Nerdy Travels: Sleepless Nights and Den Den Town

Our first full day in Osaka was incredible but wasn’t the most productive. I had an almost sleepless night in our apartment which was due to the fact that I’d spent almost twenty-four hours sleeping on the plane rides over to Osaka. I almost pulled off a all-nighter and passed this time watching videos and scrolling through Twitter on my phone. I think my body finally gave in at around seven in the morning. This was great timing on my body’s part. Thanks body. I appreciate it.

After passing out I slept till about noon which is when we finally got up and ready to head out and do something productive with the rest of the day. Our first stop in Osaka was Den Den town so I could get some eagerly anticipated anime shopping done. We fumbled our way over to Den Den town as one of the worst things about visiting a new place is that we have no idea where we are going and most of the signs and maps are of little to no help to us. Even asking can often lead to nowhere. It was really quite frustrating but we got there eventually. Anyway, after much searching and train hopping we found Den Den town which is Osaka’s miniature version of Akihabara. This area isn’t on the same scale in terms of size in comparison to Akihabara but there is still a lot to see. They do still have a lot of shops that can be found in Akiba. Some of the ones I visited included Animate, Melonbooks, Toranoana K-books and Kotubukiya and visiting these few stores took up rest of our day. I have to say that visiting this area really satisfied my anime craving until I could visit Tokyo and Akiba later on in the trip.

During my shopping spree we got hungry and headed to get a drink and something to eat. We spotted a nice coffee place named Anna Colours Coffee down the main street of Den Den town and went in for pancakes and coffee. I ordered a delicious caramel pancake which was incredible and also extremely filling.

After demolishing the pancakes we headed back into anime heaven. I wandered into K-Books which was a fatal mistake on my part and I ended up spending almost £100 on Hijikata from Gintama themed goods. I was on a mission on this trip to find a range of Hijikata themed merchandise as I wanted to expand my Hijikata ita bag and make a really big and “painful” one for him. I was extremely successful on this quest of mine and I basically went to town because I could.

I also headed into Toranoana which is one of my all time favourite stores in Japan as it’s just masses of beautifully crafted doujins by some really talented artists. I noticed whilst browsing this particular Toranoana that it was heavy on boys love. I’m not someone who reads this genre but I do find some boys love rather sweet. I’m very fussy and apprehensive when it comes to this genre as many things within the genre don’t sit well with myself. I like cute, happy, innocent fluff in all honesty. One thing I do appreciate though is that many doujins have rating which is either “all ages” or “18+” which is helpful when looking around for ones to buy. I only buy doujins for the art side of them because I cannot read and understand Japanese so I usually only pick up ones which are art focused instead of actual stories and it helps to know what’s what when browsing. I actually found some amazing My Hero Academia ones which were solely art based which I was thrilled about.

As the shops began to close up for the day we decided to head back home. I did notice on this trip that everything outside of Tokyo even cities like Osaka close earlier than I was expecting. Places in the capital close at nine or ten where as outside of Tokyo stores seem to close at seven or eight. I found this a little frustrating as when I’m away on these trips we like to stay out late and use up as much of the day as we can.

Until next time thanks for reading and I hope you’re having a great day!

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