We came to Japan!   

We landed in Osaka half an hour earlier than scheduled (planes can do that? Go Scoot). We booked our airport transfer railway tickets for a later timing, but it was no biggie to reschedule our railway tickets for an earlier timing on our phones. I didn’t know about this tidbit when we came to Osaka, but apparently, in the last thirty years, Kansai Airport has not misplaced a single luggage. And that’s not all that is amazing here. After we passed customs and reached the Baggage Collection area, we saw that the checked-in luggage had been taken off the conveyor belt and placed in neat rows by the side for the owners to wheel away (!) I was pretty gobsmacked. Not only do passengers not have to wait for their luggage, the luggage have also all been taken off the belt for us? In no time at all, we were out of the airport and on our way. 

We were staying in Shinsekai for a night, and the first order of the day was to find food. A queue was already forming by 5pm in front of Kushikatsu Daruma, and so we quickly joined it. This small shop is the originator of Kushikatsu, the regional specialty of deep fried skewers. It’s a small restaurant, with about 10 countertop seats available. The customers were fully locals, but there was an English menu, and armed with the phrase “o-susume onegaishimasu” (recommendations please), the restaurant staff and I made the dining situation work. I might have used it a bit too liberally though: at one point, he asked me if I wanted a beer, and while in front of the fridge overlooking the bottles of Asahi beer, I still replied with “o-susume onegaishimasu”. I think he laughed at me. 

We started off with doteyaki, a traditional Osakan specialty of beef tendon stew with chewy rice cake cubes.

It was an excellent restaurant: he pointed to each skewer as he served them, and explained which was which. The skewers were wonderfully battered and fried with a very clean taste, there was no excessive oily texture or taste. From meat to vegetables to juicy mushrooms, there were no faults. After a fellow customer bit into his skewer and pulled away with a thick stretch of cheese between his skewer and his mouth, we quickly ordered what he had. The deep fried Camembert and mozzarella skewers were outstanding.   

There were plenty of street food in Shinsekai, and we walked around the area and soaked up its iconic retro vibe. I bought the local favourite Okonomiyaki, a filling savory pancake dish cooked on a griddle. This Okonomiyaki from a busy corner store turned out to be a really really good version out of out of all those we’ve had.

it didn’t look the best, though. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be carried sideways? Also, Strong Zero isn't half of what reddit raved about. It’s a one-dimensional cheap lemonade fortified with booze. There are much better drinks out there.

We left Osaka for a bit to tour Kyoto and the surrounding Alpine towns (more on that in a bit!), but we returned to Osaka for the last leg of our holiday. We were planning to explore the cultural side of Osaka, but life in a busy city has a way of filling up our days. There are markets to explore, restaurants to eat and shopping to be done. 

Everyone visiting Japan should try Cremia Ice Cream at least once (can be found in many different restaurants.) The cone is a thin rich crisp made from langue de chat, and it tastes like an ice cream version of Shiroi Koibito.

Strawberries are still in season, and we finally tried some of the fancier white Japanese strawberries. We ate strawberries for breakfast almost every day .

While not strictly a tourist attraction, I spent a lot of time salivating over the kitchenware at Sennichimae Doguyasuji Shopping Street. Who doesn’t need more cookware in their lives? We bought chopsticks, alongside a bamboo matcha scoop and glazed matcha bowls. I picked up a pair of kitchen shears from Tojiro, and then spent another hour sighing over their knives. I also tried to find a Kamado-san, or Japanese clay pots, which I’ve heard are quite reasonably priced in Japan and outrageously expensive elsewhere. In the end though, I passed on it because my luggage were already full with sake bottles. Maybe next trip. 

Our days in Osaka passed pleasantly. There’s no shortages of things in Osaka to sing praises of (for example wet serviette that came with every meal, even from 7-11), but the most memorable aspect was the bar scene. The bespoke bars blew me away with their cocktails.

Bespoke bars have no menu. You instead tell the bartender what you like and he’ll make a drink that fits. The four of us told him what we were each looking for, and we watched him build four drinks concurrently to serve us at the same time. Near the end, he returned with several chunks of ice and proceeded to hand carve each ice into different shapes to fit each drinking vessel. 

