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Osaka (Page 25)

Eat food from Osaka on your lunch break in Tokyo at Isetan’s special Naniwa food fair

Japan is a nation of unabashed foodies, and each major metropolitan area has its own culinary standards. Tokyo is the place for top-tier avant-garde dining. Kyoto cuisine is known for its understated yet complex interplay of flavors. And Osaka? Well, Osaka is the spot for good old-fashioned grub, and where the people aren’t afraid of something a little heavy on the palate or in the stomach. What less would you expect from a town where fans of the local baseball team jump off of bridges into the river after a big win?

Being situated in downtown Tokyo’s Shinjuku neighborhood, our offices are too far for us to sneak out to Osaka on our lunch break. They are, however, within striking distance of a branch of prestigious department store Isetan, which just so happens to be in the middle of holding a special Osaka food fair.

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Osaka Obachan are here to rock your world, make sure you don’t go hungry

Typified by the saccharine songs of AKB48, the Japanese idol world is largely the province of the young. One rarely expects to see a singer over the age of 25 among the mini-skirt-clad ranks of the ultra-kawaii groups.

Usually.

A group from Osaka—called Obachaaan—are ready to change that up.

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Hooters comes to Osaka! Our in-depth cross cultural analysis

This summer, Hooters is opening a pair of beer gardens in Osaka and Tokyo for a limited time. Although there have been a pair of Hooters restaurants in Tokyo, this is the first time the American franchise has made it down to Osaka.

Always eager to bring you the best news from Japan sprinkled with a variety of cultural insights, we headed down to the grand opening to give you two reviews: one from a guy who used to live up the street from a Hooters in his home country of Canada, and the other from a Osaka native who had never even heard of the place. Together we can see if Hooters Osaka maintains the lively atmosphere of the chain in America but also caters to Japanese sensibilities. You know… because we’re really into marketing science and stuff.

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Posters of Underwear-Clad Man Disappearing from Osaka

There’s just something about Japan and this strange obsession with stealing underwear. In the Naniwa District of Osaka, 20 types of posters are currently on display to promote a town renewal project for the area’s old shopping district, Shin Sekai Ichiba, or the “New Global Market.” Of those advertisements, one particular version has become the object of serial theft over the past 13 days. The poster contains the image of a man in a Japanese loincloth called a fundoshi. The Osaka Police Force’s Naniwa Station has released a damage report. Read More

Who Needs a Cherry on Top? Osaka Café Crowns its Parfaits with Cake

Tokyo’s restaurants may have more Michelin stars, but for many Japanese foodies, the real culinary action is in Osaka. Particularly if your tastes run more towards good honest grub than haute cuisine, Japan’s second largest city is the place to be.

The people of Osaka enjoy a good meal so much that they coined the phrase kuidaore, to eat until you collapse. But even with this image firmly entrenched in our minds, the city has found a new way to surprise us with its gastronomic decadence.

On a recent day out in Osaka, our reporter stopped by a café and ordered a truly hard-core parfait. It wasn’t that the parfait was so big, and no, it didn’t contain any shocking ingredients. What blew our minds about this parfait was its topping.

It was a slice of cake, and it was so big it wasn’t even trying to fit into the glass.

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“Customer growth is stronger now compared to immediately after the quake,” said G, an organized crime group affiliate familiar with the illegal drug market. The Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995 proved there was a good post-disaster market for illegal drugs among temporary housing residents and others suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). As a result, when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, dealers from major urban centers swiftly loaded up and headed north to disaster-afflicted areas in the Tohoku region in search of quick profits.

According to G, “First on the scene were the stimulant drug pushers who began selling out of their cars on the back streets and in pachinko (pinball) parlor parking lots. Customers were wide-ranging, from high school students and young bar hostesses to grandfathers and grandmothers. Inferior grades of speed which couldn’t be sold in Tokyo and Osaka were offloaded there.”
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Japanese Woman Dies after Heavy-Set Police Officer Sits on Her

In Sakai City, Osaka last November a woman in her 40s died from a case of hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE), a condition that occurs when oxygen is cut off from the brain.

A possible cause of the HIE is suspected to have been the 100kg (220lbs) police officer who had sat on the woman’s back like one would on a pony.

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These Guys Keep All Their Cuteness Even When Cooked! We Try Deep-Fried Axolotl in Osaka

It came to the attention of our staff recently that there’s a restaurant down in Osaka that serves deep-fried axolotl. You know, the Mexican salamanders. The ones that had an enormous boom in popularity in the 1980s. the ones that are proudly kept in cool tanks as adorable pets. The ones that inspired the creation of the Pokémon, Wooper. Those axolotl!

