00:00:14 John Daub: Involved there but I think the Dotonbori river boats are probably worth taking if it's your first time to this area. But it's funny that Kanae has never been here before. She kind of freaked out when she saw the Dotonbori, the Glico Man. This is where we are. This is on the Dotonbori River. Again, Dotonbori, very famous internationally. I'd say in the last 10 years, become a massive international tourist attraction as well. Lots of hotels in this area.

00:01:35 John Daub: Lots of street food as well but the problem is that the prices and well, the experience has shifted from being one that seems very Japanese to one that's more catered to foreign tourists and we're going to figure this out. I think there's still a lot of charm here. That's Ebisubashi where the citizens jump in after the Hanshin Tigers win the Japan Series in baseball. It's famous for that. All right, let's go for a little walkabout and see how touristy this place really is.

00:02:55 John Daub: What's surprising is that in Golden Week, it's not a touristy area. Not as crowded as I thought it was going to be. I did expect there to be more people here and it's also not as bright because I'd say before the 2011 earthquake, this was all filled with neon lights. It was really bright and then after the 2011 earthquake, there was a need for power. They shut off all of these signages. Lights were down. There was Cool Biz where people turned off their air conditioners in the summer in 2011 and we lost the lights. It was a really big thing. Since then, it's been really, I don't know, it's not quite the same without the lights. But there's still a lot of flashing all around here.

00:03:51 John Daub: The Tonbori is very much like Shibuya, I would compare it to in that sense. It's got a very mixed vibe of different kinds of buildings from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and this millennium. It's very vibrant. This is going to be a short livestream. I'm going to stream because I am with my family but I definitely wanted to show you around here while I'm here. Take you to something that's a massive tourist attraction. You can see the amount of wheeled suitcases. It's just the reality that we live in today. It's not something that's good or bad. It's just what it is. Lots of selfie sticks on this street here.

00:04:52 John Daub: So I'm going to bring you in the center and then we're going to zoom past it all. That's the famous crab restaurant. And you can see in Osaka, they do things a little bit different. It's over the top. The signage, everything is just over the top here. And in that sense, this really is worth coming here to Dotonbori. I think you could even go to the other side. There's a sign that says Dotonbori. This sign, a lot of the international tourists miss it because it's away from Ebisubashi but you can see here that says Dotonbori in the very famous neon lights. It's much better after 6pm.

00:05:31 John Daub: You can get to Namba Station if you walk through here. Which is cool. I guess there's the department store where the Namba Station is. Actually, that's really convenient to show you right there. So you come out of there and you walk about 5-10 minutes and you're here. If you get lost, it might be 12 minutes. Which is kind of hard to do but there's so many alleyways and shopping arcades and stuff going on here that it is hard to find Ebisubashi.

00:06:09 John Daub: Alright, let's do a quick walkthrough. Fingers crossed on the signal. If we sort of lose out on it, hey, that's part of the experience too. This Starbucks came into being about 15 years ago and I don't know, it kind of changed the atmosphere from local to international when the Starbucks moved in here. Sega World moved out and Gigo moved in and you can see from red to blue. And instead of video games, they have crane games which are more addictive. And they make more money off of them.

00:06:50 John Daub: But what hasn't changed are these larger than life advertisements. So you have to look up. The first story, ground level, kind of boring. But if you look up, you really do see so much in color. There's the Meiji Karu snacks. Oh, there's a selfie. There's a camera where they're taking pictures of people saying hi. I've sent that to my new supporters on Patreon every now and then. They have some wacky flavors there. Signs for the Expo, of course, being promoted here. When they start putting the Kit Kats on the streets, you know that the international tourists are definitely a target now.

00:07:45 John Daub: But it's funny though, you were seeing a lot of the Expo goodies here sold on the streets. Myaku Myaku brownies for $5. That looks interesting. But this area hasn't changed at all. The signs up there are timeless because that's the way Osaka was. They're masters at promoting and they keep getting wilder and wilder until you got jumbo things just coming out of the store. There's a platter of gyoza dumplings and then here we've got the sushi hand which is also very famous and then the big octopus for the takoyaki and then we're coming up on the kuidaore which means eat until you explode clown.

