#2: Daimaru Umeda

This image really doesn’t do the Pokemon Center justice.  So many children.  So many plush pikachus.  ‘Nuff said.

On my first trip to Osaka I went to Daimaru Umeda, a sixteen-floor department probably best known as home to Japan’s largest Pokemon store.  Getting to Osaka was surprisingly easy — the trip took about 30 minutes and cost less than 500 yen.

It turns out the Pokestore only represents a fraction of the shopping available at the megastore.  Daimaru houses dozens and dozens of stores and restaurants.  There’s an entire floor dedicated to deserts (!!).

For dinner I ate a slightly confusing meal on the top floor that consisted of:

A) a super hot metal bowl with rice and vegetables

B) a raw egg,

C) what may have been ginger, and

D) some soup broth.

The possibilities were endless — put everything together to make some kind of soup?  Gulp down the raw egg and chase it with the broth?  Through some creative gestures and emphatic headshaking on the part of the waitress I eventually figured out that the egg and ginger went in the bowl, where to my relief the heat of the bowl cooked the egg.  The soup broth, it turned out, was to be eaten separately.  Live and learn people, live and learn.

Another note–throw out everything you thought you knew about elevator capacity.  There is always room for more people.