Osaka, Japan

If Kyoto is the calm, respectful city of tradition, then Osaka is its mischievous younger sibling. While Kyoto was reading books, Osaka was smoking behind the bins (I’m pleased with that line).

As well as being one of the edgier, grittier cities, Osaka is known as one of the best food cities in Japan, if not the world. So we did our very best to get stuck in, putting in solid shifts for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day. More okonomiyaki, more sushi, more tempura, and many frequent hauls of mysterious snacks from convenience stores.

One of the main delicacies of Osaka is octopus balls. No, not like that. Grow up. These are little spheres of batter with a piece of octopus in the middle – known as takoyaki. And in some restaurants, you cook them yourself. So that’s how we turned into our mums, cooking a load of octopus to within an inch of its life, ‘just to be on the safe side’. Eventually a waiter came over, saw our burnt very cooked octopus balls and took our tabletop gas cooker away from us immediately. But even though we definitely ruined them, they were perfectly nice, but not something I’d rush back to eat and tasted, somewhere between a savoury doughnut and a fish-flavoured dough ball.

Early one day I headed out for a morning set at a nearby diner. A little menu specifically designed for breakfast, a set usually includes coffee and toast, and maybe some fish or egg or meat of some sort. My one, at the little Karahori toast cafe Fine, included brioche toast and a little boiled egg. I sat in the window, watching through the slatted blinds as Osaka woke up, and had a very nice time indeed.

Later that day we wandered over to see Osaka Castle. Heavily restored in 1997, it gives a sense of how it would have looked back in the 1600s. And if you’re too cheap to pay to go in, you can get a reasonable view from a set of stone steps just to the south of the castle.

At sundown Osaka turns into quite a frenetic place. The central canal area is called Dotonburi, and is a head-spinning cluster of neon lights, huge animatronic sea creatures mounted over restaurants and loud music blasting from every shop. Just around the corner is the America-mura, home to hundreds of vintage shops and little boutiques, many of which stock old US brands which are popular in Japan. As we were travelling with 40 litre backpacks, we didn’t have much room for extra items, let alone vintage denim; we were very much operating a one-in-one-out policy on clothes for this trip.

We wandered around Dotonburi, looking up at the bright lights and weaving through the crowds of teenagers and twenty-somethings who were gathered on every bench and wall. They were all dressed so well, it felt like a photoshoot for some hipster magazine, albeit one ruined by us two trampling through in our Goretex wear and trainers. 

We had decided that on the Big Trip we wanted to see as much local music as possible, so after some digging on Reddit we found that Music Bar Hokage promised a night of Japanese punk. We eventually found the venue, hidden away down a stickered alleyway, and headed down the spiral stairs into a dark basement. The music was loud, the beer was cold, the people were enthusiastically headbanging, and we didn’t have a clue what was going on. At one point we chatted to a girl in the crowd via Google Translate, who explained in detail where each of the punk bands were from, although I’m not quite sure what we were meant to do with this information. It was a great way to spend our last night in Osaka, and our final night in Japan, getting stuck in and leaping around to The Knockers, Five No Risk, Inugayu and After Hours. Go on, have a listen. 

The next morning it was time for a complete change of pace. We packed up our bags and headed for the next country on our big trip: India.