Lots of Ramen and a Castle

It's pretty late, and I don't want to miss church, so just a quick update. I've gone through and added photos later, so if you read the original post, just scan for pictures this time...

First thing in the morning, we went to a ramen museum. Most of the activities were free or reasonably priced, and we ended up only spending money on a T-shirt. The museum would be a lot more fun if our reading skills were better, but we did borrow audio guides, which at least gave us an audio track for two of the exhibits. I'll note that we're talking specifically about instant ramen here; the museum is basically a giant advertising stunt for Nissin, the original makers of "Cup Noodle" and inventors of instant ramen in general. The original shack in which Nissin's founder invented instant ramen is one centerpiece, and there's also a movie theater where they tell a heavily animated story about how ramen was invented. You can sign up for a course where you make your own ramen in a big, commercial kitchen upstairs, and there's a make-your-own Cup Noodle, heavily geared toward little kids. We did neither.

Of course, I left craving ramen, so we picked some up at the tourist trap ramen place conveniently nearby. It was good stuff, although I think Rachel prefers the pork broth to the soy broth that I ordered (she wasn't hungry, and just ordered gyoza). I've got a photo here now -- this was really good stuff, possibly even worth the ten bucks I paid for it. The noodles are decorated with green onion, a bit of seaweed, crispy onion bits, several slices of grilled pork, and an entire soft-boiled egg. There are a further half-dozen things you can add to adjust the flavor along the back counter.

Next stop was Osaka castle. It's got enormous stone walls around it's base, and a windy entrance path that traverses fully two moats, both wide enough to sail a steamboat down. There are ramparts overlooking the path all along the way, loaded with murder holes and all the usual castle features. The castle itself doesn't have any windows for the first several floors, and the walls are made of enormous stone blocks. The lowest ornamentation and windows are perhaps 60-70 feet off the ground. There's a well out front, covered with a heavy wooden grill which also, presumably, is defensive. Of course, the one time it was invaded, the castle fell, but it looks impressive, and the defenses did kill quite a lot of people before eventually not working well enough. There's probably a message in there somewhere.

Incidentally, we finally tried takoyaki. They're kind of like fritters, but with octopus and onions in them. They're also not deep fried, but rather shallow fried in cup-shaped pans. Alas: the dough was raw. We'll probably try again some other time, but probably not in the same place. The frying trick is really interesting, and probably both uses less oil and goes faster. I wonder if the same trick would work on fritters.

Anyway, church tomorrow, and I need to sleep. The images on this post were added after the fact.