The Kara Trail: Impressions of Osaka

One’s experience of a city is always heavily influenced by the location of one’s accommodation. In our case, we stayed in a residential area called Tengachaya and experienced what felt like a pretty authentic Japanese lifestyle. Our Airbnb was small and long, two storeys with a tiny kitchen, teeny bathroom, toilet (with a heated seat, luxury!) and a lot of beds upstairs. The building wasn’t insulated so we battled the cold with the aid of the reverse cycle aircons.

Because of our JR Rail Passes, we would have had to pay extra to take the train from nearby Tengachaya station so instead we walked the 20 minutes to Shin-imamiya station each day instead. This gave us a really lovely insight into the local area. Tengachaya/Shin-imamiya is a somewhat “shabby” neighbourhood but also very Japanese in a really pleasant way. I walked alone through the streets after dark several times and never felt threatened, in fact one night I rounded a corner and came face to face with a man who actually looked momentarily frightened of me, until I smiled and bowed.

The houses in our little neighbourhood were all small, very skinny with bars across the windows but bikes left unlocked at the front door. Almost two out of every three had little gardens which I found exquisite. Such attention to detail in everything; just a few pot plants on the doorstep, but each perfectly manicured. Even the manhole covers have coloured garden scenes on them. The graffiti is all proper graffiti, no pointless tagging. And they notice detail too; I have little stars on the pockets of my jeans which annoy me by catching on my jumpers (they were 60% off at the DFO) and the shop assistants noticed them, pointing to them and saying “kawaii” which roughly translates to “cute”.

Clothing here is also lovely, admittedly I’ve been in the high end shopping areas but nevertheless there is a real sense of quality in all the things I’ve seen here. The jackets are beautiful but are designed to elegantly swamp the slim Japanese frame; on me they just look like oversized dressing gowns which is heartbreaking but saves me a lot of money. Because they wear everything so large it hasn’t been too hard to find things that fit me which was a surprise (I haven’t tried any shoes). The accessories are also extensive, unique and of fairly high quality at pretty affordable prices. I stumbled across a small shop selling only local handmade jewellery and it was truly exquisite, but even the basic stores (what I imagine to be equivalent to “collete”) have pretty high quality items.

One particular treat was a four hundred year old shop found in a small alley in one of the covered shopping malls of Kyoto, I found out about it on one of the sewing blogs I follow. It’s a shop of handmade pins which have gorgeous little sculptures on the end, such as rose buds, animals, leaves and so on. The shop itself was like stepping into another world, another time. Through the small alley you catch a glimpse of a tiny Japanese garden, all moss and sculpted tree, small bushes and the eponymous Japanese lantern. Such a beautiful deep green with a tiny shop nestled in the corner, staffed by two lovely smiling older men.

We had a plethora of food experiences in Osaka. We’ve tried the local bean curd sweets (the boys aren’t fans, I don’t mind them but also don’t really see the point in them). On our first night we ate at a local restaurant which was one of those BBQ cook-your-own-food-at-the-table places. We had tongue, diaphragm and “calvi”; a mysterious meat…calves? Who knows, but it was wonderful. They serve beer shandys here which I have been quite a fan of ever since my exchange trip to Germany, so I had one with my meal. Travis had plum wine which was a bit meh.

We have also had a few nights cooking at home with local supermarket buys. Prices seem similar to home but with a lot more good quality fresh fish and naturally the supermarket sashimi is excellent. We have been eating steamed buns, dumplings, scrambled eggs, takoyaki and okonomaki. I love the okonomaki which is a fried noodles omelette sort of thing, often served with fish flakes that waft around in the steam from inside the noodles and give the appearance of live food. The takoyaki is another specialty of Osaka but I’m ashamed to say that I like they way they do it at home better - more crunchy, less splodgey. We’ve also tried Suntory which is a Japanese wine company that grows its grapes in France, 8% alcohol and really lovely and light. They sell wine in cups here too and like most places, alcohol can be purchased at the supermarket.

Overall I enjoyed Osaka and marvelled especially at the many small ways that the Japanese pay close attention to detail and the beautification of small things. We saw very few western tourists and encountered a lot of interested, polite and pleasant locals. It was a great base for exploring the towns around the area and fairly easy to navigate. A good introduction to the country before the no doubt more frenetic pace of Tokyo…

Below are some photos I took of our neighbourhood and also a few of the winter illuminations that are still speckled around the place.

Tengachaya Neighbourhood