Day 5 - Back to Osaka

We woke up in the morning in Tokushima and ate a quick buffet breakfast in the hotel before jumping on the trains on the way back to Osaka (Namba).  Our train ride back consisted of three trains and a subway. Mom wanted to take the long way back so we could see a stretch of several bridges that crossed over the islands.  It's super cool riding in the bullet trains.  I took a video so you can kind of get an idea of the pure speed.

Once we got back to the hotel, we decided to go to the department store for lunch.  My mom has been saying we need to do this since we got here.  Now while it may seem bizarre to get excited to go to a Macy's or a Sears for lunch back home, however, we ain't in Kansas any more.  There is a huge department store across from our hotel called Takashimaya.  When I say huge, I mean HUGE.  It's 10 full stories tall.  Three of the stories have enormous slews of full-service restaurants.  Perhaps 15 restaurants per floor.  But where the real magic happens is in the basement.

As we entered the basement area, I can't quite describe the feeling of joy that I experienced.  Everywhere you turn, there are mini-restaurants.  They are more stations than restaurants with glass counters and display cases wrapped around enclosed kitchens.  There were more than I could count but I personally inspected about 40 stations myself.  If anyone has been to Reading Terminal Station in Philly, imagine that feel but quadruple the size.  Oh, and that's just entree food.  There is another section completely devoted to desserts!!!

Imagine this glass case times 200 and that's what you are dealing with in Takashimaya.

It's a madhouse of foodies and food vendors.

We picked out some sushi rolls, a squid/shrimp salad (Brandon likes squid), some macaroni/ham/egg casserole, some crab meat sushi, something that looked and tasted like a guacamole potato salad (quite tasty) but the champion of it all, Fried pork with curry sauce.  Mmmmmm that pork was tender, crispy and delicious and the curry sauce was downright tasty.  No one else really supported my decision to get it but even the kids were saying Mmmmm after eating it.  Gonna get some more of that stuff on this trip as it appears to be everywhere.

What's bizarre is, once you get your food, you'd think you'd wander over to a huge eating area and dive in, right?  Nope.  Mom says this is a place where young wives come to pick up dinner and bring it home.  Sure enough, besides a couple of small counters where people can eat at just a couple of the restaurants, they clearly are discouraging people from hanging around after they buy their food.  No tables anywhere!

The curry fried pork cutlets were really good.....

For dessert, we wandered around for a while but it is seriously overwhelming.  It's now that I'll take a moment to say something..... Japan is the world leader in treats and desserts.  There, I said it.  Don't hate if you disagree, but it is true.  Americans have no way of knowing though because no Japanese restaurants back east even serve anything besides mochi ice cream!  But Takashimaya is the single greatest selection of delicious desserts I've ever witnessed.  It is truly glorious.  I'm pretty sure I heard angels singing when I entered the dessert area.  We stumbled onto a glass case that had these beautiful combinations of strawberries, custards and flan all mixed up together.  Even just the pure aesthetics of each one and how they boxed it up nicely and included mini-ice packs was enough to bring me to tears of joy.  And the taste?  We tried three different ones.  They were approximately 400-450 yen a piece (about 4 or 5 dollars) but worth every penny.  Each one ranked in my top ten all time desserts I've eaten.

The kids waiting for our desserts to get wrapped.

This place didn't win our business this ime but check out how gorgeous those desserts are.

I thought the one with the flan on top of custard and creme would win, but the Japanese traditional dessert on the right with mochi, almond jellies and much more was the big winner.