Earth day at a time when I’m examining my relationship with technology. Perfect moment for my phone to be broken.
Knowing I’m in Japan, I have no doubt whatsoever that someone will be able to fix it quickly. It’s a few years old so it’s about finding someone who has the stock. And stumping up.
My broken phone was the macguffin for covering a huge amount of ground in Osaka central on foot. Women dressed as comic characters beckon passers by into manga shops, gacha machines and vending machines line the streets, intimidating food booths and tiny bars full of smokers. Unique smells. Bizarre noises. Everyone is smiling, and most people are skinny, and this is the kitchen of Japan. How do they stay so slim? Nervous energy?
Eventually I am directed to a place on the fifth floor of a mall, where I am told by a happy young woman in a mask that they do have my screen and it’ll take just two hours to fix. The price I am quoted makes my eyes water but I know I’ll need the phone once I’m walking, just in case I get attacked by bears or somesuch. You can distract bears by getting them hooked on Candy Crush. I put the repair on my credit card and silently understood that I’ll be eating a lot more cheaply than I would like to for the rest of the trip. That’s for tomorrow Al. A third of the cost of a new phone. These things are expensive.
I get the damn thing back just in time for my official tourist booking. It’s a food tour. Not super cheap, but worth every penny. I worked a long time for a well respected London tour company that turned weird on me in the end. It’s a habit they have. I know the work of guiding though from when it was good, and I tend to like the people who are drawn to it. Food, walking and facts? What’s not to like, right?
We get Tommy. He’s a fine example of the Aussie abroad. He fell in love with Japan and I totally see why. He wears his joy openly. The Japanese kids working the route all have a genuine affection for him, which is testament to his energetic persona. He makes his tour feel like an extended conversation with a friend.
Our group is a little reserved at first. A surprisingly buttoned up New York couple, a chef from Bristol, Sydney Aussies, a shy beanpole from somewhere so remote in The Netherlands that he doesn’t even bother naming it when asked twice. Is there a place called FukBum out there or something? I’ll never know.
It’s not an easy conversation group, but Tommy is disarming and knows his shape well enough not to be thrown. I’m trying my best to be the joker without taking all the air. It settles surprisingly quickly. It’s a 3 hour tour.
We are in the old Red Light District, South West of Tennoji. There are loads of little eateries around here, and the tour operator is doing brisk business, somehow managing to stitch in three groups of about ten tourists without pissing the locals off too much. It is a real gastronomic delight. We start with a little place serving exquisite barbeque skewers, unusual roots and radishes, and a mystery dish, something that I swore I would never enjoy, but somehow found to be okay. Then we go for Kitsune Udon in a little intimidating place where you stand to eat. I would never have gone into a place like this without Tommy’s lead. Everything in kanji. Nowhere to sit. Too intimidating. Having had a really tasty hot bowl there I am now happy to do it again on my own. Upskilling in Japanese food.
Third stop, prize winning octopus balls, baby. Served with a tomato sour, which is basically rakzi – (shochu … moonshine) – with tomato juice and soda. The balls are a wheaty pancake with a bit of octopus in the middle, and I’m the one who bought a food tour in Japan so I can shut up about the fact that I tried to promise myself never to eat octopus again and put three balls into my face. They were yummy. And not that much smarter than a pig, and I eat bacon without thinking.
Feeling a little guilty and with the effect of the shochu kicking in, I bought an ‘adult” gacha for the group. Someone had to. Y500 into a slot, turn the wheel and a kinder egg ball falls out without the chocolate. You pop open the ball to reveal your prize. Our prize? A BRAND NEW SEXY THONG. They had taken pains to put a label on it saying Y800 so we could feel we had WON. I hadn’t won. I had been hoping for a little mini plastic Arniecock like the ones in this claw machine. I’m not sure what to do with my Y800 thong in an egg.
There are vending machines for everything. It’s how I get my morning coffee. It’s how I get my nightcap tea. Both cold. They sell beer too. They have ID readers but they are disabled. The law says to sell alcohol in a vending machine you must have an ID reader on the machine. In a fine example of wilful bending of rules, they have attached them but they are disabled. Too much faff. They would lose sales. The machines pepper the streets in rural areas as well as central city. Cash is still huge here in Japan thank God. Living in London it is easy to think that the world has forgotten cash entirely. Not yet, it seems.
We stop outside “EAT THE FISH YOU CATCH”. If you catch it, you have to eat it. If you’re on your own and you get a whopper, you have to be hungry. None of us risked it.
Final few stops were a blur. Shochu is strong stuff and I only had one. And a beer. We constructed our own noodle sauce thing and had little tasting trays of all sorts of curious things. A second mystery dish was something I didn’t know anyone ever ate, and wish nobody ever ate. It’s a mystery and I’m not telling. Partly because I feel guilty. The Columbian dude guessed almost right, which implies they eat similar stuff out there. Monsters.
Final stop and deep fried avocado was the revelation of the evening. Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it. It isn’t an official tour dish, but Tommy likes to go above and beyond. I tipped him ostentatiously in the hopes it caused an avalanche of tips. A good tour guide is priceless, and he made it so relaxed, casual and unshowy. The opposite of the Halloween Tour I’ve guided the last three years, and all the better for it. A perfect evening with strangers, just as I found I was missing conversation in English.
AlBarclay 