Shinsaibashi, Mistranslations, and Tons of Food

Ohayou Gozaimasu! 

Japan is really starting to feel like home. A strange, efficient, smaller-scale home where nobody speaks my native language, but home nonetheless. I almost can't imagine not using a bike to get around everywhere, and seeing cars driving on the left is already normal to me. The Brits here had a head start on that one, but I definitely looked the wrong way while crossing the street a few times early on. I'm still alive though, so it's all good.

We recently had our first day off on Friday, wahoo! A bunch of us spent the day in USJ to take advantage of short wait times on rides. We left around 5pm, and a few of us took the train into downtown Osaka to an area called Shinsaibashi. We started out shopping at Uniqlo, then walked down a long row of shops and restaurants under a roof, and ended with a delicious (and expensive, oops) sushi dinner. FYI: If your server at a Japanese sushi restaurant asks if you're ok with wasabi, she doesn't just mean the little green lump on the side, she means spreading a wasabi cream or something under every single piece of fish. I love wasabi and thoroughly enjoyed my dinner but others in my group weren't so pleased with how much their tongue and sinuses were burning.

A street in Shinsaibashi, or Shinsai for short

Uniqlo! (Those Japanese symbols are katakana for Yu Ni Ku Ro)

Sharon was not okay with the extra  padding in all the dresses

Not sure that's a great behavior to encourage in children

I'm endlessly amused by all the shirts and bags in Japan with nonsense English on it

Sure

I wonder what the perfume of the absent even smells like. Nothing?

More Shinsaibashi

This row of shops and restaurants goes on for like six blocks

Now I know where to get a nice, cheap kimono

A lot of these places are way bigger than they appear from out in front

More English that doesn't quite make sense

Oh, did you?

So close to buying that bag

KitKat store. Apparently it's a thing here

Custard and Green Tea flavored KitKats

I'd say about half the restaurants here display plastic versions of their dishes in front

The restaurant we chose for dinner

We sat at a table, but if we got a room we would have taken our shoes off

Gotta learn more Japanese...

My drink of choice for the evening, a lime Chuhai

My sushi feast: A standard assortment (top two rows) and a roll of Super Fatty Tuna (1600 yen but so delicious)

All smiles before dinner (And before Dan realized there was wasabi on everything)

The chefs. They were laughing because I bumped my head on the way down the stairs. I'm a tall, stupid gaijin

Dan laughed harder than anyone about it

I'm afraid this blog is mostly going to be about me eating, but I can't help it that the food here is so good, and that restaurants here are so different than at home. Another night we tried a little Indian place right by our apartment, and I'm already thinking about the next time I'm going back there. It had just a few tables and just one guy taking orders, cooking, and serving, but it was delicious -- oishii!

I still have not found peanut butter as we know it in the states, but I did find what the Japanese use instead. They call it peanut cream, but it really had the look and consistency of jelly, but peanut flavored. Sort of translucent, a little sweeter than normal peanut butter. I still miss the stuff I know from home, but this is yummy in its own right, so I had some with a banana and some strawberry jam for dessert one night at home.

MORE FOOD. I wasn't kidding y'all. Last night a friend and I went to Ishinden, which I believe is a chain pretty popular in Japan. You order small plates, most of which are between 280-380 yen, very cheap! All the drinks were 280 yen also, so of course I had a couple beers with my dinner.

We split some okonomiyaki. Not quite as good as the place I went my first night, but it'll do

The chicken wings were both of our favorite, and I also had a yummy potato-pumpkin croquette.

This all looks pretty unhealthy but I also had a salad so WHATEVER

Alright, I'll try and post again soon... I'm thinking of trying to post more often with less content rather than saving them all up in one monster of a post like this one. Also I'll try to post more about non-food-related adventures, but I can't promise anything. Literally going to eat some breakfast right now, but I'll keep it simple with cereal and a banana.

Thanks for reading, friends! And if you have questions about anything related to living in Japan, just post in the comments and I'll answer them in my next post! Sayonara!