I only know the recipe to roam: (Almost) everything I ate in Osaka

In college I experienced the worst blowup I will ever have with my parents. I had fucked up my education and I’d been hiding it from them, and they had never been so disappointed in me. It had felt like the end of the world at the time. 

Days later my mom took me to what was then a new restaurant called Dohtonbori. The interiors were fun and there was a tabletop grill at every booth where you could cook your okonomiyaki yourself. It was here that we tentatively patched things up, that she did the kindest, most loving, most quintessentially mom thing she could do and welcomed me back into her arms with a smile. I’m pretty sure I was bawling in public from the gratitude. 

I don’t think I could ever imagine what it was like for them to let that anger go and treat me with grace and comfort, even after what I’d done. But all they ever really wanted to do was love me. 

I thought back to this day a lot as I ate my way through the real Dotonbori ten years later. How I would’ve told them about the food, maybe even how we would’ve experienced it together the way we did at that restaurant. And even though they weren’t really there, I carried them everywhere. 

The place I immediately went for the day I arrived was Sushiro. I had the limited-time basil mozzarella salmon, uni rolls, and the adorable and slightly silly hamburg steak sushi. The mozzarella tempura was addictive and they had a promo with Puppet SunSun, so I chose a drink order that came with a little puppet charm. 

I chose to include the daily breakfast at my hotel since I really liked the food when I first stayed here, and it was worth the splurge and waking up early. The daily menus had so much more variety than I thought possible. Fried skewers, takoyaki, and okonomiyaki, bacon and scrambled eggs, baked beef belly with loads of onions (I have no idea how they made it so flavorful), grilled chicken with lemon sauce, mini hamburg patties in demiglace, penne in different tomato sauces, shepherd’s pie, karaage, grilled salmon, mackerel, tiny pizza with different toppings, tiramisu and kiwi cake for dessert.

Karaksa Hotel is really the only choice for me in Osaka. The shower is decently sized and separate from the toilet, which I’ve really had to dig for when browsing places to stay in Japan. The location is perfect (if not all that close the nearest subway entrance). The doors are magnetic and the Do Not Disturb signs are magnets. Best of all: they offer free refreshments all day from the fancy touchscreen dispenser and there’s a microwave you can use any time for leftover food or konbini finds. Even better: they have boxes that you can use to pack shopping hauls and food instead of buying/bringing an extra suitcase, and they even let you borrow tape to seal it. (There’s also a service for shipping the boxes to your address, but I chose to check in mine.) 

In Umeda I stopped at a food court and ordered mentaiko pasta at a place called Pesca. The noodles were super al dente and thinner than regular spaghetti, and the sauce was creamy and lemony and just slightly briny with loads of soft, chunky salmon. 

For dinner that night I had another pasta, this time a plate of carbonara from Saizeriya. I liked the unlimited drink bar, and the pasta itself was salty and eggy. 

I was finally reunited with the true love of my life, ramune-flavored Skal, and it was just as good as I remember. My other konbini favorites: cheesy chicken nuggets from Lawson and their blue mint chip ice cream, the coffee jelly that’s Hoseok’s favorite and that Aya had reminded me to get, ready-to-drink iced honey latte, and the chocolate chip scone from Family Mart. 

I also managed to grab Snoopy-shaped treats that were supposed to be for White Day, and I’m still thinking about that thin chocolate-covered Wittamer cookie the kind stranger had given me at Art House.

Another place I’d been wanting to check out was Bikkuri Donkey. I got the hamburg steak with cheese sauce, and it was fun eating it with chopsticks (the texture of the rice and meat were perfect) while basking in the cozy, slightly dark interiors of the basement.

I wanted to have authentic yakisoba for lunch, but the place was still closed, so I crossed the street to Lawson and chanced upon this omusoba instead. The sauce was sweet and salty and I loved the richness added by the egg and creamy mayo. I will probably look back on this for years. 