He tasted each drink as he made it, which was a step that I’d not seen before. My first drink (I asked for something fruity and floral) was good. My second (to make a cocktail with Kinamori Gin, a Japanese gin that I had been trying to find a bottle of to no avail so far) was on point: the gin shone in a sweet cocktail with chartreuse that highlighted the gin’s woody notes.   

Because there was no menu, we didn’t know how much the drinks cost. But as we were sipping on our first, then second, drinks, I found that I didn’t much care about the cost, I just want to see what else he’s got.

A request for a “cocktail that tastes like tea” gave him pause.  He took the bottle of chartreuse that he used for my Kinamori cocktail, sniffed at it, frowned, sat it back down and reached for another chartreuse. (We learnt later that the second bottle, a limited edition bottle, had a different flavour profile). There was Ki No Bi gin, chartreuse, coconut water and green tea liqueur. The end result was a deliciously clear green-coloured cocktail, and tea-forward as promised.

I enjoy baking and cooking, but even as finicky as baking can be, at least all the ingredients are pretty much interchangeable from brand to brand. Can you imagine trying to bake if one AP flour tastes dramatically different from another brand of AP flour? Crafting cocktails off-the-cuff just like this is simply on another tier of skill. As we each finished our second drinks and as the small room gradually filled up with customers who started smoking, we settled our bill: the drinks cost about 1700 yen on average, and  there’s no cover charge. Incredible. 

Another bespoke bar is Bar Nayuta. I’m spoiled by this no-menu customs, because my pet peeve is trying to read a menu in a dark environment. Non-smokers would be happy to know that Bar Nayuta is strictly non-smoking, which is pretty rare amongst the bars here (We visited Bar Shiki and Bible Club a couple of days ago, and our experiences at both of the bars were spoilt by a single smoking customer. Cigarettes are period-accurate for The Bible Club’s atmosphere yes, but all that second-hand smoke isn’t enjoyable.) 

We put in our usual requests: a tea-forward cocktail, a floral sakura one and a woodsy cocktail. They were all good. The magic came at our fourth request, when we asked for a cocktail “that tastes like popcorn”. (The context was that the Bible Club’s menu had a popcorn cocktail made with popcorn-flavoured vodka which my wife liked. We wanted to see what Bar Nayuta could do with this curveball order.) The barhelp commented that it was a hard order with a rueful smile, and after clarifying that we didn’t mean something with a yuzu corn profile (I don’t know what that is, but now I’m interested), passed the order to a first bartender. We could see him mouth POP-CORN? from across the bar. The order was then handed over to the head bartender. A few minutes later, we thought could smell caramel popcorn from the countertop, though from what possible ingredients, I could not tell for my life. He definitely wasn’t melting sugar for one. To the caramel-like concoction in the cocktail shaker, he added shochu, egg yolk and cream. As a finishing touch, he sprinkled sugar and used the blow torch for what looked like ages to get a crème-brûlée-like topping over the drink. It’s not a large bar, and the seats were facing the bartenders. All conversation at the bar stopped as everybody turned to watch him handle the order.

We loved the bar culture so much, we went to 1-2 different bars every night, usually with dinner before and supper afterwards. I thought that the restaurants in Dotonbori and Shinsekai (the main tourist districts) would open til late and would be perfect for bar crawls, but as it turned out, most shops are shuttered by 9. (What’s up with this? Osaka is a metropolis and Dotonbori in particular is meant to be The Place for Nightlife). but luckily we found a few places that are opened til late for supper.

We had a good supper in Shinsekai Kushikasu Ittoku Hozenji, a kushikage in Dotonbori open til midnight. The skewers are freshly fried, and a perfect follow up to cocktails.

Mambou (Mambo on Google Map) makes good okonomiyaki, they’re run by a cute elderly couple and their son, and also, they are open until 1am.

Ten Ti Jin has a few branches around Osaka, They’re open until 3am. The service can be a little gruff, but the charcoal-grilled pork bowl (butadon) is a work of art.

Aside from my gripe about how early restaurants close, there are many good restaurants all over Osaka, and available at every price point. Rather than trying to tick particular restaurants off a checklist, we’ve learnt instead to choose our restaurants by their locations and their opening hours. There were also lunchtime specials from many restaurants.  

We had the lunch set at Tempura Daikichi Namba Komejirushi near our hotel, which goes for 900 yen per pax. You get a full meal of rice, a set of tempura, and clam soup. We’re particularly fond of Set D (The Lady Set), which comes with tempura fish roe, and a skewer of fried cheese and cherry tomato.  

