Hmm, this place seems mighty familiar…

Skip the next paragraph if you have absolutely no interest in Junjou Romantica.

So in this episode, Misaki comes to Osaka to spend some time with his brother and his wife (who want him to move in with them so that they can provide Misaki with the warm loving family he never had. Apparently they have no clue that Usagi gives him all the warmth that he needs - and more). Thank god he didn’t bump into me here, or I’d whack him with a yaoi paddle marimo for being such a drama queen the whole time and trying to play the “let’s throw selfish lines at each other and pretend like we don’t really care that we can’t have hot buttsecks every night anymore!” game with Usami, and over the phone no less *swt* Thankfully (I can’t believe I said thankfully, but there), Usagi doesn’t take the bait (omg, an author of cheesy romance novels in fiction who actually knows what cliches not to fall into!) and rushes to claim Misaki despite all his drama queening and treats him to some train se - I mean a vacation to Hokkaido (where it’s apparently fine for two guys to walk hand in hand in public, woohoo?)!

Oh wait, there was train sex after all. Obligatory I suppose -_-”

Shin asked me the other day about what’s nice to visit in Osaka since everyone who comes to Japan is too busy finding their way to Akibahara, Washinomiya, and Hinamizawa-what? And maybe the ‘normal’ people will still rather see Tokyo, Kyoto or Hokkaido and leave out this poor city T.T Okay, that’s total BS as usual, since a ton of people still come to Osaka - it’s either you land in Kansai airport here or Narita in Tokyo after all :P

Well, there you go then!

The thing that really inspired this post :P All the places mentioned in this episode of Junjou (or rather in the translator’s notes - will not make another joke at Otaking’s expense) is in the vicinity of Dotonbori, Shinsaibashi and Nanba, which I had the opportunity to visit a while back. The district is probably one of the more famous tourist and shopping spots in the city, with its long long store filled streets and rather distinctive sights strewn about, like the said moving crab. The place was tempting me by roasting those humongous crab legs outside the restaurant for sale… Oh the aroma…

I can’t remember if that clown in the picture is an actual person obscuring the actual doll mentioned here or IS the doll itself (okay, it apparently is the doll). Anyways, this place is the famous ‘kuidaore‘ where people go to ‘eat till they drop’ as the literal translation of the name implies. I think our Japanese Culture teacher mentioned that Osaka has a ‘kuidaore‘ reputation since there’s a wealth of places to eat here besides the essential okonomiyaki and takoyaki which you’ll find stalls and shops for around here by the dozen.

Oh what do you know, I do have a shot of the thing, though it’s not as large as I remember.

Also, Takahiro’s wife suggested they had curry for lunch (Japanese curry mind, which is a different entity from all th other curries in the world). Okay, so I didn’t take a picture then since then I had curry rice for a meal every other day or something, but so did I on that day, coincidentally :P

More random photos:

Opposite the giant crab.

Somewhere along the streets of Shinsaibashi. Yes, you get ‘curiously dressed people’ aka cosplayers since Den Den Town is nearby (in fact, that’s where we veered off to almost afterwards :P)

The famous Glico man at the infamous Ebisubashi, where an overly excited baseball fan drowned himself during a mass fan “jump in the canal to celebrate our favourite team’s win-wtf” activity. Supposedly one of the most famous spots in the city, and it would’ve been cool if I stayed till night time to watch the entire place light up.

Lastly, some random Engrish huhlulz (How ironic that I ended up using this “Let’s make a seed of happy together!!” pic in a Junjou Romantica post XD)

Other interesting sights in Osaka would probably be Osaka Castle, the Sky Building (which I’ve only seen on commute and on The Amazing Race), which in all my fail I’ve yet to visit. Also USJ -which for any Malaysians reading has nothing to do with Utara Subang Jaya and everything to do with Universal Studios Japan - which I will state now is a bloody awesome place to go for theme park junkies like myself :P

I was going to do a post on why I’m still pretty tsuntsun over Junjou (not as much as over S.A. still), but I’ll save that for next episode since they’re returning to the emo couple who don’t know how to communicate apparently. That and I find doing this picture post so much easier =P