For my last lunch, I went back to Sushiro. The cheese and mayo seared salmon was great, but the best I had there was definitely the cheesy seared eel. The cut was the perfect thinness and the burst of flavor from the hidden dollop of unagi sauce is core memory material. 

I got to order real street yakisoba for dinner. The noodles were flat and springy and it was topped with thin strips of wagyu beef. I held the plastic bag of takeout in my hand as I took my final walk around Dotonbori—the weight of it a promise that I still had something new to look forward to even after saying goodbye to it all. 

I’ve been feeling blue; well, how about you?

It doesn’t seem like it based on my previous post, but I did make an itinerary for Osaka. Shops and exhibitions, places to eat, even specific spots I wanted to photograph—I just ended up managing to cross them all off in the first three days. I’d even penciled in day trips to Kyoto and Kishi Station and considered a day at Universal Studios just to ride Jaws again, but again, I honestly fumbled my planning somewhat and it ended up a little too cold for me to even fathom them.

But I set out for and sought after what I could, and I really had quite the perfect few days.  

My first order of business was another pilgrimage. A nondescript little tunnel next to an automated parking lot in a chic little neighborhood where university students gather in Americana-themed bars blasting Michael Jackson and whimsical cafes. It looks like nothing unless you recognize it from j-hope’s Hope on the Street docuseries, in which he spent his downtime in Osaka (where he’d gone for an award show) doing a few popping performances in various locations, one of which was this very spot. 

It was a fun little excursion, even if I spent most of it trying not to get lost in the massive underground mall in Umeda. 

Visiting a shooting location I’d only seen on my screen is always a little fantastic, but it was only made more surreal when two days later, a gigantic underground pipe rose 30 feet from the ground in Umeda. I saw a video on Twitter and immediately checked my gallery for a photo I’d taken, which depicted the exact same area. What were the odds? Roads were closed and it looked pretty scary to witness in person, so I was glad I made this my priority.   

Also: here I go with my Sophie Tajan crates again. 

The next day I walked through Minamihorie to visit two shops I’d learned about when I went looking for places to buy prints and zines. It was such a nice day. I turned a corner from the street of my hotel and the storefronts began morphing into something more and more offbeat. I love how accessible it was and how there was so much to see.

At Art House I went crazy picking out all the postcards I wanted, and I also got two zines. There was also a lot of original art, from drawings and paintings to handmade crafts like wood carvings, clay pieces, tiny plushies, and miniatures. The woman running the store was very nice, and one of the artists sitting at a table (I wasn’t sure if there was an event going on) gave me a chocolate cookie. Definitely a place I would’ve loved to become a regular at, and it reminds me of Cubao X the way it was in my memories.

It was quite a longish and intimidating walk to the second shop, but I found it calming. For the first time on any of the trips I’ve been on, I finally put my wool gloves to use. 

I passed this little community store selling vegetables in partnership with farmers, and I found it so wonderful that people of all ages were really stopping by and carefully choosing their veggies. 

It was nice to meander around the side streets of Osaka on a quiet weekday afternoon while everyone was busy at school or work. I passed two community parks on my way. There was a pretty large group of young women beautifully made up and all dressed up in kimonos, smiling and laughing as they held hands on the sidewalk.  

Book of Days is a pretty small room on the second floor of a walk-up, the shelves and tables lined with countless books and independent publishing on art and photography. I got a zine and a book and wistfully browsed the heavier one-of-a-kind publications that I couldn’t take with me.

I’d downloaded Uber and was considering taking one to my next stop, but when I went to check how to get there from where I was, I saw that the nearest subway station was five minutes away, and from there it was only one stop. 

 

When I got to Higobashi Station, I found it so cool, the way it was lined with these comfy seats so passengers could rest while they waited. Silly, but I thought I wouldn’t mind spending some time just in the station reading while it bustled around me. There were trains on both tracks, but by the time I thought to take a picture, they were already pulling away. 

