbori River which runs through the city here in a canal. There are shops and restaurants down each side, and it is strung with paper lanterns. We went for an exploratory walk though the Dotonbori area beside the river (where we saw a turtle), then turned up a covered street called "Ebisubashi-suji Shopping Street" which runs for kilometers and was crowded with people.
We saw hardly any Europeans, although there do seem to be plenty of Asian tourists. Many of the shops opened at 11:00 and close at 11:00 pm. We stopped at a bookshop, and found an English novel for James and a bilingual map of Japan for me. Later we went into a large department store looking for a cafe where we might recharge our caffeine levels. Sure enough they provided good coffee and some delicious desserts at shocking prices. On the way out we found a food floor, selling perfectly presented food of every type, where we bought some little sushi packs for our lunch, and some (perfect) kiwifruit and mandarins.

Namba Park

We ate back in our rooms, then dozed for a while before setting off for Namba Park, which is a huge shopping centre beside the main Namba Station. It is just a 15 minute walk away.  Namba Park is a huge multilevel complex designed to resemble a natural rock canyon, containing shops, eateries, cinemas and gardens.  We wandered through that for quite a while and took many photos.  On the way back we stopped for a cold drink in the electronics shopping district, and had a quick look in some of the shops. They have everything for sale, but nothing we actually needed.


For dinner we returned to the Doutonbori Street area to find a suitable eatery. We selected one based on the appetising pictures of meals displayed at the door, and went in. Once we started reading the english captions on the dishes we found it was an offal restaurant. The mixed chicken dish included neck, skin, heart, liver, etc, and other dishes offered boiled guts, and horse shashimi.

We walked home via the river, where the paper lanterns were now illuminated. In a cramped multifloor department store we searched for a particular thermos flask Jacqui (Gale) had requested, but they had so many we didn't know which to buy.