Yodogawa Hanabi Taikai (Fireworks Festival)
Urae Park
Just a block from our home is a park, which was kind of disappointing in terms of playground equipment. We have been noticing that the city parks in Osaka aren’t that well kept, with weeds overtaking some parts and a general lack of useful play structures. Could it be contributing to the declining birth rate?
We did spot a nice shrine connected to the park, maybe there will be a festival here someday.
Not a bad view of our building too.
Local Eats
M exclaimed that this was the best udon she has ever had. Which says quite a lot, since she has been eating lots of udon the last few months. Unknown to her, the soup base was made with horumon (beef internals) and the shop served a few other izakaya items and horumon dishes. I do have to agree with her, the kasu udon and horumon nabe (stew) is the best I can remember. The place is located underneath the train tracks near Fukushima Station, and has seating for about 12 total. Sorry, they don’t have a website, but they can be found on google/maps 屋台風 かすうどん.
We had to try a place called “Meat Rush” in Umeda, they specialized in “hamba-gu” which is essentially a meat loaf formed into patties with sauce. This food was fine, but I think Japanese people believe this dish is from America so their theming is kind of hilarious.
Sure, the root of the word and dish is probably from hamburgers, but obviously this is not like anything you find at your usual burger joint in the states. Interestingly, you can also get a more typical burger (with buns) at other shops and they call that “hamba-ga”. In fact, not only are there McDonalds and Burger King, but I did see a Wendy’s too.
We also tried our first ramen place (みつ星製麺所 福島本店) near our home. There are easily 5+ in our neighborhood, and this place often has a short line. It only seats about 10 people, and is tucked away from the main road, but it’s right outside the door of our building. They specialize in tonkotsu (pork) broth with bonito, and we tried the tsukemen (noodles with dipping sauce) and ramen. I thought the tsukemen was better, but both quite excellent.
Home Update
We are getting our dining table in a few more days, so we have been eating on our cardboard boxes.
Our couch will take another month or so, but at least we finally got our beds! Just in time, because my cousin came to visit from Tokyo. She stayed with us one night, and we got to watch the Yodogawa Hanabi Taikai (Fireworks Festival).
Yodogawa Hanabi Taikai
M got dressed up for the occassion, with mom’s yukata from when she was a kid. Grandma had saved a number of kimonos and yukatas for passing down to the next generation.
Due to road construction by the river and Covid, the local festivities (street vendors and viewing areas) were canceled on the Umeda side, but there were seating and activities on the other side of the river. However, most importantly the fireworks were still scheduled, and we had a great view from our balcony! We also noticed lots of folks were crowding in the nearby parks, so unofficially there were festivities still going on in our neighborhood. The Yodogawa Hanabi Taikai was quite amazing, it was about an hour of various fireworks we had never seen before. I don’t think there are firework shows that rival Japan’s biggest festivals, our jaws dropped and we couldn’t stop watching till the end!
