Coffee and Wine Shop
Nakanoshima
In between the Umeda (North Side) and Namba (South Side) is a large river with an island called Nakanoshima. We go for walks around there sometimes, and have hit up a couple coffee shops in the area. I think the area is up and coming, historically there aren’t any major train stations there but there is a new subway line being built that will have a stop there, maybe another 5 years out. Anyhow, most coffee shops are either Starbucks, Doutour or one of the other handful of large chain stores that are practically everywhere. Most of them lack any soul, but offer a cheap place to sit down and hang out, and use their free wifi.
Takamura Coffee Roasters
But off the beaten path, tucked away off a big street just south of Nakanoshima, is a rather large coffee roaster and wine shop. Takamura also has a couple of large lounge areas too, which makes it a more ideal place to relax and not feel crammed into the immense density that is Osaka. There is definitely a more western hipster vibe here!
We ordered some drinks, the cappuccino came with foam art! This was far superior to the usual auto-machine generated coffee from the usual joints.
And they sell wine, a pretty solid selection of it. In the glass displays were a large collection of expensive wines, mostly from France. We have noticed that there hasn’t been a great selection of California wines in Japan, but we did find some Stags Leaps here and a few common brand name wines. The prices are over double though, so the import tax seems to be hefty. On the other hand, the European wines seem more reasonable, so their tariffs must be less.
They had some self server tasting machines, which is kinda rare in the states? I have only seen it a couple places maybe. They were doing some serious tasting event upstairs (without the machines). People seemed pretty focused with their clipboards, note taking and covered up bottles. I guess it was some kind of sommelier training.
Alas, we didn’t drink any wine since it was just after lunch. We’re trying not to drink too much:)
Lunch Drinking
Maybe this is an Osaka thing, or a Japan thing but we we’ve noticed a lot of places have happy hour prices during lunch and a decent number of people partaking. Definitely more day time drinking on the weekends, but even week days it’s pretty common. I guess people here tend to drink more in general, and a good amount of restaurants have all you can drink specials too! Oddly though, the wine selection is usually pretty poor, but I guess when you’re in Japan, you should be drinking beer, sake or shochu (distilled spirits). Of course, the other very common drink is chu-hi or ‘sours’ which are hard seltzers.
Oddly, beer at the supermarket is more expensive than beer in the states, but at the bar/restaurant it’s not that much more than the store. Most places are serving ‘chu-jockey’ (about a pint?) for like 350-500 yen ($2.5-4 USD). However, to make things a bit confusing in Japan is the proliferation of ’not beer, beer’. There is a hefty tax on beer, so there are a number of beer alternatives that taste just like beer, but cheaper cause it’s not technically beer. Here is an article that explains it better about the 3 classes of ‘beer’ and ‘almost’ beers I have tried a few kinds, and I couldn’t really tell the difference. Even the cans look pretty similar and they are produced by the big name brand beer companies, I can usually only tell by the price at the supermarket.
What the?
Sometimes you see some funny Jinglish, although it is a lot better now than when I was a kid. But sometimes you just have to stop and have a good chuckle… This is for a hair gel product, or is it?!