Our sweet, little reporter Usagi didn’t realize that by bringing up the topic of eating axolotl she’s be asked to write an article about it, but that’s what happens when one introduces strange and interesting foods to our editors! It was time for our reporter to chow down on some deep-fried adorable salamanders. Read More

Having ruled out Colonel Mustard with a candlestick in the dining room (thanks Hasbro), Osaka prefectural police at the city’s Taisho station are trying to figure out who made off with national flags from two of the district’s elementary schools on April 16.
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This Robot’s Got Soul! We Discover an Animatronic Ray Charles Sittin’ on a Bench in Osaka

Japan has made quite a name for itself in the world of high-powered technology. It’s no lie that seeing the words “Made in Japan” stamped on the back side of any camera or other electronic device gives one the immediate impression of superior quality. Why, Japan is so advanced that even their street performers are technological geniuses! No really, imagine our surprise when we heard that a creative craftsman in Osaka developed his own life-size singing robot, the likes of which are rarely found outside of the enclosed passages of Disney’s “Small World” attraction. Brimming with intrigue, we immediately took to the streets of Osaka to find out more about this singing robot and the man who created it. Read More

In Search of Osaka’s 11 Cent Vending Machine

Legend has it that in the urban center of Osaka there sits a vending machine so cheap that it boggles the mind. Here a tasty beverage can be purchased for a measly 10 yen (US$0.11).

RocketNews24 had sent a reporter, Usagi Yumeno, to Fukushima Ward in the port town in search of this machine.

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Back in the day, delivering the morning newspaper was an honor bestowed on one lucky neighborhood child who could earn some cash and tips of peanut-butter M&M’s in exchange for providing their neighborhood with news from the world.  Now, the local paperboy is a rare, if not extinct, breed.

In Sakai City, Osaka, one father has been arrested on suspicion of violating the Child Welfare Act after allegedly deciding to instill the values of hard work and responsibility which come with a paper route in his own children.

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From November last year until this January, Nozato Elementary School in Osaka City had been the scene of a string of robberies. In 16 different incidents, up to 235,000 yen (US$2,500) was stolen from the wallets of teachers who worked there.

However, thanks to the efforts of one vigilant teacher, the culprit was finally identified and dealt with on 28 February.

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Previously we reported on the global reaction regarding a beautiful piece of architecture in Osaka, the shopping center Namba Parks (pictured above), which looks especially stunning when viewed from a high place.

However, another amazing photo surfaced on 9GAG a while back. Taken from a high angle it revealed an even more shockingly designed building that’s arguably even more impressive than Namba Parks.

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Register Rage: Osaka City Official Arrested for Allegedly Punching Out Register’s LCD Display

On 6 February, Osaka Prefectural Police announced that a 45-year-old man working for the Osaka City Construction Bureau had been arrested on suspicion of destruction of property.

In what could best be described as “register rage” the man was upset with the speed of the cashier and took his aggression out on the store’s age verification check with his fist.

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Anyone who’s ever tried to shed a few pounds knows how hard it can be to stay motivated. Sometimes you just can’t reach down and find the fortitude deep inside to put down the doughnut and pick up your dumbbells without a more immediate payoff.

A recently opened rental property in Osaka has come up with a novel idea to help dieters keep their motivation up: a discount on rent for weight lost.

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For those of you who enjoy playing the lottery, here’s a story that should help put your odds of winning in perspective.

Last December, painter Shigeru Aikoh was arrested from robbing a Kushikatsu (deep fried snacks) restaurant in Settsu, Osaka.  However, prefectural police later discovered he was a part of a four man group responsible for a year-long crime spree around the prefecture totaling 4.5 million yen (US$572,000).

However, much to Aikoh’s dismay a fair chunk of that loot had turned out to be totally worthless.

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Some photos recently posted on reddit of a shopping mall in central Osaka surprised those not living Japan some of whom wanted to live in the mall. This, in turn, surprised Japanese people who didn’t know it was that amazing to others.

The mall, aptly named Namba Parks certainly looks beautiful from this angle but there is actually function as well as form at work here.

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Danish variety store, Tiger, had recently opened up its first store in Osaka, Japan, in the shopping area known as American Village. Little did they know about the propensities of the Japanese shopper.

Or maybe they just didn’t give them enough credit. In this case, it was the intensity of Japanese shoppers that resulted in the store having to unexpectedly shut down. Despite having the experience of managing stores in 16 different countries, Tiger underestimated the insatiable drive of Japanese people to shop, even if it meant queueing in line for hours and hours.

All this trouble for the European answer to the 100 yen shop... Read More

Osaka Temple Offers Visitors Visions of Hell, Tasty Sweets

At the moment there’s a picture book that’s very popular in Japan called “A Picture Book of Hell.” It’s intended to teach kids good manners, and it’s become something of a hot topic, if you’ll excuse the pun. Popular illustrator Akiko Higashimura even mentioned it in her manga series “Mama wa Tenparisto”, loosely translated as “Momma With a Short Fuse”. As you can imagine, there’s been a lot of interest among mothers and educational professionals.

I suppose terrorizing your kids with two-dimensional representations of hell is OK, but did you know there’s a place you can take them to experience it in real life? Read More

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