On Friday morning we headed to the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living. On the 8th floor of the museum which also houses government offices, an 1830s Osaka neighbourhood has been re-created with shophouses, drug stores, an old-style sentō (public bath) and more. We each got an English audio guide and could walk through the neighbourhood learning about the buildings and life of Osaka in the 1800s. It was quite well done, with the lighting cycling through daytime and night time. They had some kid’s games from that era available to play with as we walked through.
Leaving the museum, we turned the corner and walked down Japan’s longest shopping arcade Tenjinbashi-suji. The street stretches 2.6km over six blocks and is a pedestrian only street that has been covered to turn into an arcade. The shops lining both sides are mainly small individual shops, rather than large chain department stores or the common brands seen everywhere. Shops like restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries, repair shops, chemists.
A dumpling restaurant caught our eye so we stopped and three of us enjoyed the dumplings. We walked another block or two and came across a KFC, which met Carter’s taste.
Here we left the arcade and went a block across to Kids Plaza Osaka, a science learning/play centre to spend the afternoon. A little like a smaller and lower tech version of Questacon it kept the kids entertained for a few hours. This also allowed us to book the remaining few weeks of our trip.
Leaving Kids Plaza we grabbed an ice cream from a vending machine (you are never far from a vending machine with drinks or ice creams in Japan) and went outside to Ogimachi park, a large open park with playing fields and playgrounds. The football was quickly pumped up (the third use so far on the trip) and spent an hour kicking the footy amongst others that were playing baseball or soccer. The boys then had a go on the playground, which was mainly slides including cement slides that have been polished enough to slide on!
It seemed a little odd that Japan seems so safety conscious in so many areas (abundance of fire extinguishers, lots of warning and caution signs etc.) yet they have cement slides with no cushioning or protection. But all the kids were having a great time and came away unscathed.
The final schedule stop was the Pokémon centre which was one station away on the train. We were a little disappointed to find it was just a Pokémon section of the Daimaru shopping centre, with Pokémon gear to purchase. But it did have a Pokémon arcade game the boys could play. And we did go through an amazing desserts and sweets floor in the shopping centre, which we came back to after Pokémon. Here we found some Daifukumochi – Japanese rice cakes with a sweet filling – similar to the ones we had at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. A bit of Googling later and we discovered that they are made from mochi, which is a rice cake made of a specific short-grain glutinous rice called mochigome. The rice is pounded into paste and moulded into the desired shape. When filled with a sweet filling, often red bean paste, they are called Daifukumochi.
I passed and instead headed to the Kit Kat stall where I purchased a box of the wasabi flavoured and a box of the Shinshu Apple flavoured Kit Kats. Kit Kats seem to be popular throughout Japan (or at least popular with tourists in Japan) as they are always seen in souvenir shops and the like. And there is a different range of flavours. We had already sampled the green tea macha, strawberry, and dark chocolate. And so we had two new flavours to sample.
Fun family times!