It was pissing down rain, yet again in Osaka. I was there only a few days and this weather was mucking up my plans but good. Or perhaps not—Osaka, unlike nearby Kyoto, is not chock-full of must-see sights, particularly outdoor ones. Besides its most famous sight, the castle in the center of the city, so many of the attractions of Osaka can be done under cover. I spent a rainy Sunday doing just that.
My last blog post was about what to do in Paris on a Sunday. Europe, progressive though it is, is still in the religious grip of thinking Sunday is a day of rest. Old laws still on the books either prevent or restrict many business, especially shops, from opening on Sundays. Wandering around European cities on a Sunday, you may be forgiven if you assume half the population has left for the day. Not so in East Asia. Shops are open and it’s a brilliant day to hit them, especially if it’s raining.
The Kansai region of Japan consists of the mega-city Osaka, nearby Kyoto, and a few other towns such as Nara, the old capital. It’s in the southern part of Japan’s largest island, Honshu, and there’s something like 25 million people in the area. Kyoto gets all the attention, and for good reason. If you visit only one place in Japan, make it Kyoto. But Osaka grew on me. Unlike Kyoto, you don’t spend your time visiting shrines and temples; you spend it seeing modern Japan. The Kansai people are, to me, much friendlier than those around Tokyo, despite both being megalopolises. You’ll meet people there, get into conversations.
A typical shotengai
The phenomenon is called shotengai in Japanese, meaning shopping arcades that are covered, but not really indoors. They are like long tunnels, very wide and with high, arched roofs, but open to the street on each end. The effect is an indoor shopping mall crossed with an outdoor market, not as chaotic as a market but not as generic as a mall. The variety is amazing.
I’m not much of a shopper, and less of a buyer, but wandering through various shotengai all day is not just shopping–it’s exploring the culture. The arcades are filled with everything, not just the wearisome chain clothing stores like your local shopping mall. The effect is more like exploring crowded city streets. Moreover, everyone likes food, and below are many food options.
If it is indeed raining, start your day by ducking into any of the thousands of convenient stores around the city. You probably won’t walk a block without seeing one, either a Lawson’s, a 7-11, or (my favorite) a Family Mart. There, you’ll find cheap clear plastic umbrellas for about ¥400. Grab a coffee while you’re there from the cans they keep heated up front by the register. Hell, grab breakfast.
The best place for a rainy day in Osaka is the arcades just south of the Dotonbori area, towards Namba train station, in an area known as Minami. But, if you do any other research at all about shopping, about covered markets in Osaka, anything like that, you’ll run across the name Tenjimbashi-suji Shopping Street, which, at 2.6 kilometers, is the longest covered shopping arcade in Japan. This is located in the Kita ward, the north side of Osaka but not a long subway ride away.
And yet. I found Tenjimbashi-suji Shopping Street to be rather boring compared to the others. It’s much, much less crowded, but I think there’s a reason for that. I can’t recommend it, but if you like, it’s located along the subway Sakaisuji Line, running along three consecutive stops, Tenjinbashi 6-chome (K11), Ogimachi (K12), and Minami-morimachi (K13). Use any one of those stops to get there.
The area is also home to the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living, which shows several recreated houses from the Edo period (1603-1867) that visitors can enter. It’s right outside the Tenjinbashi 6-chome (K11) station.
A better option is Shinsaibashi-suji, a covered shopping street running north~south, leading down to the Ebisu-bashi bridge at the south point that will take you down to the Minami shopping area if you cross the bridge and just keep heading south.
Nota bene: Japanese currency (¥) has long hovered near 100-to-1 with the U.S. dollar, making conversion to dollars fairly easy. ¥100 yen is 1 dollar. ¥2000 is $20, easy, just lop off the final two zeros. As I write this, it’s near 90-to-1, meaning lop off the final two zeros and then reduce by another 10%, so ¥2000 is $18 (or just don’t worry about that part). For euros, reduce by 20%, so ¥2000 is €16
I’m recommending the Minami neighborhood because of the cluster of places in this area, all rather walkable, even in the rain, and especially because of the best one, the covered street that holds the Kuromon Ichiba food market. Do not miss this food market. It will make you happy. However, it is expensive enough to make you cry.
Grilled fruit, at the market
Japanese food often depends on expensive ingredients and simple preparation, and that’s all here at the market. You’ll see single sea urchins, cut open and ready for you to eat plain and raw, for €1000-2000. Eels, cut open and cooked for around ¥3000-4000 each, or king crab leg clusters, some for ¥10,000 or so. After this, some single grilled jumbo shrimps seem a bargain at ¥800 each.
The huge market, about 600 meters long, seems like a local fish market that long ago figured out that people, locals and tourists, like things to eat there as well. More than half the stalls feature food to eat there, usually simply cooked seafood, perhaps just sliced or on a skewer. Plain, raw seafood is quite plentiful, but only a few places have sushi. Cooking rice must be too much of a pain.
