We go fishing, and see Christmas lights – Day 73 – Nov 14, 2025

Friday is language day! Ever since we figured out that tvolearn has French starting from grade 4, Maylin is now doing French Grade 4, and Téa is doing grade 7. Because they’ve been doing French immersion at home, that’s my best guess at the equivalent level of non-immersion French…

Every weekday when the demolition crew is hacking away outside, we do our schoolwork, maybe have lunch, and then we leave for the second half of their work day. This morning we can’t even see any walls next door, surely they must be done soon?

We decided to head out for lunch today, and to explore an area we zoom by on train or subway every single day. Tsuruhashi, or Koreatown as it is also known, is the stop before ours every day when we come home, yet we have not explored it to any length. So today, we got off here, and aimed for a particular restaurant, craving some delicious Korean food.

After lunch, we walked around for a little while, and discovered an entire network of very narrow market alleys, each themed for what they sold. One was full of restaurants, with staff standing outside, begging us to come eat at their establishments. Another was women’s clothing, another fresh seafood, then one was ready to eat lunch boxes. So much to see in all directions!

After we had browsed our way through Koreatown, we headed to the city centre. We still have not bought that suitcase we need, and we had a goal in mind. We aimed for Bic Camera, and on the way there, we found a taiyaki stand! Téa had a red bean waffle fish, Maylin had a sweet potato one, and I chose the green tea in a cookie shell. Because we were almost done our treats by the time Téa remembered that we should have taken pictures, I hereby present to you a photo of the menu…

Then we were off to Bic Camera again. at least today, after maybe 30 minutes of comparing and evaluating suitcases, and Joe asking his best friend ChatGPT to compare this vs that vs the other umpteen times, we’ve made our decision. Because our day wasn’t over yet, we decided not to buy it just yet, and headed back out empty handed.

Our next stop was Round 1, and entertainment building over many floors. They have bowling, karaoke, go kart, darts, ping pong, billiards, claw machines and video games. So many video games! The girls played a little bit of Pokémon and a little bit of Mario Kart, and Joe spent way too much time and money on a claw machine for a Figlife I jokingly said I wanted… Figlife = Figure + life, an anime character that has a function as well, this one had an impressive mechanical right arm that was magnetic, and I thought it would be funny. Alas, we left empty-handed.

When we emerged from Round 1, Joe and I looked at each other over the girls’ heads and said “we’re close to The Place… should we?”. And so we did!

The Place, aka Jumbo-Tsuribune Tsurikichi Namba, a restaurant that lets you fish your own dinner! We had heard, read and watched lots of reviews on this type of restaurant, and we’d said we wanted to try it ourselves, I think mostly because Joe really misses his fishing hobby.

Joe and the girls eagerly jumped to the task of catching our dinner. Joe and Maylin caught a seabream, and thus dinner was secured. We also ordered an array of other dishes, as the swimming fish were rather pricey.

We ordered some smiley faced potatoes for the girls, wasabi octopus (raw), skate wings with mayo dip, deep fried octopus, wok fried seafood noodles and rice. Our seabream came out as half sashimi and half fried, and it was so good! All the food was delicious, but I think the most fun one was the skate wings, which looked like dry little wood chips, until I (because I happened to sit right next to the table top hibachi grill) finished cooking them over the flames.

We hummed and hawed, should we go buy the suitcase and head home, or should we stay out? Joe had a destination in mind, and because we are running out of Osaka time FAST, we stayed out! We took the subway up to Osaka Castle. We’ve been here before, but last time I was too busy taking pictures of my children as statues, to even notice that we had a great view to the Osaka Castle right behind them! Or maybe there were more leaves then? I do not know. But I spy a castle in the background now!

We walked up towards the castle, and suddenly there was a sign for the Illuminage to the left, in the castle gardens. We paid our (very high) fees and headed in. It was a definite chill in the air, so Téa and Joe got some hot drinks from the vending machine. Remember these are plastic bottles or cans of hot beverages, and I tell you, that can of cocoa that Téa chose was HOT! Joe picked a hot lemon and honey beverage, and was happy with that. Maylin was running circles around the rest of us (I feel like maybe she hasn’t had the space to run lately, there was no stopping her tonight), so she had no need for a hot beverage.

Now we are lucky enough to have something called Bright Lights in Windsor, so this type of attraction is something we both love and are used to. The individual attractions were very pretty, and we had to wait our turn to get pictures without disturbing other visitors.

All in all, the Illuminage by Osaka Castle was pretty, but unfinished. Lots of exhibits had half or partial lights broken or off. Some parts were not plugged in, but should have been. The pictures that led Joe to want to bring his girls here promised much much more than what we got. We had a nice night walking around in the castle park, but I don’t know if it was worth the $60CA to see this. For those of you reading my blog from the Windsor area, please enjoy and appreciate Bright Lights for what it is!

It seems so far to get home from Osaka Castle, but when we really look at the map, it’s just on a different subway line than the ones we usually take. Maybe because the first time we visited, we took a very long, very slow bus that was more direct? It didn’t take us all that long, but it was a late night nonetheless. Tomorrow we have a different adventure planned, so off to bed we go!