Niko niko!

Today we finally met Niko, Zoupi’s host in Belgium last summer. We met him for lunch and he spent the day doing silly things with us.

First we went to the Osaka Sewerage Science Museum. Sounds weird but we wanted to visit the last time we were in Osaka, but didn’t make it. So of course it was on the top of our sightseeing list this time.

Zoupi liked this exhibit—it shows where the zoo sewage is.

What else is at the Sewerage Science Museum? Explanations of how Osaka treats its wastewater, examples of how it’s reused after it’s cleaned, and a lot of exhibits feature water—vortex spinners, rain simulators, wave motion generators and a quiz at the end.

Probably better than the museum was where we ended up afterwards. The train dropped us back in Umeda, the same area we’d had dinner the night before. Rather than head into the tick of things, we threaded our way into the back alleys behind a temple. And found a wonderful little izakaya presided over by this man:

His wife called him “Master” and he certainly was an excellent cook. We went in for oden, and ended up with a variety of foods, included the best goma-ae I’ve ever had. He served it over simmered greens and chilled green grapes. I regret not asking him for the recipe.

Here is some of the Osaka-style oden that I was eager to taste. It’s a big block of tofu, simmered in a lightly seasoned broth and topped with a sheet of paper-thin seaweed. Yum! We also had simmered diakon served with grated yuzu, and a kyouimo a greyish, sticky potato I’d never had before.

I was having such a good time that I failed to take any photos of Niko. But he took one of us (in fact all the photos in this report are his) at our nijiikai. Tod is looking up the kanji on the waribashi wrapper. Tod looked up the kanji on everything during this trip—he even had to change the batteries in his electronic dictionary. He loves kanji and never passes up the opportunity to look them up. I try to be patient…can you tell in the picture?

Posted by kuri at October 18, 2003 11:59 PM