My trip began with the three-hour bullet train (新幹線 shinkansen) ride out to Osaka. I hadn’t purchased a ticket in advance, so that meant standing in a non-reserved seating car for most of the way there, the sole consolation being the great view of Mt. Fuji. Lesson learned: buy reserved tickets for holiday weekends.

大阪城

Our first stop was the Osaka castle (大阪城 ōsaka jyō). Located at the center of the city, the castle is surrounded by a moat and a pretty big park. Many of the paths are lined with cherry trees, making it a popular cherry blossom viewing venue in the spring.

The castle seen today is actually not the original but the end product of the history of its complicated history. Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豊臣秀吉) built the castle began its construction in 1583 but were stripped of its outer baileys at the end of the Toyotomi era in 1615. Since then many have tried to rebuild parts of it while it endured lightning strikes, Meiji restoration civil unrest, and World War II bombings.

Here Bailey reconnected with her inner Bailey:

道頓堀 and 文楽

We continued on to Dōtonbori (道頓堀), the flashy and touristy part of the town. Particularly famous is the crab restaurant with the huge mechanized crab sign. The main strip runs parallel to a boardwalk which offered a comfortable contrast to all the shops.

We also had たいやき (taiyaki), the fish-shaped cake with red bean paste inside. No fish were harmed in the making of our taiyaki.

Afterwards we met up with Bailey’s classmates and professor from her nō (能) and kyōgen (狂言) course to see a bunraku (文楽) performance. Buraku is a Japanese puppet theater tradition which originally began as street performances in Osaka and registered as a UNESCO Intangible Heritage of Humanity. Bunraku today is only performed regularly in Osaka and, compared to other traditional theaters such as nō or kabuki, has an uncertain future for its continued performance and teaching.

A bunraku performance consists of key scenes from a few different famous stories (or, stories that were famous 300 years ago), like a review show. The puppeteers are accompanied by the storytellers who have a distinct style of sing-speaking, much like in opera. The language they use is an older style of Japanese (think Shakespearean English, say), so the theater has supertitles. These storytellers are in turn accompanied by a handful of musicians.

Each puppet is controlled by often four different people, with only the lead puppeteer’s (who controls the head and right hand) face visible. You can obviously see all the puppeteers, but if you ignore all the people dressed in black and just look at one of the dolls, they really do move like people and express human emotions. It’s riveting. Unfortunately we weren’t able to take any pictures.

We love Ikeda and Momofuku Ando

The next morning we went up to Ikeda, a northern suburb in Osaka prefecture, in search of Momofuku.

Earlier this year Elvis Costello released the album Momofuku with The Imposters. The album features Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis. But this is not the Momofuku we were looking for.

We went to Ikeda for the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum. Andō Momofuku (安藤 百福) was of course the inventor of instant ramen and cup ramen and founder of Nissin foods.

The museum is a beautifully designed building full of cute ramen-related displays and, on that day, dozens of elementary school groups. The display first takes you through the history of instant ramen—its discovery, marketing, evolution, and ultimate world (and space) domination. Have you ever wondered why the ramen in cup ramen cups are floating towards the top? Or why he decided to seal the packages with an aluminum foil top? Well, if you went to the museum, you would know these answers.

There was also a huge “Instant Ramen Tunnel”: a genealogical timeline of all the Nissin product lines, beginning with the original 1958 package.

The museum was also filled with the adorable instant ramen chicken character. We found a huge one on the second floor.

The highlight, however, might have been Mister Ando himself. Just look at him:

Frankly, that looks way more like an album cover than the actual Elvis Costello Momofuku album art.¹

勝尾寺

We took a train and then an expensive taxi up to Katsuō-ji (勝尾寺), a beautiful temple up on a mountain. The leaves were turning so it was the perfect time of the year to go.

Walking up the mountain, we started finding a bunch of daruma dolls—little dolls based on Bodhidharma, a prince-turned-monk important in the early history of Zen Buddhism. Legend has it that Daruma went into a dark cave to mediate for nine years and his eyes fell off. Even now in Japan, you buy daruma dolls with blank eyes, filling in one eye when you make a wish and filling in the other once the wish has come true.

It turns out the daruma dolls are a kind of symbol of the temple. Most temples have omikuji (おみくじ) fortunes that you draw and if you like the fortune² you can tie it to a string or tree in the temple. This temple sells omikuji that come in little daruma dolls, so many people will take their daruma and leave it someplace in the temple grounds for good luck.

The temple also had something else bizarre. A little background: there’s a famous pilgrimage route of 88 Buddhist temples on Shikoku island in western Japan. Well, why would you bother taking time to visit all those temples when someone can bring some of the ground from each of those temples into a central location!? This is what they did at Katsuō-ji… neither Bailey nor I are Buddhism experts, but we agreed it’s bizarre, to say the least.

Overall, though, Katsuō-ji and the mountains were beautiful. We had a great weekend.

Related posts:

1. Weekend update: 師大 café, 南方澳, and 淡水
2. ETA-ROC and Another Weekend in Taipei
3. 北京 Part 1: Fulbright love, the Forbidden City, the Temple of Heaven, and Houhai

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