Osaka

An emotional non-guide to Downtown Dotonbori

By Thomas Feng

November 25^th, 2015

downtown dotonbori

“I hope Nangka doesn’t strike before we arrive.”

Kingsley and I have just arrived in Osaka and am trying to find our hotel in downtown Dotonbori. I’m puzzled and amazed at once at all the neon lights and flashing signs and the few people around. Soon I realise we are only on the outskirts of Dotonbori (see photo); as we explore further inwards, the buildings stand taller, the signs flash brighter and the people pack closer together.

We’re both exhausted today; Kingsley was coughing until the early hours the night before.

We check in and I decide to have a quick look on my own around before Nangka hits. Exuberantly large inflatable seafood signs catch the eyes. Restaurant hawkers line the street, yelling above the crowds of people to entice you to dine with them with the smell of freshly cooked okonomiyaki and takoyaki balls filling an already overwhelmingly bustling strip (see below). I walk slowly up and down the main strip, trying to soak everything in but the atmosphere is pure electric and I am not fit to be a conductor on this day.

typhoon nangka strikes

I am terrified. I have never experienced a natural disaster before; I have only seen images of the carnage a typhoon can bring in destroying anything standing in the way and stripping people of their livelihoods in its wake. Umbrellas are quickly stripped and soon I find myself pushed by the sheer force of the wind (top photo underneath), and I plead to Kingsley to go indoors. Somehow others seem to keep moving on with their night-time activities like any other evening.

We find an okonomiyaki restaurant hidden between a laneway of stores; in Japan you cook the pancake on a grill in front of you until it’s done the way you like. Yum.

“Where do you call home?” I go straight for the deep end with my brother; we’re spending 1-on-1 time for the first time in years.

We end up having a really big argument over the definition of what home means and somehow it ends up with him critiquing my interpretation of home even though he agrees with it. With family there’s an added element of being able to be very honest and so rather than building the discussion, we would both try to squash the other person’s opinion and prop up our own in an endless cycle. Another realisation I have is that our values are mutually embedded with family and hard work but how we express those values is quite different.

60 straight hours of rain

The next day was definitely one of the more emotional days of the trip. We had originally planned to go to Nara but the rain just pelted and pelted and so we tried exploring Osaka without much research.

My spirit dampens immensely as I swim around Shinsekai (below right) in my clothing. Only a few brave souls have ventured out and the emptiness makes the place feel like a strange, abandoned amusement park. Had I been in a better state I could have pretended I was in the markets of the spirit world in Studio Ghibli’s movie Spirited Away and eaten all the food.

Alas we depart the emptiness and head to Umeda where I find the second best bookstore ever (below left). The timber folds on the roof remind me of home and the dimly lit shelves invite you to build a home inside a book. I pick up an art book named “Emotional Journey” by Ellie Omiya. It is raw, honest and to me indicative of Japan: painting a world that is radiantly evocative in thought and feeling. With each turn of the page my mood changes and upon its conclusion I feel happy, vulnerable and loving.

the arcade

We return back to the hotel and my brother decides to play Initial D at the arcade: a car-racing arcade console based on the manga. When we were younger, he used to watch it for hours into the night and I would watch by his side if there was nobody to talk to on MSN; sometimes he would even wake me up in some mornings to watch the movies.

We walk around and find old childhood favourites such as Mario Kart, Pokemon and Dance Dance Revolution; and we watch people spend hours on games which they have mastered perfectly: it’s unbelievable how quick people’s reflexes and muscle memory is with music. Kingsley attempts many times to win oversized Minions and other plushies with no luck.

We both realise how much of our childhood was affected by Japanese gaming culture: I used to spend all of the hours of my day playing games such as MapleStory and Gunbound. We both grew up playing Pokemon and we used to race each other on Mario Kart late into the hours of the morning. Seeing four levels of our childhood filled the both of us with such joy and still remains at the core of our brotherly bond.

Typhoon Nangka might have stripped me temporarily of my emotional stability those few days but the arcades of Osaka were able to remind me that I need to enjoy the simpler pleasures, especially during the most complicated of times.