One Fish, Two Fish; Big Fish, Fugu Fish

So we’re getting a little out of order here — today is Day 16, it’s our last day in Kyoto (and the Kansai region); we actually arrived in Kyoto last Friday and have spent a full week here, split between four days in Kyoto three days set aside for day trips to Nara, Osaka, and Kobe. Tomorrow we’ll leave for Hiroshima (with a quick detour across the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge and  through Shikoku to see the tidal whirlpools in the Naruto Strait), spend two days there, and begin our descent through Kyushu and towards Okinawa.

I’ve already written about Nara and Kobe, so I’ll do a quick recap of Osaka — including the aquarium, how I ate poisonous sushi, and Japan’s favorite street food — here and follow-up with a full Kyoto recap on the train tomorrow.

The plan was originally to spend two nights in Osaka, one in Kobe, and then jump across to Hiroshima, but it turned out to be easier to base ourselves in Kyoto and do both cities as day trips (and turn one “Osaka day” into a “Nara day”), so on Wednesday we stopped by the Bus Ticket Center outside Kyoto Station to pick up a Kansai Thru-Pass. This handy little pass — ¥5,000 for three days — gives you unfettered access to most of the Kansai region’s private railways (minus the JR lines) and the cities’ subway and bus systems. A great value if you want to explore the Kansai region and Kyoto’s neighboring cities.

We left for Osaka around 11 a.m. on Wednesday morning and pulled into Umeda Station at around 1:00 p.m.. Osaka happens to be the second-largest city in Japan, though having run through Tokyo already, it didn’t — at first glance — seem to offer anything particularly new.. The city is notable for a couple of things: the bayside city is supposedly a big foodie town, it’s home to Japan’s Universal Studios theme park, the skyline features some pretty cool/futuristic architecture, and the bay district houses one of the world’s largest aquariums (which, naturally, was the focal point of our trip).

So after grabbing some maps from the Tourist Information Center, we hopped onto the subway and made our way to the Tempozan Harbor Village. This bayside promenade features a number of stores and entertainment venues (mostly aimed at children), as well as a huge ferris wheel (¥700 gets you a ride on the ferris wheel to view the harbor and Osaka’s sprawling metropolis, but do it at night when it’s lit up to forecast the next day’s weather) and, of course, the Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan (海遊館).

The aquarium is housed in an eight story, butterfly-shaped building containing 16 tanks. Each tank features habitats and marine life from a different region of the Pacific Ocean’s Ring of Fire, and a massive, central tank (it holds 5,4000 cubic meters of water) contains the aquarium’s prized attractions — huge manta rays and two massive whale sharks. The layout is particularly innovative — an escalator lifts visitors to the eighth floor, where a downward spiral of ramps guides you towards the ground floor. Many tanks span several stories, allowing you to observe the animals from different depths and perspectives.

Here are a few of the better snapshots I managed to grab; forgive the poor quality or lighting, it’s a little hard to take good photographs of moving animals when you’re hampered by an entry-level lens, dim lighting, and panes of acrylic glass that can measure up to six meters by five meters by 30 centimeters and weigh 10 tons.

Sea otters!

Isn’t this tiny crab adorable? Yeah, hold that thought.

Sea lion. Not dead, just lazy.

Fish!

More fish! Although mostly I just like the color contrast of this photograph.

A very large iguana.

Penguins!

A dolphin!

Great Barrier Reef tank.

Whale sharks! It’s kind of impossible to capture the scale of these things, so I won’t even try other than to say they’re fucking huge.

Remember those cute tiny crabs from earlier? Yeah.

The aquarium finishes off with a display of several different kinds of jellyfish, which I still think are a beautiful but very, very bizarre animal.

One of the animals I regret not getting photos of (I hadn’t charged my camera battery, stupidly, and it began to ran low) were the adorable finless porpoises. The aquarium houses two (it’s also the aquarium’s mascot), and while it’s not on the endangered species list (except in China), the finless porpoise is monitored closely for conservation.

After the aquarium, we made our way over to Dotonbori Street, the center of Osaka’s shopping and entertainment district where we were ready to try two of the city’s local specialties: takoyaki (たこ焼き) and fugu (フグ).

Fugu, as you may know, is the Japanese word for pufferfish (or blowfish). It’s a notorious Japanese delicacy because its liver, ovaries, and skin contain tetrodotoxin, a lethal neurotoxin that paralyzes the victim’s muscles while they stay conscious and die from asphyxiation. (If you’re interested, New York magazine’s restaurant critic, Adam Platt, wrote an excellent feature about fugu a couple years ago that’s worth a read.)

There are strict regulations over the preparation of fugu, and only specially licensed chefs can legally prepare, sell, or serve fugu. It can be notoriously expensive, and a full, eight-course fugu (it can be served as roe, sashimi, stew, salad, as a beverage, and pickled) meal can often cost more than $200 — kind of crazy for a fish that’s essentially flavorless. Rumor has it that some chefs leave just a tiny bit of the poison on the fish, enough to give a diner a tingling, numbing sensation (this rumor is probably a myth, or just psychological hysteria — I, for one, didn’t feel a thing).

We tried fugu at Zuboraya, a a popular fugu chain in Osaka that has more than a few outlets on Dotonbori alone. As I said, fugu can be prepared in several different ways — having read already that it’s essentially tasteless, we didn’t exactly feel like dropping any Benjamins on this dance with death, so we went the cheaper route and split an order of fugu sushi (we also ordered a small plate of fugu sashimi after the sushi failed to get our adrenaline going, but I was too lazy to pull out my camera and photograph it).

Of course, we chose to juxtapose this deadly delicacy with another one of Osaka’a specialties — takoyaki, or fried octopus dumplings. Takoyaki is a popular street food in Japan and is as quintessential as the New York hot dog. This tasty snack is cooked in a special, cast iron mold — diced or whole baby octopus are fried in batter and topped with things like okomiyaki sauce, ponzu, mayonnaise, seaweed, and dried fish shavings. Just one word of caution: don’t let their amazing smell trick you into shoving a whole one in your mouth right away. These things are tangy and chewy and delicious, but scaldingly hot. Still, they’re so good you might not be able to help yourself.

Note: If you care at all about our itinerary and timeline, we actually spent Saturday, Sunday, and Tuesday exploring Kyoto, Monday in Nara, Wednesday in Osaka, and Thursday in Kobe, so chronologically, the events in this post occurred before the earlier post about Kobe.