Monday is here, and the calendars have been updated! We’re attempting to have another “normal” week here in Osaka, all while panicking about running out of time. Today was Social Studies, and while we were working on the learning side of things, Joe headed to the post office, in the hopes of being able to ship some boxes back to Canada. 20 minutes after he leaves, he messages me that “It’s a holiday, they’re closed”… Yesterday was Labour Thanksgiving Day, so I guess it’s only fair that they have a day off! Once he returns and we finish Social Studies, we headed straight downtown.
We are aiming for the to us unknown parts of Umeda today. I have a café planned for our afternoon snack, and a curry restaurant for later dinner. Our walk takes us in new directions, and we walk into a very fancy mall. The first thing we see is this magical northern lights Christmas display:
The café for this afternoon is called The Lab, and is a part of a larger initiative throughout the mall, with an Active Lab exhibition space and an Event Lab. The girls share an order of pancakes, and Joe and I share a créme brulée inside a ring of baumkuchen(!). Maylin has a strawberry milk, while Téa prefers hot chocolate.
After snack time, we walk around the area. We’ve been near here many times, but in this particular space only once or twice. Today, it’s been transformed into a skating rink! We hang out and watch for a while, even though all Maylin wants to do is go out on the ice. One thing I noticed is the incredible trust and security the Japanese have with their belongings. There are purses, bags and shoes in a lightly fenced area to the side of the rink, something you would never see in other countries. There’s just that low a crime level here!
We head inside the Umeda Links building and spend way too much at the claw machine floor. It’s not necessarily playing and trying on our own, but also watching others spend thousands of yen on attempting to get this prize or that for “only” 100 yen per try… When the claws grip the prize, lifts it off the floor of the machine, and then it just slips out of the claws before you win! But, like the American business man with time on his hands told us in Hiroshima, each machine has a “personality” and once you understand them all, you’ll be able to win any game.
We walk around, contemplating some last minute purchases, but it’s all window shopping, as usual. And a photo op here and there:
Today’s destination was chosen because of a specific Japanese curry restaurant, fittingly enough ALSO called a lab, the Hokusetsu Spice Laboratory, and so we set off in that direction. This place is a lot harder to find than you’d think! We walk, walk some more, take stairs down, take stairs further down, ask for directions, cross a street, and then FINALLY find the restaurant in a busy market store corner.
We’re seated at the only table for four, and it’s bar height, so we’re all on tall stools. We’re given an appetizer first, chickpeas in a curry sauce, and then we place our order. We get a few “safe-ish” options for the girls, an order of currywurst with fries, fried chicken (always a hit, and always available), baguette slices, turmeric rice and potato salad with egg. Joe and I thoroughly enjoyed the Taiwanese curried glass noodles with beef and the spicy crispy chicken skin. We also ate all four of the appetizers, as they were on the spicier side, according to the girls. Once we had finished most everything on the table, Joe and I ordered the Numbing Delicious Spicy Mapo Tofu to round the evening off. It was fabulous, and maybe not as numbing as promised, thank goodness!
After dinner, we had to walk back through the maze to find our way to the subway. On our way we found an actual enormous chocolate display!
On our way home from the subway, we stopped at Family Mart for some desserts. Téa had her vanilla Coolish, Maylin had a strawberry ice cream sundae, and I tried a new to me matcha waffle sandwich type thingamabob.
With only a few days left, we’re rethinking our airport transport booked for 5.30am Friday morning. We end up booking Thursday night at a hotel near the airport, and changing our airport transfer to Thursday afternoon. Because the airport transfer is only just an airport transfer, the driver will not be able to drop us off at the hotel instead, even though the distance is shorter… So we’re hoping to store bags at the airport, subway back to the hotel on the mainland (the airport is on a constructed island in the bay), and then hang out in this brand new area for the evening. YAY for proper beds! We’re getting giddy already…