I had gone to the Nakanoshima Kosetsu Museum to view their current exhibit “Journey to Masterpieces: Torajiro’s Dream, from the collection of the Ohara Museum of Art.” I felt so lucky to be able to catch it, especially when I learned of the works I would get to see, curated before his passing by Western-style painter Torajiro Kojima, whose own paintings were also on display.

When I got there I didn’t realize the true scope of what I would be in the presence of. It was overwhelming and magical. All these painters I only ever thought I would read about or see on a screen: El Greco, Raffaëlli, Pissarro, Cézanne, Degas, Matisse, Picasso. Name drops so unbelievable I sound like a character on a sitcom being written to sound cultured and smart. I didn’t know that “starstruck” could ever apply to inanimate objects, but that’s exactly what I was. 

The piece that really gripped me was this lithograph version of Edvard Munch’s Madonna.

And then there was Monet’s Water Lilies, seen on the poster for the exhibition and the only piece I really knew to expect. I was so emotional, there’s just no other way to describe it. Like with most of the paintings, I stepped as close as I could and examined every detail, trying to grasp the fact that these artists, these human beings, had once created every stroke of the brush with their own hands. They jumped off the canvas, their textures so real and so clear to me for the very first time that I could almost feel them at my fingertips.

I put on the piano version of “Fake Plastic Trees” from the Westworld soundtrack and just lost myself in that room until I had to go.

I bought postcards of my favorite paintings at the gift shop. (No prints of the Munch, sadly.) Also: I love this shot so much. 

I took a short walk by the river before finally letting myself have that Uber ride back to my hotel. 

Sometimes it’s hard out here in the deep end: Pictures I took walking in Osaka

 My body’s different in Osaka than it is in Seoul.

Maybe it’s something about the Dotonbori River and the other rivers in the city, along with Osaka Bay, that makes it feel so much colder. In Seoul I could wear a sweater with my breath coming out in puffs of white in zero degrees and I would be cozy. But six to ten degrees in Osaka and I fold, slipping wool gloves onto delicate fingers and finally putting my hot packs to use. 

Two things became the driving force of this trip: I needed to get away, and I wanted to wear my Human Hope knockoff sweaters. Preferably somewhere cold enough, before all the spring tourists. And I was starting to miss this city a little too much. 

The first thing I did when I arrived was to walk the couple blocks that would lead me to the Dotonbori Bridge. I looked out over the view, and there was this sense of, What now? 

I came to find a lot of solace in the looser, as-you-go style of travel I tried in November—letting go of the pressure and staying comfortable didn’t have to mean sacrificing new experiences and discoveries. They could go hand in hand. People say there’s not a lot to do in Osaka, but the way I saw it, this only made it perfect for this kind of meandering. 

I made a map of places I specifically wanted to stop by just so I could take pictures of the ridiculously fun larger-than-life shop signs around the river. I ended up not needing to consult it at all—most of them were side by side, literally jumping out at you as you passed. The best part was finding a number of them that I hadn’t even heard of. 

They remind me of how it felt when I first came here and what it was like to come across one of them when I had no prior knowledge or expectations. Crossing what I thought was an ordinary side street, only to find a bright red giant crab claw sticking out of an otherwise unassuming storefront. It’s still one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken. 

I didn’t bring my Canon G9X on any of the trips I took last year, thinking it would weigh me down when my phone was good enough for documentation. Now that I was intent on going slower and really capturing what I saw and experienced, I made sure to have it on me all the time. 

It’s not a Ricoh GR or any of the other viral cameras, but I’m still so in love with it and think it takes stunning shots and makes such a huge difference. 

I made a playlist before I left, with the theme of depression walking alone at night in a city where the closest person who might care about me is thousands of miles away. I put it on while waiting for the light to turn green at the first crosswalk, and of course it starts off with j-hope’s “Safety Zone.”  

