Downtown Osaka

While I spent most of yesterday rehearsing for my recital today, I did have a chance to visit downtown Osaka with three students: Tomoyo, Chihiro, and Madoka. Downtown Osaka is a vast maze of buildings, above-ground walkways, trains, underground roads, above-ground roads, underground sidewalks, and several subway systems. The buildings are massive, and are engineered to sway in the event of an earthquake. 

 The next photo shows one of several shopping malls in the city. These are nothing like shopping malls in America. Each mall has about 30 floors filled with more stores and restaurants than I have ever seen. On the floor where we ate lunch, there were more than 25 other restaurants.

For lunch, we had okonomiyaki, which is a Japanese pancake. The pancakes are made on grills located in the center of each table. Cabbage, seafood, and other vegetables are mixed with raw egg and noodles and grilled for about 20 minutes. Here is a video of the process:

 Here is a shot of all of us at lunch. Can you find the American in the photo?

 

Tomorrow, I will have pictures from my recital.

-Carson