The Travels of 4 Couch Potatoes: Noodles and Bentos in Osaka

Sunday, July 28, 2019

We took advantage of the hotel lounge and ate their provided snacks and drinks as our breakfast. We then boarded the train and went to the outskirts of Osaka for the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum. There is no charge to enter and it was packed! Maybe we shouldn't have come on a Sunday as there were a lot of Japanese families with their children. There is a small museum portion discussing the history of instant ramen but all the signs are in Japanese. You can rent an English audio guide but we never have the patience to listen to all the explanations. Therefore, we did a cursory look and walked through the museum.

Instant ramen through the ages

There are two activities that can be done at this museum. At the Chicken Ramen Factory, visitors can make poultry noodle soup completely by hand. From kneading, spreading, and steaming to drying and flash frying of the noodles. You need a reservation for this part and the reservation opens about 3 months in advance. I started looking at the website a few weeks before the 3 month mark and kept checking every couple of days. But no reservations were available for that day nor any of the other days for our time in Osaka. I did observe a class going on while we were there so maybe these spots were already sold to tour groups or school field trips?!

The other activity is the My Cupnoodles Factory, where you create your own cup noodle package and flavoring. Each cup costs about $3. You first decorate your cup, then you pick the flavors and additions that go into the cup, and finally your cup is sealed and packaged. Again I was regretting my decision to come on a Sunday as we stood in the long line. The queue took about an hour but we had our own customized cup noodle!

Don't come on a Sunday

Step 1: Buy your cup for $3.

Step 2: Decorate your cup.

The choices available for your custom flavor

All the premade noodles

Step 4: Turn the handle to get the noodles into your cup.

Step 5: Pick your soup base and toppings.

Step 6: Seal your cup.

Step 7: Place your cup in shrink wrap.

Step 8: Protect your cup further by placing it in a customized air filled baggy.

We had a good time but it was a long ways to travel and a lot of standing in line for a cup of instant ramen. Of course this is a once in a lifetime experience. I'm not going back to this ramen museum in Osaka. I'll have to try the ones in Yokohama next time.

When The Husband and I visited Japan, we had gone to the town of Himeji especially to see the Japanese castle there. We were quite disappointed because despite the beauty of the outside, the inside was completely bare giving no sense of how the castle was used or how people lived. Osaka also has a castle and I had read that the inside is also pretty bare. So I had planned on just stopping by the outside for some pictures and then moving on.

We got to the nearest subway stop and walked the two blocks to the castle in the 102 degrees heat. Unfortunately, the castle is located behind several walls and moats. The entrance through these walls are not lined up and behind each other. No, you have to walk through an entrance, walk half way around the next wall to get to that entrance, and so on. After walking for about 30 minutes, we finally got to the inner court yard of the castle. We took our pictures and got some over-priced shaved ice and left. So much for my "quick stop".

Osaka is considered the food capital of Japan. Two famous Japanese dishes, takoyaki and okonomiyaki, are both invented in Osaka. Dotonburi is an area famous for its nightlife and entertainment, as well as food. Even though we can't have much of a night life with The Girl around, we can enjoy the food it has to offer.

We first walked down Shinsaibashi, a covered shopping

street, that is crowded with people, stores, and snack shops.

Fresh potato sticks, or so delicious fries

We crossed over the Ebisu bridge and was greeted into Dotonburi by the Glico Man, a giant billboard for Glico candy that's been there since 1935 and is seen as the symbol of Osaka within Japan.

We made our way to Dotomburi Ichiaki for their okonomiyaki and yakisoba. Then we walked a little more to Dotonburi Akaoni for their takoyaki. All were delicious and we were completely stuffed.

Seafood and soy sauce yakisoba

Ichiakiyaki okonomiyaki with pork,cheese, mochi, and bacon

A vendor cooks takoyaki.

The final product with all the toppings

To digest our food, we walked around Dotonburi admiring the different billboards advertising the restaurants.

That's a takoyaki not a monster

The Girl refused to let me try fugu, blowfish,

just in case I died then she'd be left all alone

By the time we got back to Osaka station, we were ready for some dessert. One of the things we'd wanted to try is the jiggly Japanese cheesecake. After walking all around the food hall of the department store next door, we finally found it. But it was also accompanied by a long line. Since we were running out of days in Japan, we got in line to get our jiggly cheesecake. It turns out we'd found Rikuro Ojisan, a famous bakery chain based in Osaka that developed the fluffy cheesecake. After standing in line for 30 minutes, we finally got our hands on the dessert. And it was just as fluffy and jiggly and delicious as promised.

The line waiting for yummy cake

Fresh out of the oven hot cheesecake

Monday, July 29, 2019

We again took advantage of our lounge access by having our breakfast there, this time with our left over cheesecake.

We'd signed up for another "experience" from Airbnb, making cartoon bento boxes. We found our way to the kitchen of Ai where she walked us through each step of the cooking and decorating process. Between the two of us, it took almost two hours to finish making our lunch. Ai told us that when her kids were younger, she'd make these bento lunches for her children every single day. It took her about an hour each day and the designs had to be different each day. I must not love my kids enough because there's no way I can spend an hour each day making pretty decorations with their lunch.

Making each dish

Making Japanese omelette

So that's how they make those egg rolls

Assembly

A delicious and pretty lunch, but why does mine look like a rat instead of Totoro?!

After we were sufficiently stuffed from our homemade delicious lunch, we went to the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living. It is a small museum located on the top three floors of a shopping mall. It has life size replicas of a street in Edo Japan. You can also rent kimonos there; therefore the place is packed with Chinese tourists in Japanese kimonos. It is a lot smaller than I had imagined but it was still interesting and fun. Did I mention it is air conditioned?!

The Japanese had fancy toilets even back then.

Old lockers of a bath house

The streets of old Japan

A diorama depicts a bus settlement in adaptive-reuse housing during post-war Japan.

A special exhibit showing old kimonos

For our last night in Japan, we decided to make sushi our final dinner. So we walked to Kame Sushi which is close to the hotel. There was already a long line when we got there at 5:40 but at least the wait was inside under air conditioning. When it was our turn, we squeezed our way to our seats at the counter and ordered our final sushi meal of our Japan trip. It was a delicious end to our lovely trip.