Osaka – Dotonbori
By Dennis | Published | No Comments
Dontomburi was pretty amazing. I want to say “shocking” because of the sheer size of the place. We got there pretty early so the crowds were thin, but it got pretty packed by the afternoon.
Taylor and I shared our first taste of Wagu beef. One of the restaurants had a polio thing just out front and they were cooking up different types of beef. I decided to go for a premium skewer at 5500 yen ($45). Was pricey but I knew I wouldn’t do it too often. I read online that any restaurant with lots of English signage is definitely targeted at tourists and have “tourist prices”. Anyway it was really quite good. It’s true what they say that it let’s in it mouth because of the marbling of the fat.
There was a Japanese camera crew setting up to film the chef cook up the skewers and they asked me if I wanted to talk to them. “Me on Japanese tv? YUP!” The TV guys were really nice and the reporter and I could barely understand each other. Told him where I was from and that we were visiting Japan for the first time. He asked me what I thought of the price. I thought that was an odd question but whatever.
My answer was a shrug because I knew I wouldn’t be having it too often at all and this was part of the experience of being in Japan. Anyways it turns out they were there to cover how foreign tourists were “flocking” into Japan fo take advantage of the low yen and how costs were so high for regular Japanese people. Got to say, I was a little disappointed in how they made foreign tourists look in their report. The low yen isn’t being caused by foreign tourists; foreign tourists are here because of the low yen. The tourism industry is actually benefiting greatly by the favourable exchange rate, but they didn’t mention that. Whatevs.
We found our way to Shinsaibashisuji. It’s a massive covered street market. I’m not understating the word massive. Every narrow street was full of people and jut went on and on. Was crazy.
Many of the restaurants have fake, plastic examples of the food they serve. It’s kind of strange because we absolutely never see that sort of thing in North America. Everything on the menu has a life-like plastic version for you to look at it’s pretty wild.
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