Whew! November's been an unexpectedly busy month. But, I've come to learn that in this job, we can pretty much expect every month to be unexpectedly busy - so wait... is that just expectedly busy?
Anyhow, since I'm not travelling this Sunday, I'll conclude the travelogue from our latest big trip to Kansai, Japan!
Our last episode saw us explore 15th century and modern Osaka with visits to Osaka Castle and the Dotenburi district. Our last days of the trip take us to some of Osaka's more unique shopping areas.
The first stop was Pokemon Center Osaka, at the nearby Daimaru Umeda store. You can think of Pokemon Centers as sort of like Disney Stores, but for Pokemon. You have to hand it to Nintendo and the Pokemon Company - creating such a massively popular franchise from a game boy game!
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| Tomica makes the best die-cast car lineup! |
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| Pokemon Trading Card Game Tournament! |
After purchasing some obligatory Pokemon memorabilia, we set our heading to the Shinsekai neighborhood. Shinsekai is translated to "New World", but in 2019, it's anything but! First built in the early 1900s, it is modeled on Western metropolises of the time, namely New York City and Paris, but it has more or less stayed that way over the decades! The result? An interesting, vibrant, and somewhat seedy neighborhood with a reputation for "dangerous" by Japanese standards, which attracts a small but curious crowd of tourists, like us!
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| You can really see the effect of the years on Shinkesai from this shot |
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| We considered watching a show at this little theater, but decided it was probably going to be a little abstract for us! |
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| A video-game oriented amusement space served as a good prelude to the our next stop of the day |
After our walk around through Shinsekai, we decided to explore Den Den Town, which is the electronics and anime district of Osaka!
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| Plenty of Anime |
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| I'd heard of these tiny hotels before, but didn't check any of the units out... |
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| This was by far my favorite shop in the area - all retro gaming! |
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| A giant Game Boy |
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| Fire Emblem dolls! Fifi's been enjoying the Fire Emblem Heroes game on iPad! |
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| Lots of old consoles for sale, like this Famicom! I had one of these growing up! |
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| Even the ill-fated Virtual Boy was on display and for sale! |
To be honest, there was not much activity on the streets of Den Den Town, at least not until the evening started to creep in. Once it did however, we started to see all sorts of shady folks hit the streets:
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| Lots of shady guys and schoolgirl outfits |
After getting our fill of Anime, video games, and maid restaurants, we made our way back to the central part of town to get our last signature meal in Japan. To date, we'd had Udon meals, Japanese curry, Japanese fried chicken, Sushi (lots of!), and Ramen, but we hadn't had Japanese beef! So we went to a place famous for its Wagyu beef! It was a small place (curiously run by Chinese people, which made communication pretty easy for us!) so we had to wait nearly an hour to eat! But eat we finally did, and it was very tasty, if a bit pricey!
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| Waiting for dinner |
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| Nothing like grilled Wagyu! |
With that, we spent our final night in Osaka. The next day, we explored the local area around the hotel before heading to the airport and completing our Kansai Quest!
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| Very cool water art display! |
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| On the road to the airport |
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| Heavy industries along the bay area |
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| De-planing in Chengdu! |
Until next time!
