Weather to be 77 and cloudy. Wake up 7:00. Breakfast 8:00. Shirley wants to look for more vegetables knives. We head for the kitchen arcade in Osaka Namba known as Doguyasuji Arcade. This arcade sells a variety of appliances, tableware and cooking accessories. We also want to check out optical shops for eyeglasses so we will be shopping today. We pack one luggage to ship to Tokyo after breakfast. It will get to our hotel in Tokyo between 2 to 4 tomorrow. That lightens our baggage for the train travel tomorrow. We shop at Daiso. I want to buy some new chair leg socks but can only find two with the design I like. 
I plan to visit other Daiso to buy the other six. This Daiso only has a self checkout. We had to ask for assistance to expedite our checkout because the instructions were not in English. 
Next up was GU pronounced Jiyu, the Japanese word for freedom (from high cost clothing). It’s the sister store of Uniqlo. 
The load that we lightened by sending one luggage ahead has made way for the heavy bag of 16 items that I bought at GU. Mike gets to carry the bag. 🙂. Ownday eyeglass store is across the way. Three of us select two frames apiece to get the second pair half off. 
When I give them my prescription they tell me that they don’t have my rx or Norman’s rx in stock, it will take three days to order the lenses. Only Shirley gets her two pairs. We enjoy Happy Meals on behalf of DeAnne while waiting for the glasses to be done. The toy giveaway has changed to a new series of toys. 
We got three out of the four items. 
Ordering is done by touchscreen and a grandmotherly staff member helps us get to the English menu. Mike and I ordered a new menu item that was only 50 yen. The English translation was corn potato. It turned out to be sweet corn flavoring to put on your french fries. The fries are then coined "shaka shaka fries" since you shake this topping on the fries and then close your bag and shake. I didn't care for the corn flavor as it was too sweet. Apparently there are other flavors such as sweet plum, and red pepper. 
After we ate the meal Norm pulled out an apple, banana and 2 mandarin oranges that he had in the To Go bag from breakfast. He wanted to have everyone help eat the fruits so he could lighten his backpack. Just as Shirley had peeled her mandarin orange the older staff member came over to admonish us that outside food was not allowed. We returned to Ownsday for Shirley's glasses. They made some minor adjustments and we were on our way to the kitchen arcade. 
I buy a nonstick rectangular pan for cooking the layered Japanese omelette known as tamagoyaki. The breakfasts at the our hotel have featured tamagoyaki for breakfast. I love the flavor of the these little rectangular omelette. Shirley didn’t find another vegetable knife. I see some potential teacups for Kevin but decide to wait until we get to Tokyo to buy one. If you have ever visited Dotonbori or similar shopping streets with stalls selling snacks you have no doubt seen those rows and rows of cast iron pans with half spherical molds. 
There will be someone flipping dough with a skewer to create round balls. You can stand there and watch transfixed as they work fast and furiously; flipping the dough as if there is no tomorrow. It's mesmerizing. Which leads me to wonder if there is such a thing as a competition to see who is the fastest Takoyaki maker in the world. The end result is a small sphere of piping hot dough with octopus, green onion and ginger. Typically they serve them up in little wooden boats, brushed with takoyaki sauce, drizzled with Japanese kewpie mayo, and topped with bonito flakes and seaweed. They come with skewers or chopsticks to pick them up. Norman orders eight for us to try. It's a bit windy and some of the bonito flakes fly away so we try to scoot to a spot shielded from the wind. Patience is needed with takoyaki. Eat it too soon and your tongue will burn.
The outside is crunchy but the inside is gooey and oozing. It is extremely popular in Japan. I try one and recommend you try it to experience this unique Japanese snack. Uncle Rikuro’s cheesecake store is next. It too is extremely popular. 
There is a cheesecake “police officer” to guide you at the end of the line. There are 2 lines. The shorter one is for the 2 hour old cheesecake, the longer one is for freshly cooked. At $6.00 US it’s a bargain. (Much cheaper than the Uncle Tetsu that we have tried in Vancouver and San Francisco.) There is a charge for a knife and fork so Mike gets one set of disposable utensils. We walk back to our hotel to drop off our bags. I take our my GU purchase and count my items. I find that I have bought 16 items and Mike's Citibank charge shows that it cost $100 US. 
We enjoy the cheesecake before heading to the train station to go to Umeda. 
The entrance to get to the train station is a 3 minute walk from our hotel. As we approach the Semba 10 building to go into the station we notice there is a Daiso sign so we decide to finish our shopping for the chair socks since the stores inside the Semba 10 building are open at this time in the middle of the afternoon. We go through the front entrance of the building instead of the side entrance. As we walked towards Daiso I glanced at a store display of a souvenir shop to our left. Most of the grocery stores and souvenir stores that I have checked for the soy sauce are not set up in a way to have a store front display. This one had an outside display, so I glanced at the soy sauces that were on display and saw a bottle of Cameron’s soy sauce!! It was very easy to spot. We walked into the store, excited about the discovery. There were four on the shelf. I bought three bottles. 
Norm grabbed the last one and asked the sales clerk if they had anymore. She ran out the door and took the one on display. After conversion each bottle cost $12.00. Buying it in the states would cost $44.00 from Amazon. The folks at the brewery didn't have this store in Osaka listed when they gave the information to the lady at the Meidi store. I am very glad that the big bottle has the distinctive gold double cranes. If it had the Kanji characters only like the label on the small bottles, I would have never noticed it. I really feel like it was a miracle that here was a store that was one and a half blocks away, and it was the first one that you encounter when you walk inside building 10, and they had it on an outside display. At Daiso I bought the remaining chair leg covers, although they were a different color from the first two. We took the purchases back to the hotel since three bottles of 18 oz shoyu weighs you down. Fortunately we are so close to our hotel. Then we head back to board the train to Umeda. Umeda Skytower is a short walk from the Umeda station. The path to the tower is very scenic. A large bear sprouts water which flows down over bricks steps. 
A beautiful ceramic fountain stands in the center of another shallow pool. 
When you cross the street, the path to the tower snakes through a construction site, before you come upon the hanging fish and the building. 
You take an elevator to the 39th floor. 
It’s a glass elevator so you can see the ground below as the elevator travels. 
After buying tickets for the observatory you ride an escalator to get there. 
We enjoy soft serve cones while enjoying the view of the cityscape. 
A visit to the rooftop via a stairway rewards you with a path bathed in blue UV light to make the ground sparkle and whites on your attire and teeth glow. 
We come upon a marriage proposal and watch as the guy gets down on his knees, opens a ring box and looks up at his girlfriend. When she accepts the ring the small audience applauds. 
The view from the roof is extraordinary because there are windows to look out of. 
Back at the Umeda station we head to the 10th floor of the complex with a food floor in search of Gyukatsu Motomura, the beef cutlet chain that we dined at in Fukuoka earlier. Norm and Shirley sat down to wait and Mike and I walked around to check out a pizza place nearby in case the wait was too long. The pizzas were more than the katsu so we went back to wait. 
The line moved swiftly and we were inside within 20 minutes. Having given them our order while in line, our meals arrived right after we were served our tea and water. 
It was 10:00 when we returned to the hotel. It had been a long but fruitful day of shopping. We had found the shoyu, but could have easily missed it. So many things had to align for me to see it - the time of day, the entrance that we chose, the need to shop at another Daiso, the display on the outside of the store, if anyone of those factors didn't come into play, it would have been a missed opportunity.
This featured blog entry was written by Helen K. from the blog Japan Trip 2024.
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