Disappointment at YMCA, but tasty treats at Abeno Q’s Mall – Day 20 – Sep 22, 2025

We wake up to a Monday, and this is the start of our first full week in Osaka. We need to get into a good weekday groove, so after breakfast us girls send Joe packing to the peace and quiet of upstairs, and we take over the kitchen table with workbooks and computers. Today is Social Studies, grade 5 for Téa and grade 1 for Maylin. Our “class” goes… ok. Only a couple of minor meltdowns, but overall we get the work done.

At 11am we consider ourselves done for the day, and I make a miso tofu noodle soup for lunch. After lunch our goal is this: learn how to take a bus in Japan, and find our local YMCA. We conquer both! Our closest bus stop is a quick 10 minute walk away, and 6 stops later we arrive at the YMCA.

We first ask at the reception – are there any programs suitable for English speaking kids? “Sorry, try the language programs on level 5 and the wellness programs on level 6.” On the 5th floor we spoke to a lady who had spent a year as an exchange student in Wallaceburg, ON (just over an hour away from where we lived in Tecumseh), in fact the same year that I was in Dryden, ON! Alas, she only had programs for residents, not for visitors like us. At least she had excellent English, and promised to get in touch if she could find any leads in any direction.

Onwards to the wellness department on floor 6. Here, we had a fun conversation with two older Japanese ladies and a lot of Google Translate. We did understand that “sorry, there’s a waitlist for everything, except for fusball”, which we could potentially sign the girls up for at different times on a Tuesday and a Friday. Maylin would be earlier, Téa’s would be later, and both coaches and students would all potentially speak zero English. So the hunt for extracurricular programming continues. We’ve only been here since Thursday, today is Monday, and so we have only just began our search, really. We’ll find something! (I hope!!)

By now we have thoroughly burned up our lunch and are starving. Or could it be the fact that everywhere we look there are exciting things to taste and evaluate? Maybe a bit of both. Our closest mega mall is just around the corner (you know, 10 minute walk or so) from the YMCA, so we head there. It’s amazing! It has all the stores we could dream of, and we start our hunt for a snack. On the 3rd floor there’s a food court, and we head for the takoyaki stand.

Takoyaki is an Osaka specialty, a savoury batter poured into a giant “waffle” iron, but each side is a half globe, and the iron fits maybe 60 takoyaki at a time. After pouring the batter in, a small piece of octopus is placed in the middle, and when the outside has a cooked crust, the takoyaki is turned over so it becomes a perfect little sphere, and cooked all the way through. I ordered two dishes, one with spring onions and lemon, the other with – would you have guessed? Egg salad! All the takoyaki options come with mayonnaise and BBQ sauce on top, and a healthy dose of bonito flakes (shavings of dried bonito fish). Téa loves watching the bonito flakes as they move in wind or with the heat of the food beneath.

This mall is enormous, and after our afternoon snack, we head for a couple of different stores to browse. It is, as in all other malls, cuteness overload! We suddenly realize it’s 3.30pm, and the girls haven’t had the ice cream we promised them yet. The girls and I head for the cutest ice cream shop we found on our way into the mall, and Joe discovers that the basement floor of this mall is essentially half grocery store, which is at least double the size of the one close to our house! So the girls and I buy and devour our treats (ok ok, I did save Joe some of my Japanese tea latte), and there’s still no Joe in sight. Turns out this new store was so big and so impressive that even Joe, yes MY JOE, got stuck marvelling at the selections. In the end, we now have vegetables for tonight’s dinner and bread for tomorrow’s breakfast, and set our sights for home.

There are subways, trains and buses in all directions in this city/region, so we kind of always end up taking a different route home. As much as Google wants us to take the subway an extra 5 stops to wait for a bus to take us 10 minutes closer to home from the other direction, we have learned where the most direct subway station is, and we would rather walk the 19 minutes than wait for 15 and take a bus that would take us close to, but not all the way, home.

Once home, we cook dinner, take showers, play video games, blog, watch tv… you know, the usual, relaxing evening at home type stuff. It happens here too! We can’t possibly be on the go go go for 10 months straight, as that would be expensive, and exhausting.