00:08:24 John Daub: Here we have some street food they're making takoyaki you can see bustling out Osaka specialty right there but that's not the only place there are dozens and dozens of them including kushikatsu you see this oh my goodness this is so Osaka it's these deep-fried skewers kushikatsu (deep-fried skewers) you have beef asparagus shrimp and you can see everything is in English so it's definitely become a lot more internationalized which is not a bad thing. Is this a tourist trap oh hell yeah this absolutely is a tourist trap 1000% but I don't know it's just a street and it's just really famous and I think it's a tourist trap even for Japanese.

00:09:57 John Daub: Look at the kushikatsu popping out of the street there that dude loves deep-fried look at that oh my goodness oh look back here that's a kushikatsu. The mega takoyaki. There's the kuidaore clown. Leo has yes I bought him Myaku Myaku was 4,000 yen or $30 for the Myaku Myaku but how could you not. It's crowded this is the famous kuidaore clown. From my expertise in making Only in Japan kuidaore means eat until you explode or eat until you burst.

00:11:18 John Daub: I'm so excited to see this in person thanks for the stream. Osaka is very different than Tokyo in the sense that it is very Osaka seems like a local place Tokyo seems very international and Osaka's international too but the thing is like this is a funny funny thing here it's a story I always ask the taxi drivers because we came here by taxi I said you know are you from Osaka nine times out of ten in Tokyo, the taxi driver is not from Tokyo. He's from some other area like Akita or Wakayama and they moved to Tokyo. In Osaka, most of the taxi drivers are from Osaka. And I thought that was interesting because Osakans were like, a lot of them were born and raised there.

00:12:20 John Daub: Of course they're coming in from other areas, but it's a lot less international than Tokyo is in that sense. And I think with that also retains a little bit more of its regional charm. Tokyo's got some of that too, but Osaka is just different, you know. And the best way you can tell is if you talk with my friend Kevin Riley, who also does tours here, the king of Osaka, he'll tell me, he says, which one's better, Osaka or Tokyo? And he goes, Osaka. But he's very proud of it because he's not Japanese. But he's Japanese. He's been here for well over half his life, as I have now too. And so he's very much an Osakan. And he's very proud of it as well.

00:13:05 John Daub: Here's the big sushi. Here's the big sushi jutting out of the storefront. You don't get more Osaka than this. But it's the music and the loudness of it all. It's just insane. It's really in your face. That's just like, Dotonbori is like this.

00:13:28 Kanae Daub: Kana, you wanna see Horenji, the moss man?

00:13:36 John Daub: There's an otera with a man made of moss. He's like green.

00:13:44 John Daub: They wanna know something. Why did it, this your first time in Dotonbori?

00:13:51 Passerby: Yeah.

00:13:52 John Daub: Why?

00:13:54 Passerby: I don't have any chance to visit here. I came here, I came to Osaka like three times. Three times. I couldn't.

00:14:06 John Daub: In your life?

00:14:07 Passerby: Yeah, in my life.

00:14:08 John Daub: Wow. So you're a Tokyo-ite. Tokyo person.

00:14:12 Passerby: Yeah.

00:14:13 John Daub: I think it's, we gotta go down this alley. And then you can see the Horenji. Okay. And then I'll stream for like five more minutes. And then we'll end it. We have to check out of the hotel. I got a late checkout. So there you go.

00:14:34 John Daub: Tokyo-ites tend to stay in Tokyo and go to other places. They don't wanna go to Osaka. Well, that's not entirely true. But Osakans don't honestly go to Tokyo so much. That's a gross generalization, but stands true more than you think it might.