Gokai Tachizushi Nambanankaidori, for example, is a sushi place with pretty good service. They also seem quite flexible as to what constitutes lunchtime. We visited close to 5pm but still somehow qualified for their lunch offer. Our bowl of rice came with a mountain of uni and roe (it’s as generously filled as it was pictured), with a side of those firefly squid from Toyama. 

And look at the size of each unagi sushi!

Niigata Katsudon Tarekatsu Shinsaibashiten was another good find with a lunch promotion. The pork fillet is pounded into thinly before being breaded and deep fried, and the rest of the tempura were all well fried. I think I ate more fried food on this trip than the entirety of last year. 

Chibo Okonomiyaki is a curious restaurant. It’s run like an Emergency Department and I was getting flashbacks. The cooks are constantly cooking several okonomiyaki in front of them. When their shift is up, they just hand-over to the next person coming on for the next shift to continue the cook. There’s a hierarchy in the staffing, and there was clear deference being shown from some cooks to other cooks. The service was great, and there’s a good deal of showmanship, but there are better okonomiyaki around.

One surprise for Osaka: it’s called the food capital of Japan, but I think a more accurate term would be the street food capital of Japan. There's loads of restaurants serving okonomiyaki and takoyaki clustered in Dotonbori, but so many of the popular restaurants all also serve these street-style food. I have a few quibbles with the Osaka branding. Still, Osaka's a nice place and I'll happily spend a few days there anytime. Just make sure you have your dinners early. 

Note the deserted streets and shuttered storefront in Shinsekai. The sun's not even set yet!

The first time I’ve heard of Inter Rice Asia, it was from a colleague. Her family owns a Japanese restaurant and gets their bottles from this sake supplier, who regularly goes to their restaurant to hold private tastings for their new products. (Lucky her!) 

When your family is in the restaurant business, you learn to take booze seriously and treat each bottle with care. Proper alcohol storage with climate control is essential to keep them in an optimal condition. I’m a bit more casual, and may have given her a shock when I briefly mentioned that I’m storing my wines in my wife’s old dormitory mini-fridge instead of getting a wine cellar. Fridges apparently run too cold, and the condensation that results when taking the wine bottles out of the fridge can damage the labels. (Who knew? Definitely not the guy who’s calling them booze. Though in hindsight, if you look at the picture, you can see the one of the labels have indeed soaked through from the condensation.) 

I’ll pass on ordering a wine cellar for the time being; the bottles that I’ve been buying are probably not in the same stratosphere as the ones that she’s getting, and my customers (i.e. me) aren’t as persnickety as the people that she’s used to dealing with. While I don’t think my laissez-faire ways will win me an invitation to any of Inter Rice Asia’s private tastings anytime soon, luckily for me, the sake importer held a public tasting event for their 17th anniversary. So off I went. 

It was held on the third floor in a quiet industrial park in Kallang, and off every beaten track. It’s not the easiest location to get to, and you wouldn’t want to be driving to attend an event like this. But on the bright side, there’s a nearby eatery serving terribly good steamboat, and I recommend getting lunch first before you start drinking. 

There were eight tasting booths, and many, many sake bottles for sampling. I’ve been to similar events for wine tastings, and I also attended a couple of whisky exhibitions, so it was a particular pleasant surprise find that the sake dealers and lovers are so chilled out. Wines (and sometimes whiskies) can invoke a certain vibe in the servers and their clientele. IYKYK. At the sake tasting, everybody just seemed so warm. From the servers to my fellow patrons, everybody were friendly and approachable. I made a remark on how little I knew about sake, and just about everybody’s eyes - from the servers to the patrons -  simply lit up. The servers started talking about the sakes they were carrying, explained their favourite bottles and guided me towards what they enjoyed. Even the other patrons spoke about what bottles they enjoyed and guided me to several fascinating choices that I might not otherwise tried. This conversation starter might have gotten me shunned at a wine tasting, but folks here were excited about sake and weren’t afraid to be warm and show it.

