japan day 6: Chanko + Nanba

once again, ari is a guestwriter in this entry again. he’s helping me finishing up this neverending story…

We met up with Melvyn and Tracy for dinner that night and walked towards the Dotombori area… the place was called Chanko Dining. It was created by some well known sumo wrestler, supposedly the food is characteristic of what you will find at sumo boot camps. The only difference is the portion, the 4 of us had what would be likely to be a meal for a single sumo guy. It was very good. Sort of like Shabu-shabu but with a tastier broth. We shared a sashimi platter for the appetizer. The waitress actually did this cool thing with two pieces of bamboo creating fish-balls out of the patty and then dropping them one by one into the boiling soup.

After dinner, we decided to take a walk to let our digestive organs do their thing. Right across from Chanko, we saw this place called Bow Wow – a place where you can select a dog from the printed catalogue stuck to the window, or the Maltese that’s looking pretty bored, and have dinner or a snack WITH THE DOG. Yes, it’s like dog geisha. We took the picture and walked on to try the grilled Alaskan King Crab legs down the street. It was 500 yen for two pieces, but well worth every yen.
The four of us continued walking around, first towards the love hotels and then south to Nanba area. We stopped by this cute vintage cigarette store and bought “Is It?” cigarettes. It’s not bad, kinda like Camel. But us being designers, what we were really after was the packaging.

It was getting pretty cold, so we headed back to the hotel. And soon enough as the bars close at around midnight, hordes of drunken spaghetti-legged middle-aged and old men started to pour to the streets, accompanied by the Mama-san of each accomplishment some with a few scantily-clad younger ladies, saying goodbye on the streets bowing many many times. These guys are probably here every weekend anyways, but the dramatic exit is a necessity here in Japan. It’s a very cheerful (comical) scene.
When we turned on the TV after a long hot bath in our hotel room, we found this really brilliant show for kindergarten kids (at 1am) called “Pitagora Suichi” (PythagoraSwitch). It’s hard to explain what it’s about, but it puts Sesame Street to shame. We are hooked! We’ll definitely look for the DVD collection online. Somewhere out there, there must be some sort of compilation from the TV network.
photo album: Japan Trip: Day 6 (29 December 2005).