00:14:51 John Daub: There's another takoyaki place. It's just filled with street food. Again, they go to one level, and then these crab displays go to 11. But it's gotten really touristy when they're selling knives on the street. Probably made in Seki, which is not so far away. Oh yeah, wagyu skewers. We've gone into tourist trap. When they have skewers of wagyu on the street, that's tourist trap. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm just saying, like, you lose me. When they have strawberry daifuku, that's when it's game over.

00:15:36 John Daub: I featured this three times in shows, including one for a Denmark TV show when I came here, and they're making takoyaki as well. They make a lot of them at this shop here. The steam, the smell from this shop is really good. There's no particular place that's better than another place. It's hard to say. Here, let me just pan by here. But they have a pretty wide menu, so you can get more than just takoyaki. You can get, like, jumbo mayonnaise. What is that? Orochi, which is like a grated daikon radish with ponzu and mayonnaise. So there's lots of different ones. That's on the right side. On the left side, they have cheese sauce, which looks really good. Cheese sauce with some toppings. But you can see they make a ton of them here. And we're just getting into lunchtime, so it's not too crowded yet.

00:16:41 John Daub: This is sort of the end of the street. You can keep on going, and Dotonbori extends, but typically the tourist attraction stuff ends right around here. And I think there was some street food here. They might have to get rid of it or something. There was a street ordinance or something. I can't remember the story. But you see the tear, probably his last breath here. I've had ramen here many, many, many times. It's really good. Get it from the vending machine. And they used to have tatami mats that you could sit upon, but I think for the international tourists, this seems to be a lot better. Stools.

00:17:36 John Daub: Yeah, there's a lot of things. There's a lot of stuff going on here. The last thing I want to show you is, Osaka is considered Japan's kitchen. You will not go hungry here. You will find a lot of food in English, with English menus here to satisfy everyone's needs. The manhole covers are of Osaka Castle and the Cherry Blossoms. Tokyo doesn't have a really interesting manhole cover, but Osaka does. And I think that that's, yeah, photo. You could tell the locality, the regionality of the manhole covers here. Tokyo doesn't have much of anything, but Osaka really does do a good job with it. And at the Expo, we saw the Myaku Myaku. This is around Shin-Osaka Station, so you'll see these Expo manhole covers, too.

00:18:43 John Daub: And there you go. This is the Tonbori. Is it a tourist trap? Yeah, that's 85% foreign tourists and 25% Japanese tourists. And like, zero locals. Oh, look at the dango here. That looks good. So there's a lot of different street foods. The variety of street food is so much different than when I did an episode on this about 10 years ago or longer. The taco, the taco's busting out. The octopus is busting out of the takoyaki. Do you see that?

00:19:23 John Daub: I have to be honest with you. I sort of stopped eating the takoyaki because I saw that Netflix documentary on the octopus teacher something. And that messed up my head. Maybe I'll eat takoyaki again soon. But I think the takos are pretty smart. But I eat wagyu and I give them massages, so I'm sure I'll get over it. But I don't eat takoyaki as much. Octopus, I think maybe we overeat the tako, just like maybe we overeat the beef. I don't know. One thing that I learned, never criticize somebody's food, what they're eating. People can eat whatever they want. They can eat whatever the heck they want to eat. Never tell somebody they're doing it wrong.

00:20:03 John Daub: See, none of the foreign tourists know about this. People are walking right by this alley. People are walking right by. But we know. We know, right? Because we've been here so many times here. This alley is a historic alley. If you go through this alley, it'll show you the history of Dotonbori. It was an entertainment place for kabuki and other sorts of theater. And it's kind of neat to walk through here, but you won't find a lot of tourists who know about this. As you can see, there's not a soul.

00:21:12 John Daub: Now you know. That's like, none of the, oh, there's thousands and thousands of tourists walking right by that alley. They don't put any signs either. Don't pee, don't stand and pee here. Only in Osaka.