While we were taking a break from all the sakes that we had drunk, we struck up a conversation with another patron who turned out to be a sake educator. She pointed us towards her - and soon to be ours - favourite buy: a sweet sake liqueur made with mikan, or Japanese mandarin orange. This was one of her top choice to make sake cocktails with, and she had put down an order for 3 bottles. It was just about the end of the event, but the servers were such sweethearts and continued pouring for us. The sake was sweet and tart, almost as sweet as the severs. Truly, the mikan sake liqueur and its Yuzu cousin were terrific, and we added both to our growing basket of sakes. (If you see the first picture again with the almost-empty bottle, it was because it was so delicious, we near-finished our bottle before I thought I should take a photo of it.)

All too soon, the tasting session was over. As I joined the queue to pay, I made small talk with a well-dressed gentleman who soon introduced himself to be the owner. He peered into my basket of sakes and asked if I had the chance to try their warm sakes. I didn't have time to, but even though the tasting session was over, he invited me to go to the booth after I made our purchases to try those sakes. I was still reeling from all the alcohol that I had drunk, so I passed on the offer. But was a business run with grace.

(As I was writing this post, I realised that I didn’t take any pictures at the actual event. I didn’t want to appear even more of a rube by whipping out my phone to take photos. So instead I’ll put a couple photos taken from my recent Takayama trip that I went on after this sake tasting event.) 

A common refrain that I’ve heard about sake was that they often didn’t taste like much of anything, which was understandable as they're usually lighter compared to wines and spirits. There’s a grain of truth in that (pun intended): restrained, light-tasting and elegant sakes were often a deliberate stylistic choice. Breweries from Niigata in particular are renowned for creating such sakes, with their sake philosophy to avoid overshadowing the food that they are paired with. 

When I was touring Hida-Takayama, a region famous for their high quality beef, I was at a local sake brewery. I asked one of the staff for a recommendation to pair with the beef that I was going to cook that night, and without a moment's hesitation, she directed me to a light-tasting sake, while explaining firmly that "if you want the Japanese way of food pairing, this is the sake for you." If you'd spent any amount of time travelling in Japan and interacting with the customer-facing staff, then you'll understand that her choice of words was as certain and forceful as she can get. Choose another style of sake and you'll be a fool, gaijin. That sake - which wasn't part of their most expensive lineup - wasn't the fruity sort of sake that I liked, and didn't stand out amongst the other sakes while I sampled one ochoko cup after another while earlier at the brewery. But later, as I drank it with our steak, I realised that she was right. Its restrained profile cleared my palate and the next bite of beef tasted as good as the first bite. A full-bodied fruity sake would have been far too heavy and contrasted too much with the rich beef. 

As an aside, I was pretty really proud of this meal that we cooked. It was an impromptu decision to cook after we stopped by a supermarket near our apartment, and saw the quality of the beef! I grabbed several other ingredients - vegetables, shrooms and tofu - and anything else that I thought looked good. It was my first time working with kelp. We were in and out of the store in half an hour, and only took us 42 minutes from entering our apartment to finish plating our dinner. (Yes, I timed. I wanted to cook all that beautiful beef, but I didn't fly to Japan to play house for the whole day. Guy's got tourist attractions to visit.)

Of course, not all sake are created to fit a restrained style. There are many styles of sake out there. We’ve also had some incredibly bold, intensely floral and fruity sakes. These sakes are easy to enjoy, easy to drink, and perfect for beginners like myself. There were even heavy umami-driven aged sakes (koshu) that we tried from Inter Rice Asia's tasting, with funky tasting notes of mushrooms (we tasted chicken essence). These can be a bit of an acquired taste.

But every sake pairs well with a good snowy mountaintop view. (Photo from our trip in Toyama, in Midagahara Hotel up on the Japanese Alps)

I slant towards the bold fruity sorts. How wonderful is it that a drink made from rice can have such fruity and floral notes? I approach sake the way that I learnt to approach wine, and I wanted those intense, complex flavours and a long finish. If you're new to sake too and think that it sounds like something you'll enjoy, then you may want to seek out sakes that are “Nama” (meaning fresh and unpasteurised), “genshu” (undiluted), and “muroka” (non-charcoal filtered). These terms indicate certain brewing choices to deliver the maximum amount of flavours in each sip. These brewing methods usually go together (but not always!), and you may find it enjoyable to get those sakes, chill them, and sip on them cold.

Just don’t tell any alcohol connoisseurs if you’re planning to stick your bottles in your fridge.