Day 5 - our last full day in Osaka, shopping and having ramen at midnight

It was Sunday, 18 Jun and Father's Day! On the home-front, the children were well taken care of at a staycation planned by their Godpa, so it was nice that they spent it with him on this timely weekend.


The husband and I woke up with no agenda, except of course to eat, so we washed up and headed to fill our tummies. We headed towards Uniqlo - when in Japan, one must! - so we headed to the major mall a short stroll away from our apartment.


By this day, we finally were more familiar with the route from the train station to our apartment. To say that it's complicated is not true, but to say it's a breeze isn't either. The underground tunnels all look the same and as we didn't know Japanese or all directions, it did get slightly confusing. It was a lot easier on ground as we could identify big buildings and major landmarks. I guess it took us 4 days to be more aware of the directions.


Ferris wheel was one of a major landmark that we used to orientate ourselves

We headed to the basement of the major Osaka Mall (right above the underground Osaka Train Station) where as expected, there were major food stalls and options. We settled on this particular one called Top Chefs as it looked popular.

In the queue

They served fusion type of noodles in big, white shallow bowls that made the food look extra pretty. We had one serve of noodles each, plus a salad that I liked but the husband didn't (there was runny egg within - what not to love!). I had a standard tempura udon noodle and the husband opted for their signature dish, a mentaiko based one that was swimming in rich broth.

Our counter seats with lunch served

The pretty and tasty salad

Post lunch, we strolled through the mall browsing then attacked Uniqlo. It was sale period so we topped up on basics at a steal! The husband and I split up for a bit after and in that time, I went to get a strawberry shortcake. All the cakes and pastries on display always looked so good, I could not leave Japan without having one.
 



Yay

It was about 5pm at this time, and we'd given up the idea of an evening run. So why not have ramen and beer then?
 

Why not, indeed.

We had extra char siu and gyoza with the meal, finished off with dessert (my cake). BURP.

Back to our apartment with the tiny door... for a nap.

It was such a lazy time where we rested the next two hours. Without hunger to motivate us, we just lazed in the apartment. The husband took a short nap while I packed - we were due to leave the next day and I needed to sort out our shopping into our one luggage.


It was about 8ish when we were ready to head out and as it was our last night in Osaka, we made the decision to go to where it would be bustly with activity - back at Dotonburi. This time, we took a train there.


There were so many restaurants that we were truly spoilt for choice. Besides not knowing what we wanted to eat, the bigger challenge was if the food would be good. Every place pretty much looked authentic that it was really hard sometimes. I remember walking up and down a stretch and tossing options before we finally picked one that said "niao" on the outside. That literally means 'bird' but we figured it'd be fowl.. and we were spot on. In fact, everything on the menu was chicken and every possible part of the chicken!
 

You'd be surprised how much one can order just based on a
purely chicken menu!

Happy faces, post dinner

We strolled along Dotonburi, and just soaked in the sights, sounds and atmosphere. It was still so crowded despite it being late and a Sunday night. Truly, everyone must/loves to eat and I guess everyone also thought like us, to want to be in the thick of things.

Giant gyozas

Stopped for a snack - beers and ebi tempura

Giant dragon (popular ramen, no we did not try)

At this point, we'd walked by this particular ramen shop several times and it always, always had a queue. Since we were not hungry, and we had time, we decided to join the queue for this gotta-be-amazing ramen.

Cannot believe we're queueing for ramen! This was the start of
our queue which was outside the building

Forty minutes in, we had made it into the building and this was the queue behind us

Finally, after an hour, we made it! By this time, it was already just past midnight and I was close to being sleepy. Everything was actually running pretty quickly by clockwork, so it's really just the large number of people that caused the wait. We were led to a long bar table that was segmented into little booths. It felt strange! You filled in the details of your noodles into the card and passed it to the faceless staff moving around behind the wall. It was queer because they served everything through the hole, so we could see bodies but not any faces.

Waiting for our noodles

Verdict? The noodles tasted pretty amazing. Considering we were so tired, it was so late, we were not super hungry (not been for days), the taste of the noodles was still pretty awesome! The husband and I shared a bowl though, so perhaps that made it even better. I reckon it would have been overkill to have one bowl each. While I cannot believe we queued, I think it was not a bad wait after all to have such yummy noodles. Belatedly, we learnt that the place was called Ichiran, and they had branches in other states within Japan; so that means it increases the chances of us having this ramen again if we ever visit Japan, not necessarily Osaka only! Hooray.


Post ramen, we strolled about - being the tourist centre, some shops were still open and yes, there were also people still shopping. The husband and I called it quits as we had nothing left to buy and so we took a cab back.


That night, we attempted to pack more before crashing. We'd worked out a time to retrace our route back to Kansai Airport, to make our way out of Osaka.


Good night, Osaka. Ichiran FTW!


Read about days 1, 2, 3 and 4 here.