The girls caught up on some school work this morning, and we had a small lunch before heading out to explore again in the afternoon. We were headed back downtown towards Namba, and Dotonbori. Even after almost 2.5 months in Osaka, we still keep finding things we haven’t noticed before!
The girls were given the choice of where to go for our afternoon snack, and that’s where we went wrong… Of course they chose the Cinnamoroll café, so in we went, and down we sat. The menu had maybe 5 things to choose from, and because these places are so busy, each person has to order something.
Then Joe and I had to pick something. I picked the super cute Chiffon pudding, which came with a scoop of ice cream for the head, and the eyes and mouth were printed on a piece of plastic!! Joe loves tiramisu, so he ordered that, not realizing that this is a strawberry tiramisu. No matter the flavour, this tiny cup (maybe four tablespoons in total) was half super dry cake, and half whipped strawberry cream. Not our best Japanese treat, that’s for sure.
Character cafés are all the rage in Japan, but not for kids, they are always full of adults! And I guess if everything has to be cute, this is the cutest café ever! Téa and I agreed that the washroom wallpaper was incredibly cute, but I’m afraid it might be a painted stamp pattern, I haven’t found anything like it online…
And of course, all cute things have photo ops! Our girls love striking poses with their new found character friends, even Maylin’s getting better at smiling and not grimacing!!
After our snack, we walked over towards Namba Walk, where there’s always stuff to see. It’s getting closer to Christmas, so of course there’s a little holiday setup with a station to write Santa a sticky note and hang it up on a tree cutout. Super cute, and we practice some more posing.
The next thing we have to do today, is to head over towards the girls’ last bouldering class in Osaka. First though, we need to have dinner, as they can’t go bouldering on a tiny Cinnamoroll ice cream, no matter how cute! When we arrive at Uehommachi, we’re a bit indecisive, so head into one of the surrounding malls and go downstairs to their restaurant floor. We duck our heads into a random restaurant, and order some food. Here’s what we had:
After dinner, we headed over to the bouldering class for the last time. The girls have gotten so much better during these two months of bouldering, Maylin is catching up to some of the girls who have been doing this for a long time. We may have to find her a bouldering class when we return to Canada next summer!
To end bouldering today, we had saved up our gacha gacha coins from the last couple of weeks, so all the kids (4 locals and our two) in class today got to get a gacha from the front desk. Because the girls have been paying full price each week, they said we got a gacha each week. When the girls started bringing home branded towels, t-shirts and small sports bags, I said enough. Buttons and candy are one thing, we can always eat and keep those, but we did not need to risk ending up with yet another three t-shirts, bags or towels EACH. So that was a nice little farewell from our girls to their bouldering classmates.
And thus our farewells begin. “Our last time doing this” and “our last time doing that”. And in the midst of it all, some firsts! Banana cakes are apparently a very famous and popular food souvenir, and yet we hadn’t ever tried them. I had bought a pack at the grocery store, and we opened them as an evening snack tonight.
Tomorrow we’re playing hooky, so off to bed we go!