Fridays are language days, so we started the day off with a bit of Norskskolen, or Norwegian School, for those of you who don’t speak Norwegian. Norskskolen is a free program run by the Norwegian government, so that Norwegian citizens who don’t attend school in Norway can still learn the language. It’s brilliant, and both my girls and their cousin in England attend the online course. The girls have a teacher for each grade, who sits in Norway and makes them little videos to reply to their homework. It starts in September and ends in April/May, and each week they have videos to watch, quizzes to take, and either writing or speaking exercises to submit.
After their learning on the computer is complete for the week (deadline for their Norwegian homework is every Sunday, so it has to get done), they get some time on Duolingo. What a brilliant app! It seems like a game, rewards you for consistent work and actual progress, and they can learn so many different things! Today was language day of course, so French and Norwegian were the courses they were focusing on in their apps today. Otherwise, Maylin loves the Math, Music and Chess courses!
I think we had itchy feet after yesterday’s full on day, so after school for the girls and work for Joe, we headed out on new adventures. Joe had set his sights on Kuromon Market, a bustling hub of street food vendors, souvenirs and restaurants, side by side.
We got tempted by this tiny little “food court”, essentially three delicious food vendors facing the street, maybe 10-15 tables in the middle, and another 3-4 vendors along the side of the venue. Find a table, order your food from a vendor or five, and sit in the middle enjoying all of it together in one place.
The girls wanted gyozas, so Joe lined up and saw that the portions were either 5 or 10 pieces. If they don’t like it, 10 could be too much, so we added 6 pieces of fried chicken and ordered the smaller portion of dumplings. (The girls loved both actually, and when I asked Maylin later in the evening what is the best thing she has eaten in Japan so far, this fried chicken was her answer. So either she truly meant it, or her memory is worse than her mom’s.)
It was my job to buy lunch for Joe and myself. I checked the sushi stand, their prices started at ¥5000, so I decided not to. The Wagyu beef stand was even more. The other raw fish stand had a scallop bowl at ¥4000, so that’s what I ended up getting. Scallops are, after all, my favourite raw seafood.
The food was delicious, and totally not worth the price. At least not the scallop bowl. It was a tourist trap, and we fell right in. But, it was a fun atmosphere, walking through the Kuromon market, looking at all the stalls, hearing all the languages spoken by the tourists walking through.
We wandered quite a bit today, the entire lenght of Kuromon market and half way back, took a left, found another covered street, and suddenly! THAT smell just hit us right in the nose! (Sniff sniff) WAFFLES! A waffle “egg” stand, where a gentleman was flicking freshly baked waffle eggs out of his waffle egg pan onto the plexiglass that separated us from the deliciousness… I couldn’t help myself. There’s waffle smell in Namba station as well, which we’ve walked by so many times, and just never had the chance to stop, so NOW was my time. 15 waffle eggs for ¥500? SOLD! These were, to no one’s suprise, extremely delicous.
Next, we ventured out to find a mall. Joe and I are still on the hunt for some new clothes, but never seem to find the right stores for us. On the way through the mazes of markets and underground sections of malls we hadn’t even aimed for, we came across the below building. What fascinated me the most this time around, is that at first, glancing up, it seems like just another busy, downtown busy modern office building, but looking closer at the bottom, it’s traditional style, but only no the outside. Even the top of the building has that pointed roof detail!
One of the malls we ended up half way exploring had a kids department on the 6th floor. We’d gone through 3rd, 4th and 5th trying to find a more casual men’s department, to no avail. It was all high end brand names, with more well dressed store employees than there were customers in the entire mall! In all, downtown Namba/Kuromon/Dotonbori felt much calmer and quieter today than last week when we were here with Tiffany. My only theory is that Autumnal Equinox Day on Tuesday made last weekend the longest long weekend ever, and that people were out en masse due to that?
We gave up on shopping in the end. Aimed for the subway, ended up on a train instead, as all stations are called the same, are part of the same underground network, and work differently. Not only were we on a train, but we also took an express version of our train, so it skipped our end station. Luckily, it only went one station further, so it was easy to hop off, cross the platform and hop on the one going back. (Thankful for this train not being an express going back…)
On our way back from this new-to-us train station, we walked through a district full of Korean and Vietnamese shops, restaurants and stores. A corner bakery lured us in, and we picked up a couple of their “about to expire” reduced sandwiches. A fruit sandwich, an egg salad sandwich and a bag of mini croissants later, and we were en route home once again.
Joe and Maylin went back out to the grocery store to grab some ready made foods for dinner. No pictures this time, but a small okonomiyaki with noodles was ¥498, the same for the 8 delicious tuna rolls, the pack of seaweed salad (I was craving fibre) maybe half that price. And if you eat later? Everything gets discounted after 7pm, because the stores make such large quantities of ready to eat food.
Téa and I went for a walk to chat after dinner, and walked through the grocery store (dark, humid and hot outside, bright and cool in the air conditioning inside – easy destination for a walk and a browse). Every ready meal was discounted by minimum 20%, all the baked goods were marked down, and if we didn’t just come from dinner, I probably would have shopped! Went for a browse in the pharmacy section, as Japan has a category of foods and supplements they call FOSHU – Food for Specified Health Uses. These are foods containing ingredients “officially approved to claim its physiological effects on the human body”. It’s quite interesting! https://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/topics/foodsafety/fhc/02.html
After our late night browse instead of shop, we went home, had our fruit sando dessert, watched some Japanese game shows (tonight it was eating competitions, teams going through many kilos of noodles), and headed to bed. Tomorrow’s the weekend, and we’re trying not to do school/work on weekends, so we’ll see how it goes!
