Osaka: A weekend of taiko, food and pink eye

Where: Osaka
When: December 16 & 17, 2007.
Who: Me, Elspeth and Fil
Info: It is a well-known fact that Elspeth and I LOVE taiko (Japanese drumming). We love seeing it at festivals, etc and when I told my Dad, he found out about a famous taiko group called Kodo. I actually remember walking with Steph around Innsbruck, Austria (hip kegs!) and hearing their performance through the walls of the performance centre. I checked their website and found dates on a Sunday in December. Thanks dad!

Our first meal in Osaka - udon nabe, tempura and negi-toro. So delicious.

After lunch we headed off to see the KODO performance which was spectacular! This group from Sado Island plays all over the world (and quite often in Toronto). If you ever get a chance, go see them! I had shivers the whole time, their drumming was so amazing!

At one point during the packed performance, I started coughing. Thinking that the VERY LOUD drumming would hide the noise of me opening a candy, I reached into my bag. The second I started to unwrap it, they decided to embark on a very soft drumming performance! Elspeth was watching me the whole time and she started to laugh, then I started to laugh and off we went on a silent giggling attack. I thought the Japanese woman beside me was going to kill me!

Ahhh...this picture was taken just before my eyes starting oozing eye snot and swelling shut.

After the performance we headed out onto the streets downtown Osaka. It was crowded and bright with lights. We stopped at numerous shoe stores for Fil (that man has more shoes than I do! Sorry if that offends you!) and the Hello Kitty store for Elz. That was an experience. Three floors of everything Hello Kitty. The most amazing part was a wall of cell phone charms from every place in Japan. As Elspeth collects them from everywhere we go, we checked out all the cute ones she doesn't have and made mental notes to go there!



There is a famous crab restaurant in Osaka (that has huge mechanical crab with moving legs on the sign) and I've wanted to eat there for a long time. We decided that this weekend was as good as any to splurge and treat ourselves. We added our names to the long waiting list and wandered around until it was our turn. We watched the doomed crabs in the tank in the lobby and stole some crab crowns (darn, I should have taken a photo...damn pink eye).

The restaurant was something like 5 floors high and we had a nice view of the river/lights. We poured over the menu and finally chose the set below. It appeared to have a good combo of crab dishes and less crab sashimi (it was also one of the cheaper sets).

Prepare yourself - here comes just a few of the dishes we ate in our crab marathon.

I don't usually like crab sashimi (above) but that night it was tasty!

You want to make macaroni and cheese amazing? Add crab. So surprisingly oishii! Talk about decadent.

Eating crab takes a lot of concentration.

And to top off that wonderful meal, we ate ice cream covered with hot green tea. The combination of hot tea and cold ice cream was interesting.

After eating we went to this weird warehouse-like store full of costumes and accessories that Elz and I had visited with Becky. We wandered the aisles, enjoying the Engrish, the wide variety of racy costumes (where do people wear these things? Wait, I don't really want to know that) and the interesting pillows (see above picture).

After my eyes started to swell shut, we headed back to the hotel. Elspeth and I ate chocolate and tried to watch Spiderman 3. Well, lets just say that I am now terrified of Tobey Maguire and whenever I hear his name I am frozen with fear just picturing that dance/strut/nightmare scene. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. We tried to find Fil, so that he could translate from guy/comic book movie into an understandable language and explain what was happening but he didn't show up until later (something about emailing his mother...honestly...where is he when we need him!). We ended up turning off that awful movie and turning to religious texts for our entertainment. Reading the Teaching of Buddhism makes me laugh and contemplate life all at the same time. Seriously good reading - check it out if you ever find it in your hotel room.

They next morning we headed to Doguya-suji, the cooking-ware paradise. If you want some kind of kitchen gadget, go there because you'll find it! I mean, Elspeth and I even found the giant mochi hammer/pounder.

Teeny-tiny creme-brule cup-thingys. Only in Japan would a dessert come in a cup this small. Could a spoon even fit into it? I mean, if you're going to have dessert, have DESSERT.

We were in takoyaki gadget heaven. This place makes my tiny takoyaki-yakiki (takoyaki cooker)(ha! According to Elspeth's research that is it's actual name) look like a kids toy...

While Fil checked out pottery, Elspeth and I went to find knives. Talk about sexy kitchen utensils - check out those knives!

Plastic sushi is expensive! Each piece was about 600yen. Ouch.

Okay. What are you making that you need a powertool-whisk?!

We couldn't leave Osaka without having okonomiyaki. We found a cute restaurant with a tanuki theme (It felt like we were eating in a tanuki hut/bamboo village, if you can imagine something from that random description). Yummy yummy! I love okonomiyaki! Especially when it is made on the table grill in front of us.

Covered in okonomiyaki sauce and mayo, this is not a low-fat lunch.

Fil adding some 'dancing' bonito flakes.

We did some last minute shopping, took some purikura (you can even seem my red eyes in the purikura) and of course an Aaron shot. I love ya, Osaka!