We decided to spend our last full day in Japan in Osaka. Pro tip: pronounced “OH-suh-kuh”, not “oh-SAW-kah”. We hopped on a slow local train out of Kyoto Station and enjoyed the views on the journey. Once in the city we transferred to the subway to get to Dotonbori.
I didn’t do much research on Osaka, but for some reason thought Dotonbori was just a street when in actuality it’s an entire district. The main streets popular for tourists on and near the river were a visual delight with a lot of fun signs and people watching.
The street food was plentiful and we enjoyed steak skewers and fruit skewers (both fresh & candied).
Around 2:thirsty (hey Brian & Carrie!) we conducted a Google search for craft beer and headed to Stand Umineko, which ended up being one of the highlights of our entire Japan trip, honestly. It was that quintessential small, narrow Japanese space, standing room only for maybe 5 people if you’re from Seattle, 8 people if you’re from NYC. The young guy working there was fun to chat with and when he noticed us looking up steak restaurants for later he enlisted two other local patrons for recommendations. We ended up having 3-4 beers of varying sizes each, with my favorite as the saison from Vector Brewing. Full pints were about $11 which is pricey even by Seattle standards (and certainly by Japanese standards), and we ended up spending about $50 USD here. There is some savings in the fact that tipping is absolutely not a thing in Japan. Overall 100% worth it in our opinion.
After the fantastic craft beer experience we set out to find wagyu for our last dinner in Japan. The recommendations given to us at Umineko didn’t pan out for a variety of reasons – already booked, dress code, prefix menus with items unappealing to Scott, etc. – so we were left to our own devices.
Unfortunately we ended up making a poor decision. I’ll blame fatigue and a failure to preplan. We ended up at a restaurant serving hot pot. Our only hot pot experiences have been Chinese-style in Seattle and we have loved them. They are the only exception to my rule that I don’t pay to cook my own food in a restaurant (i.e., I don’t go to Korean BBQ spots). But this hot pot experience just wasn’t as good, I think because they provide boiling water and the expectation is that you do all your own broth flavoring? In our Chinese hot pot experiences the broth base is already well flavored, so I’m not sure if the plain water is typical for Japanese hot pot or what? Regardless, I did not have the skill nor motivation to make great broth from scratch. So in the end we were mostly just eating boiled thin-sliced steak and vegetables. Yeah, it was about as tasty as that sounds.
The most unappetizing moment came as we were walking away from the restaurant and Scott mentioned that we had paid $200 USD for that experience. OMG.
I’m not naming the restaurant here for a couple of reasons. One, I didn’t take the time to capture the name and I can’t easily identify it using Google Maps. Also, the restaurant was full with locals that looked happy so I’m assuming the tasteless food was entirely our fault. Finally, the prices were posted clearly on the menu so what we agreed to pay was definitely and entirely our fault.
I consider eating meh food while traveling a travesty, so I really need to do a better job of planning restaurant destinations for our trips. Especially those first and last meals that become strong memories of a place.
We caught an express train to Kyoto and headed back to our hotel to get packed up for an early departure towards home the next morning.
Kjar-ied Away 