Joe buys a knife, we have brunch, and I get my hair cut – Day 67 – Nov 8, 2025

Beautifully sunny and around 20 degrees, on a Saturday with no school and no schedule (at least until my hair appointment at 3pm), so we head down to the Tsutenkaku tower area. Joe is shopping for a Japanese chef’s knife, and has researched the topic to bits, so off we go to the Tower Knife at Tsutenkaku!

We took two subways here today, unlike last time when we had to walk and get lost at Tennoji park on our way here. Joe aimed for his knife shop, and the girls and I waited.

Tower Knives Osaka Hamono Kobo is a tiny, dark little shop with walls upon walls upon display cabinets of different knives, in all possible quality and price ranges. There were also lots of friendly, English-speaking staff, and so many travellers I quickly took the girls back outside. We waited patiently (well, they’re really patient when they get to play games on phones) for the looooooongest time, and then decided to go explore for a bit.

Every so often, we could hear screams from our little bench in front of the shop, and sure enough, as we walked closer to the tower, we could hear the screaming echo from inside the steel tube on the outside of the tower. Want to get down quick? Why not slide down! Weeeeeeeeee!

The girls and I found a souvenir store of the sweet baked goods kind, and I bought us three sweet potato treats while we were waiting for Joe. Just as I was paying, Maylin said “Mom, my nose is bleeding”! So I quickly shove a tissue at her face, receive my change from the store attendant, Téa grabs the bag of treats, and we hurry out of the store. Maylin and Téa are both quite used to nose bleeds, and stay as cool as cucumbers during the whole ordeal. Maylin held tissues to her nose for a few minutes, and was soon all better. We needed our sweet treats after that little shock to the system!

Shortly thereafter, Joe calls and says he’s done and on his way over to where we were. At this point, after he spent close to an hour buying his knife, we’re all ready to sit down and have some lunch. Joe has, of course, done his research on this as well, so off we go to Maze Café Shinsekai.

We ordered three of the café’s brunch dishes, clockwise from top left: French toast with fluffy scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, carrot salad, green salad and granola yogurt. Eggs Benedict (one with bacon, one with smoked salmon) with carrot salad, green salad and granola yogurt. Maylin digging into the granola yogurt in the fancy stem glass with the world’s longest handled smallest spoon. Sourdough (although the menu said baguette) toast with barely set scrambled eggs, grilled vegetables, bacon, sausage, carrot salad, green salad and granola yogurt.

After lunch, we decided to head towards Osaka Station to exchange our purchased railway passes for actual specific seats on specific departures of trains (we have an adventure coming up next week). We needed to walk through the tower area towards a different subway to take us in the right direction, and this time we didn’t let the enormous staircase up towards “Spa and Resort Hotel” scare us into taking a different route. We figured we could walk through the hotel, if nothing else.

After a big long climb up to the top, we discovered a walkway straight out towards the other side of the building, with the hotel entrance to the left. There were SO MANY vending machines up here! Machines we didn’t even know existed!!

Clockwise from top left: Dorayaki and ice cream machine, matcha machine, pudding machine and pudding machine, fresh orange juice machine and fresh apple juice machine (!!!), macaron machine and Pokémon card machine.

We finally wrenched ourselves away from the vending machines and headed to Osaka Station. After a bit of searching for the ticket office, and a bit of assistance from an attendant who tried to get us to use the self serve machines instead of waiting for a person at the counter, we ended up needing to get help from a person at the counter. We exchanged our tickets for our first destination, and then decided to throw in a bonus destination a couple of days earlier. More details to come!

After we had sorted out the tickets, Joe and the girls headed for Daiso and I headed for my hair appointment. My hair dresser spoke zero English, but used his translation app thoroughly during our consultation to figure out what I wanted. All good and well, but I missed the banter. I miss conversations, honestly. If you know me in person, you know I’m chatty. I used to work front desk in hotels and make small talk with 200 strangers per day! I miss being able to easily communicate, to ask questions and understand the replies.

So I’m sitting in the chair, and he gets his thinning scissors out. He starts thinning my hair. I don’t know if I like that, but he clips and clips and clips. I feel like half my hair is on the floor. Will I have any left? When he’s finally done, he takes me over to the sinks to wash my hair. He uses his translation app to ask if I want the eye massage machine as well, as they like their clients to be as relaxed as possible during the wash and massage portion of the appointment. Sure, I say. He places a tissue over my eyes, and plonks a device over my eyes. Teeny tiny movements “massage” my eyelids! Meanwhile, he’s giving me a strong (!) massage with both thumbs down the centre of my skull and at my temples. Back at his station, he cuts some more layers, adds some treatment oil and blow dries my hair. I think it looks ok, but I can’t wait to see what it’ll look and feel like once I wash it myself.

I get home, and Joe is sitting there grinning at the kitchen table, just waiting for me to get home so he can open his/our new knife.

Originally, Joe thought he wanted a hybrid stainless steel/carbon steel knife, where the core is carbon steel, the sharper of the two. When the store attendant told him a carbon edge needs to be carefully oiled before storing, after every single use, Joe opted for the easier to maintain stainless steel option.

Joe made a delicious salmon dinner, and we sat down to watch the rest of Castle in the Skies. After about 30 minutes of watching, Maylin nudges me and says if I still planned on going to 7Eleven for ice cream, something I had mentioned at dinner that us girls could go do, and then promptly forgotten as both girls went to change into PJs. So of course I went out quickly to grab ice creams!