Saturday was our final day in Japan, but our flight out wasn’t until the evening, so we had most of the day to bonk around Osaka a little more. We started by heading to another pancake spot. While we located the previous one by virtue of “it was downstairs from our hotel,” this one we had seen praised online ahead of time.
We passed this interesting creature on the way there.
And then we made it to “Elk”, which, as is obvious from the name, serves pancakes. Delicious, delicious pancakes.
Pancake accomplished, we did want to look into a few souvenirs for the trip, since we are notoriously bad at that. And we were right near Shinsaibashi, the biggest shopping area in Osaka. So we wandered over to a nearby building that was likely to have some of the Ghibli and or Moomin related merchandise (don’t judge) we were likely to be interested in.
It was a few minutes before the building opened, and there was a HUGE line waiting to get in. Saturday being “new product drop” day. Japan’s consumer culture is sometimes weird in ways that are interestingly different to the way that North America’s consumer culture is weird.
Anyway, not needing a new Poke-thing, we were able to basically go around the line and go up to the floor with the stationary, board games, and cabbage peelers. Stationary for Leigh, board games, because why not, and cabbage peelers because a friend of ours had asked us to get one for them. Got one for ourselves, too.
After a bit more of a wander about this temple to capitalism, we were inspired to go look for an specialist board game store, to see if we could find anything unique to Japan… and we ended up right back where we had been on Thursday evening on our way to our food tour.
Specifically, we ended up at a store called Yellow Submarine, Googling “board games only available in Japan.” And we ended up with a really pretty one called “Eternal Sevens.” The picture here is one I took a few weeks later at a board game night in Vancouver, where I was pretentiously showing off having a game that wasn’t available in North America yet.
It was getting close to lunchtime, so we first wandered over to the covered food street where we had started our FIRST Japan trip, three years prior. While it seemed fitting to return there at the end of this visit, nothing really caught our eye, so we decided to go get some less stressful conveyor belt sushi than our Sapporo meal.
Less stressful for us, anyway – it was probably equally stressful for the fish.
After lunch we spent a little more time looking for Moonminalia, and then decided to make one more trip to an arcade to play a few more rhythm games. Japanese arcades really are super fun and great value, particularly if you remember your earplugs. (I am NOT referring to the claw machines here, but you do you if that’s your thing.)
Before we knew it, it was time to make one more trip past Glico man, and bridges full of people pretending to BE Glico man, and retrieve our bags from the hotel.
From there, it was only one art deco inspired train ride back to the airport for the trip home.
Of course, we did have to do the traditional airport ritual of spending down the balances on our IC cards on snacks at the combini. I did not, however, opt for a biblically accurate Osaka Expo mascot, despite the plethora of choices on display.
And from there – home! I really love Japan – some day I’d love to go there not in August. But if August is my only option, I’ll still take it.