I didn’t cry in public (and we all know I’m the last person who would ever care if I did), but I almost wanted to, you know? For the catharsis of it all. I just stopped by the riverfront and took it all in with a rattle in my chest as the music drowned everything out. Waiting for that sense of healing, and welcoming it when it settled over me. 

It’s only my first night, and it’s a feeling I would chase through the rest of my days here. 

For the last few years, whenever I thought about returning to Osaka, I would think to myself that I could spend my entire stay just discovering everything Dotonbori had to offer. It was this hyperbolic notion, because surely it would be a waste of having flown all this way and I’d grow bored of it. 

But it was proving too cold to go on day trips or Make the Most of It. The point of this trip was to relax and float along, so I gave myself permission to do just that. My hotel offered access to all of these areas and neighborhoods that I never even knew were so close until I was in them. Shinsaibashi and Namba were a given, but Amerikamura was right there, and so was Minamihorie—an instant favorite of mine that won me over not with its endless row of vintage stores, but with its unique architecture, quaint parks, and arts and culture spots.

Just the surrounding streets were full of scenery and moments that I desperately wanted to remember as I saw them, like this little okonomiyaki place that I’ve always found so fascinating to look at. 

I spent my last two days perfectly happy walking my little walks, exploring on foot and thoroughly inspecting the shelves in every konbini. Like I had all the time in the world, like every day could look like this, like I could get used to it. Getting to know it like it was mine. 

There’s something about depression walking on the Dotonbori bridge that everyone knows. My initial impression of Ebisu Bridge—impossible to cross on a Halloween marked by tragedy in another city—had left me with dread, but I’ve come to find a strange comfort in routinely finding myself, well, by myself in a sea of people and movement and chaos and noise. Couples holding hands, friends spending time, families making memories, and me. 

Dwarfed by the billboards and the bright lights, which I’ve only recently learned have been there since 1935. Looking up to admire them and bask in their presence instead of keeping my head down staring at my feet. 

And then there’s depression walking on the other side of the street, on the Dotonbori bridge that no one takes except to get someplace, where it’s just me and the quiet and the river in the faintly glittering dark.

Nobody stops on Shinebisu Bridge. In the morning it’s a silent witness to how the day unfolds; the shops and restaurants won’t open until later. At night it becomes a safe passage as tourists wind down or stumble around in search of one last thing to do, because this is Dotonbori and there’s always something to do. 

I’m the only one who ever seems to slow down, who pretends to check for messages that are never there just so I could pause and look out into the water that no longer ripples because it’s late and the boats have stopped cruising. 

The first time I crossed it, I thought: How come no one ever talks about this? Because no one ever comes here, and there’s nothing to see but a large body of water. But that’s exactly what I love about it. It becomes something I consider a secret, something only for my own. And as always, I feel like I never stay and look long enough.

Osaka makes me feel like I’m part of something.

Encountering people who make me believe in kindness, in wonder, in the importance of wanting and happiness. Tourist traps that remind me not to take myself too seriously. Equal parts kitsch and genuine beauty that will always make it worth it to stop and point and shoot. Streets paved evenly enough to support me on my feet. Rivers deep enough to drown out my grief. 

Osaka makes me feel like myself. 

I took this with my phone on my last full day, but I think it might be my favorite from this trip. Another thing I learned recently is that the giant crab on the sign of the Kani Doraku flagship branch has been around since at least the ‘50s. 

I went back so I could take this before I grabbed dinner, because I was curious about what it would look like. 

I don’t think I’ve ever had this certainty where I knew I wouldn’t be back someplace for the foreseeable future. But that’s exactly what I was thinking about as I walked to the middle of the Dotonbori Bridge on that final night. I had seen everything there was to see, for now at least. It was time to say goodbye for a while, and I’ve never been good at goodbyes. 

I started to walk away, but the light at the crosswalk was red and I could still feel the everlasting glow of it right behind me. So I stopped, and I turned back for one last look. For real this time. 

But as always, of course, I was left feeling like I didn’t stay and look long enough.