Three oysters and a beer at one stall set me back ¥1000, quite reasonable. At a larger place, a grilled crab stick, a single prawn tempura, and a grilled crab shell containing mixed crab meat and béchamel was about ¥2000, okay. My splurge there was at a corner stall selling only tuna, but they could do sushi. Four nigiri pieces made with fatty chu-toro tuna was ¥2000. Moving up to o-toro, the highest grade fatty tuna, would be ¥3000. I watched the couple next to me eat this, the chef torching two of the pieces before serving. I should have done that. Still, that’s ¥5000 I spent in the market, for snacks, and I could have easily spent twice that.
Eel, squid, and other fish on a stick
I’ve seen many complains that the prices there are inflated for the tourists, especially because of the Chinese. One can go lower. Some fish like the grilled squid are only ¥200 or so, and there’s plenty of fried options, and not just seafood. Meat offerings are few. Most places are simple stalls, but the market also has larger places along the way, stalls that extend back and are more like catch-all basic eateries, though still casual. One of my favorites was grilling figs and dragonfruit in front.
At one end of the market are restrooms (you’ll see a sign), and also some long tables for eating what you’ve bought at the stalls that don’t have seating.
The Kitchen Market
From the food market, you could move to the nearby kitchen market, even if the rain has stopped by now. Sennichimae Doguyasuji kitchen supply street is often just called Doguya-suji Arcade. It’s still about all things food, just not the food itself. The arcade mainly holds stores, not just stalls, selling kitchenware and other food-related items, such as the plastic models of food that you see outside restaurants, or perhaps key chains with rubber sushi models as fobs, that probably make great gifts for someone.
You may believe you don’t need anything else for your kitchen, but you are mistaken. Here is a special pan for making that square-shaped omlette you dream of. Here, hey over here, is a grill in the shape of a long, thin rectangle, just wide enough to lay skewers over perfectly. It will fit on any deck. Here is the perfect goose-neck kettle to make your coffee pourover. Here is a single-serving iron pot for making a charred rice bowl. Here is a spare wok ring. Here are beautiful lacquer serving bowls, and some wooden boxes for your flowers. You need something here.
Some of the neatest stores are those selling knives, and even if you don’t think you’re interested, wander through one, checking out the amazing variety of shapes, some truly scary-looking. Influenced by the previous evening’s meal where I had sat in front of the chef and watched him slicing fish, I succumbed at one knife store, walking out with a beautiful long thin knife perfect for sashimi. It’s carbon steel, folded with 32 layers, the saleswomen promised, and the blade is angled on its left side, meaning it’s specially designed for left-handers like me. I paid ¥12700 for it and I love it and I think it’s a bargain.
Choose your seafood tray, and they’ll grill it up
Other indoor options
If it’s still raining and you’ve gotten your appetite back from looking at all the kitchenware, perhaps head to Takashimaya, the seriously upscale department store right next to the train station. The clothes there were far too rich for my blood, though perhaps not yours, but the basement level is a gustatory romp, and not just Japanese food. Bakeries, chocolates, cheeses, wines, really everything, and it’s huge. It’s terribly hard to write this paragraph without committing cliché, but the place just has everything.
Nearby is a branch of Bic Camera, the national chain that sells everything electronic, including yes yes cameras, including any lens, tripod, filter, or camera bag you might need. To the south is Namba Parks, a huge mall with more stores, yes, but with very unusual architecture for a mall. It takes its “parks” name seriously, filling spaces with greenery and even waterfalls. The rooftop garden is a nice place for a stroll, if the rain holds off.
Another nearby mall is Namba Hips. Ten stories tall, each level is dedicated to one topic. There’s also a golf and an archery range, along with karaoke and sports bars.
Or, head back north just a bit and there are several more unnamed (by me, perhaps by anyone) arcades running east and west. In this area, you’ll find plenty of covered spaces to prance about.
Just because you’re eating so much doesn’t mean you can’t be drinking. I stopped first for a coffee at the Doguya-suji kitchenware arcade, at a store that seems to be selling furniture but has a coffee bar up front, okay, where they made me a brilliant and quite cheap pourover.
The narrow hallway in the kitchenware arcade
Just beyond it, I discovered a very narrow hallway holding perhaps eight to ten tiny drinking and eating establishments, some ridiculously small. I stopped in the first one on the left, specializing in tempura, where in a space smaller than my bedroom at home, they have an L-shaped bar and a full kitchen behind it, in which a solitary young woman was taking care of everything. She made me some fried squid and octopus with seaweed and wasabi and poured me a beer and I was happy.
The little hallway is full of good stuff. My favorite place was KaraKara, in the middle of the hallway, specializing in fried chicken, where I stopped for some sake simply because the people were so damn cool. I liked them so much I went back the next day. The owner of KaraKara recommended to me the next place, at the end of the hallway, a bar called FUu2, specializing in the wildest mojitos you’ve seen.
If the rain has stopped (or never started), and it’s early evening, now’s the time to get outside. Sometime during your trip you should check out Dotonbori, the famous promenade that looks much better in the evening than during the day.
Hopefully, the rain has stopped by now, you’ve snapped a hundred market photos, and you’ve had a bang-up time just checking out daily life in Osaka. Get outside tomorrow, but if I had just one day in Osaka, I would do at least part of this type of day, raining or not.
It sounds a pretty fun. I would travel to this place.