00:21:35 John Daub: Alright. To go back to my family. I'm here for that too, but they can share me a little bit. Why is Pumpkin Man ¥1,000 fine? That is not a lot. That's almost, you probably get away with it nine times out of ten, making it only ¥100 fine, really. But people are typically pretty good. In this area, you're going to find, I think it's Horenji. It's a moss man, which is a temple. I wanted to take you there. But the alleys behind Dotonbori, probably more interesting than Dotonbori, that the main street here.

00:22:10 John Daub: Oh, here it is. I still know my way around. Oh, you can smell the incense. This is so different. I want to be respectful, try to hide people's faces if they get so close. I'm just going to show you Moss Man here. Here he is, from head to toe. So this is a hidden temple right off of Dotonbori. And yeah, you know, it's got a pretty amazing vibe. I love this. I don't love Dotonbori, but I really do like Osaka, and I wish I got more time to spend here.

00:23:14 John Daub: But, alright, we're too, I think we're going to get it after this stream. I don't have it on me, the postcards. But I need two more people to join the postcard club, and then I'm going to come back to Osaka, and I'm going to send the postcard, which is the X-Ring. I'm going to send the X-Ring to Osaka Expo from Osaka to get the Osaka postmark, which is, you're going to get an Osaka Expo stamp, Osaka Expo postcard, and a picture of us on the backside a little bit at the Osaka Expo. But you're also going to get it sent from Osaka. I want to do this, but I said I got a goal. I need two more people to join the postcard club on Patreon. It's patreon.com slash onlyinjapan, one word, and postcard club.

00:24:05 John Daub: If you join, maybe you want to join in May if you want to get that postcard. If you join now, you're going to get two. You'll probably be billed twice. You might get two. But I don't know. I appreciate it, but I definitely want to hit that goal. A lot of people that were samurai members upgraded to the postcard club so we could try to hit that goal, and then I could kind of justify the cost of taking Shinkansen to send the postcards.

00:24:28 Passerby: I've seen you on YouTube.

00:24:29 John Daub: Oh, hi. Nice to see you. Thank you. Bye-bye. Take care.

00:24:37 John Daub: EK loves the alleys. I agree. It's almost better than the main strip. How many days would you recommend to explore this in Osaka? That's a good question. I think Osaka can be pretty. It's a big city, so I think you could probably see a lot in two days, maybe two nights and three days. But you know what I would do? I'd probably make a trip, spend two nights, three days, and then when you come back to Japan again, you can decide.

00:25:13 John Daub: You can decide whether or not you want to see more. It helps if you have Japanese friends in a place like. It helps if you have Japanese friends that live in Osaka, but it's very easy to make them. I think people in general are a lot friendlier in Osaka than Tokyo because, as I said, most people are from Osaka than they are from Tokyo, and that makes a big difference.

00:25:52 John Daub: All right. I got to get back to my family. I appreciate it, guys. I'm not getting any street food this time. I don't think we hit our goal anyways, but I'll be back here. I think we're going to get to the postcard club. We're going to hit our goal, and I'll come here before I go to Guam to send the postcards, maybe from inside the expo because I think there's a post office where you can get an expo stamp to cancel the stamps. It says Osaka Expo on it with the Osaka Expo stamp. That'd be pretty sweet. I really want to do that for you guys, so thanks for joining the postcard club.

00:26:22 John Daub: All right. We were doing it a week ago. We're going to head back to Tokyo. I'm glad that we got a chance to see Dotonbori and all about the details. I'll see you probably back in Tokyo. We're getting back to the Shinkansen and heading back to Tokyo in about an hour or two, but I'm glad that we got a chance to see Dotonbori. It's just really cool. It's like I don't come here that often, but when I do, I got to do a live stream just to bring you here to show you around.

00:26:43 John Daub: I'll go through here a little bit slower maybe. But I won't focus in on the pictures. I'll save that for you to do that. But you know a guided tour of Dotonbori might be a pretty good idea. I wonder if Magical Trip has one of those tours I can collaborate with them on it. Nobody knows, all the tourists don't know about that little side street.

00:27:16 John Daub: All right everybody thanks so much see you in another live stream maybe back in Tokyo tomorrow. Matane.