Blog - Osaka #4: Tsūtenkaku

Osaka #4: Tsūtenkaku

After checking out the Expo park, it was still around noon and we got a bit hungry. We went down to Tenōji station and had some delicious takoyaki at Yamachan, recommended by friend Tsugumi. They were very cheap too at 10 for ¥350! People kept coming to the shop non-stop, and ate just across the street.

Then it was time to head towards Tsūtenkaku, Osaka's tower that contains the Billiken statue that I had previously seen in Shibuya two years ago. I had also just watched the "Billiken" movie again a few days before, a funny take on Tsūtenkaku about how its owners desperately try to get it some popularity, and how Billiken makes people's wishes come true, so Tsūtenkaku was very fresh in my memory.

Tsūtenkaku is located in an area called Shinsekai, part of the lower class area Nishinari. There are plenty of Billiken replicas (pictured above) to be found in the streets that lead to Tsūtenkaku. It seems that Shinsekai also used to be a place to avoid, but lately it's safer and popular with younger people. Nevertheless, there was a moment when we were there when some old guy ran after us (well, in terms of speed he walked) yelling. We met our friend Mizuki who came to visit with us.

Some interesting facts:
- Tsūtenkaku has the oldest round-shaped elevator in the world.
- At night, Tsūtenkaku is lit up, and its top-most part uses a color code to tell the weather forecast for the next day.

So after visiting Tsūtenkaku and saying hi to the real Billiken, and me buying a big pile of souvenirs (I spent like ¥3000!) for myself of course, we went to eat some kushikatsu (deep-fried sticks of meat, fish, vegetables, etc.) at the Daruma in Janjan-yokochō. There are so many kushikatsu shops in Shinsekai, but only Daruma's shops had long lines of people. It must have taken us close to an hour to get in there, but we only ate a few sticks because we had a dinner waiting for us elsewhere.

Oh, and we also played a game of "smart ball", a now uncommon game that's a mix between pinball and pachinko, where you can accumulate balls by landing those in target pockets. Accumulating enough balls can get you prizes. One game with about 15 balls to start with was ¥100.

Then our friend guided us to a very weird place. There's this restaurant in Nishinari called Taiyoshi Hyakuban (鯛よし 百番) where we had first intended to eat on that night but couldn't get a reservation. We went to see the restaurant anyway as it's quite a unique sight. If you've seen the movie Sakuran, it's exactly that kind of bordell0-type of house. The surrounding area is also a real red-l1ght district like I've never seen in Japan. Quite surreal.

That was it for our Saturday tourism. We headed back to Nanba and had some great okonomiyaki with p&art sasanoooha (Junko cooked for us like a real Osaka girl!) at a famous restaurant called Hatsuse.

Larger sizes and many more photos at Flickr

Next up: Osaka castle, the last installment left to wrap up this Osaka weekend.

Posted on September 19, 2007 at 01:13 | Tweet |

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