Japan Trip: Foods Strolling at Dotonbori

My first stop in Osaka is Dotonbori. It is located in Namba District. If you using subway, there are two way to reach Dotonbori, either from Minami Subway or Namba Station. If go to Dotonbori from Minami station, you can take a look at the busy shopping center in Minami first before arrived in Dotonbori. You can find many stores in Minami, from cheap boots sellers to branded clothing lines like Zara and H&M. At the end of Minami, you’ll meet Dotonbori, which was my original destination.

Dotonbori Gate

Dotonbori name is consist of Doton and bori. Doton is the name of a local entrepreneur, Yasui Dōton, who began expanding the tiny Umezu River, which ran east to west, hoping to increase commerce in the region by connecting the two branches of the Yokobori River, which ran north to south, with a canal. In 1615 the new lord of Osaka Castle, Tadaki Matsudaira, named the canal and avenue beside it Dōtonbori ("bori" from "hori", meaning "canal").

Dotonbori Canal

Dotonbori Avenue

Intersection between Minami and Namba

One of the famous landmark in Dotonbori is the “Glico Running Man” huge billboard. At night, this Glico Man will change its color continuously. I was so happy seeing this Glico Man since my original purpose to Dotonbori was to take a picture in front of it *corny, I know, haha*.

Glico Man during the day

Glico Man at night

The main street of Dotonbori filled with many food sellers. The unique thing about the store in Dotonbori is the stores’s front view. Most of the store owner put giant food illustration on front of the store. Therefore, no wonder if you see giant octopus in front of Takoyaki sellers, huge Fugu fish in front of seafood reastaurant, and giant sushi in front of sushi store. Something that you hardly found in other places.

The first food that my travel partner and me tried in Dotobori was Takoyaki. I forget how much price that we paid for the takoyaki, but it's not more than 300 yen. The funny thing about the takoyaki store is the store played a theme song for takoyaki. Though I did not understand about the song but it just funny to find out a takoyaki song is really exist. Besides takoyaki, we also tried gyoza. For me, the Gyoza is quite cheap, it only cost 100 yen and it taste really moist, unlike oily or dry like what Gyoza in Indonesia.

The Takoyaki store

Eating gyoza

Since my stomach still needed to be filled, I went to the Kani Doraku, the famous crab store with giant mechanical crab illustration in its front side. We quite surprised to see the price in the menu, it was pricey. The store itself offered lots of variety of crab menus. We tried the Alaska King Crab. It was great, full of crab meat, though we only afforded to buy the the crab legs. Besides crab, we also ordered potato gratin. from those two foods we were billed around 2,000-ish yen.

in front of Kani Doraku store

My traveling partner with alaska crab leg

some candies as souvenir and refreshment from Kani Doraku

Since we were not full yet, we then went to okonomiyaki store. I thought that I had to cook okonomiyaki on my own, just like what I saw in some okonomiyaki review in websites and youtube. Fortunately they gave us the ready-to-eat one, and put it in a heated table. For me, eating okonomiyaki is taste like eating a bigger version of Takoyaki. Maybe because I requested an octopus okonomiyaki. 

Me and the okonomiyaki

After eating too many seafood, then our head started to get dizzy, maybe the cholesterol just boosted up, just like old peoples, hahaha.

p.s: I don't have the clearer foods images of the crab and okonomiyaki since I didn't have a thought of creating this blog at that time :p 

XOXO,

The Tourist