Today was our tour of the Ikeda area, an outer suburb of Osaka, with an ex-boss of Michiko – Mr and Mrs Nishimura. They met us at the station and showed us their home town. First stop was Ando’s “Ramon Cup Noodle” Museum. Ando was the inventor of instant noodles. The museum was dedicated to telling the story of the invention of 2 minute noodles. I’ll never look at a cup of instant noodles the same again. It was actually really interesting.
We then strolled through the local shopping area before stopping in at a Rakugo (Osaka comedy) museum. Next was the Satsukiyama Zoo, a small zoo specialising in Australian animals. Ikeda is a sister city with Launceston, Tasmania!
The highlight of the day was lunch at an Okonomiyaki Tepinyaki restaurant. This was a feast of salad, fried tofu, pork, seafood, soup, rice, noodles and just when we thought we couldn’t eat anything more they brought out the main event – a pancake with seafood, pork, special sauce, barbequed at our table barbeque. Delicious. But so much food. Many, many thanks to Mr Nishimura for a great day.
After we left Mr Nishimura we headed back to Osaka Umeda and checked out a huge electrical store and an ever bigger department store. I’m currently sitting in a restaurant/bar, sipping sangria on the 13th floor of the store. Very nice.