Okonomiyaki, Animals and Dragon Quest Island – Osaka

Just a quick break from the anime content for some more regular touristy stuff my sister and I got up to.

After Kyoto, we hopped on the train to Osaka. Overall, it was a super cool city. Think Tokyo, but with a more laid-back atmosphere. People are smiling a bit more, and in general people are there for a good time. My sister described it as a “lived-in city” as opposed to a “working city” like Tokyo.

Dotonbori

Dotonbori was the place to be after dark, and the area was alive with lights and sounds and smells and people. This is an area that is heavily featured in Yakuza Zero, a game from the Yakuza series. And the game really reflected the atmosphere that this place gave off in real life. Take a look for yourself.

We found a place for an obligatory okonomiyaki, a dish Osaka is kinda known for. It’s a sort of fried pancake filled with noodles and cabbage and coated in a tasty brown sauce. I can’t really describe it properly to someone who hasn’t tried it, but it’s pretty delicious. We were meant to cook it ourselves, but since we were total noobs, we asked our waiter to cook ours for us (something quite normal for people to do). And she drew some pictures of Osaka tower and Doraemon (a popular Japanese kids cartoon character).

A visit to the aquarium, and go-karting

On our second day we decided to check out the Aquarium. On the way there I found a rather amusing seating arrangement in one of the stations.

We got to the reclaimed headland where the Aquarium was located, and I took some snaps of the surrounding area.

After we got our tickets, our scheduled time slot was an hour and bit from then. We decided to have a walk about the adjacent mall to kill some time. In the mall was an animal petting shop. Some really cute animals like dogs and rabbits, but I was questioning the happiness of the monkeys and capybaras. There also was a really grumpy looking cat.

After that we headed into the aquarium. I didn’t take many pics (I defo should have taken more). But these are the ones I did manage to get.

And after the aquarium, I noticed there was a rental kart track near by. I used to do it competitively and it’s been a while since, so I had to give it a visit. My sister and I had a go in the double kart, and I did a few more solo runs after that until dark. Lots of fun.

Dragon Quest Island

My sister and I had planned to go here months before we even got to Japan. It’s basically a small theme park which was meant to simulate being in an actual game of Dragon Quest. For those that don’t know it’s a pretty famous JRPG (Japanese role playing game) that goes way way back, and has had a massive influence on more well-known titles like Final Fantasy and Pokemon.

The park was a long long way from the city, and was situated on an actual island too. We had to take a train, and then hop on a coach along a highway across an impressive suspension bridge, get dropped off pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and then take a shuttle bus from there to the park.

After all that faff, we finally made it there.

We got given a little IR tag each, and you’d go round and scan it next to monitors set up to talk to people, battle, get items, etc. It was surprisingly effective actually.

The way it played out was very similar to a JRPG. Which means there was a lot of walking too. But it was no match for us since we’d done a lot of walking already that holiday.