Osaka 2018

Now, some people travel to Japan for the anime. Others go for the gorgeous winter landscapes, and cherry blossom season. Plenty visit for the food alone.

To all these perfectly good reasons, I would like to add another: if you are ever in a ~mood~ but ~have to~ travel to keep up both a birthday tradition and your sanity, Japan is a great bet.

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We flew into the charmingly regional KIX, a month after Typhoon Jebi whacked the airport and flooded it, but you would never know it except for the fact that the metro stopped one station short while they repaired a bridge.

I hadn’t brought a pocket wi-fi from home, but it was a simple enough matter to rent one for the week. Next order of business for mum and me: teriyaki burgers and matcha tea at the airport McDonald’s while we waited for an aunt to arrive from LA.

The nighttime drive to the city had a decidedly dystopian feel, with bridges that curved past towering pillars of light looming out of the inky reflective blackness. It was all so still, so cold, so impersonal, that you could almost understand how easy it was to conjure up Godzilla on a rampage, or Super-Frog locked in an underground battle with a giant Worm.

And yes, that was a reference to one of my favorite Murakami pieces, although I won’t be able to come up with any more erudite cultural asides than that; my literary experiences related to this country are limited to Battle Royale and Kazuo Ishiguro. (Memoirs of a Geisha doesn’t really count, does it.)

Pulsating, neon-lit Namba and Dotonbori, though, are so recognizably, cinematically pop-culture Japan.

That evening we caught our first glimpse of the Glico Man, and tirelessly went up and down the riverside till we found just the right hole-in-the-wall for dinner.

The next day they dropped me off in Kyoto (more on that in a bit), and I returned to Osaka after a few days, inordinately proud of myself for having navigated the trains and found my flat – which was an adventure in itself!

It had marvelous ratings on Booking.com, but the contact was elusive and only sent the barest directions. There was a seemingly straightforward address, a photo of the street entrance with what looked like an Italian restaurant next door, the apartment number and the combination to where the key was stored.

That address proved to be a bit of a doozy; I stopped several strangers for help and they all pulled out their phones and frowned over their maps and shrugged tentatively. Google Maps eventually led me down a literal dead end, but lo and behold, there was a cafe, and a kindly proprietor who magically located the flat – all I had to do was cross the road and turn after a block, and sure enough there it was, perfectly situated just like all the reviews said. Now the photo of the entrance made much more sense, and there really was an Italian restaurant beside it.

I felt a little suspect as I furtively figured out how to gain access to the lobby, found the key and my floor, and finally entered the flat, which matched its online photo gallery and did not disappoint. My favorite part was that the bedroom had a shoji – a traditional sliding paper door – and a charmingly low bed. Not quite the tatami and futon of a ryokan, but close enough!

In the morning I got lost again, distracted by the teeming storefronts till I found the Glico Man and reoriented myself. Now it was time to locate Uncle Rikuro.

Jigglypuff cheesecake, said my favorite person when I asked what he wanted from Japan, so off we went on a brief quest for the nearest store, that ended in an equally short queue (we made it right before the noontime rush), and I was hard-pressed not to gobble one cheesecake up immediately.

Also: it does wobble about quite a bit.

Next stops were Tennoji Park and Keitakuen Garden, a soul-soothing sanctuary of silence. The Japanese have got the art of meditative gardens down to an art, haven’t they?

The Ueji- designed garden, large and elegant in its simplicity, was in the formal style, centred around a pond with a teahouse, and was located just behind the Osaka City Museum of Fine Art.

The building itself used to be the main residence of a family of merchants, the Sumitomo family, but in 1926 they donated their home – and the garden – to the city.

I sat in the gazebo facing the pond and reflected on how modern life has made us so overwrought that a simple joy – fresh air, greenery – becomes increasingly available at a premium, and is all the more precious for it. The garden isn’t as famous an attraction, so I gratefully enjoyed it all to myself, absent a horde of tourists, for a while.

At Kuromon-ichiba Market, the mother duck and aunt (who had stayed in Osaka all this time) spent all their time in one souvenir candy shop, while I trawled the aisles picking up barbecued Kobe beef and hot soy milk and seared Hokkaido scallops and orange juice slurped through a straw stuck in the fruit – and guess who had the better (and more filling) time?

It was too late in the day to go to Osaka Castle, so we ended up in Dotonbori again on our last evening, queueing up at a roadside shop where you had to punch your meal tickets out of what looked like an arcade machine, for a wonderful bowl of ramen. (Definitely worth the wait.)

To round it all off, the airline served a bento lunch on the flight home, which was enough of a novelty to keep me entertained.