Osaka

After a half day in Nara, we jumped straight into the Osaka food scene, effecting a food tour of Dotonbori (the nightlife hub) by wandering around picking out street food. Osaka is known as the 'Kitchen of Japan' for its varied street food scene. We ate katsukushi (skewers), gyoza, takoyaki, udon, okonomiyaki, and daifuku mochi. All delicious, and we will definitely be trying to cook okonomiyaki at home next year! Later in the evening we walked past a local bar, where a middle-aged man collared us into a free drink after he found out that Dan was here for the Rugby World Cup. We made fast friends with Shinja and Ryuta, who were more than generous with the sake pours. Shinja was unwaveringly enthusiastic about the Osaka World Expo 2025, and over the course of several drinks convinced us to go. So many drinks, in fact, that we only got home at 2am and didn't get out of bed until 6pm the next day 😅 (though to be fair we have had many early morning starts recently).

Rousing ourselves on Friday, we took Shinja's advice and visited the World Expo 2025. This is being advertised heavily all over Japan, and is running for six months... but we'd never heard of it until we arrived. Pretty much every country in the world is exhibiting (except Russia 👀), with pavilions showing off their advances in science, technology and sustainable future living. The pavilions are fantastic, with many designed by famous architects, and the 2km ‘Great Ring’ was amazing to walk around—it’s a huge wooden structure some five stories high, encircling the pavilions, planted with wild flowers.

But. We stood in a queue of about 10k people in the hot sun at 10am for about half an hour, and then once inside, the ticketing system was atrocious. So bad that we wandered around for a couple hours looking at hour-long queues and being increasingly frustrated by the app. At lunchtime we ate cold soba noodles from the konbini and called it a day. For a global expo of cutting-edge technology, in a country that is so ahead of the curve in so many ways, it felt a bit weird that it was so impossible.

It was still only halfway through the day though, so we split up to visit some more landmarks. Chelsea went to the Kaiyukan, the world’s largest aquarium. It houses two (2!) whale sharks, the biggest fish in the world. Chelsea is not a fan of zoos or keeping fish in tanks, but these sharks are rescues from fishing accidents and are rotated in and out of the tank for research purposes, so their survival depends on the conservation efforts of the aquarium. Also, the glass of the tank is almost a metre thick, which creates a bizarre perspective trick whereby the fish appear to be much closer than they really are.

Dan has visited the Kaiyukan before, so he went to Osaka Castle where Japan made up for the technological failings of the World Fair app by delivering an ice cream from a vending machine that accepted payment on his Suica metro card.

In the evening we went back to Dotonbori, to eat any food we'd somehow missed so far. This led us to a vegan okonomiyaki joint where one woman ran all the cooking, cleaning, waitressing and front desk by herself. It was three storeys high 😳 she is also tiny and intensely cheerful the entire time. Either her 00s Japanese pop punk playlist keeps her going, or a healthy dose of methamphetamines.

We finished the night back at the bar from Wednesday, where Shinja and Ryuta were hanging out again, and had another fun night, though sensibly stayed off the sake this time.

The vibe in Osaka is SO GOOD, and if (when) we come back to Japan in future, we would really love to spend more time here. For now though, we're into our last week in Japan and have a bunch more stops to cover before we leave 🚅Read more