Shinsekai was a highly recommended place to visit from my yoga classmate who claimed that the place appeared to be a pop out town from anime and has good fried food. The name literally means New World although it was created in 1912.
However when we reached there, the town appeared abandoned with many shops closed. The area did not seem safe at night and there were policemen everywhere checking on some youngsters and a drunk young girl with an old man when we alighted at the station.
I posted for help on Instagram but nobody knew what happened. The answer came after I posted on Facebook when I already returned back to my hotel. We were at the wrong entrance, the tower should read "安心" (anshin)...
Based on a cute map provided by Yi-Sheng, I was at the other side of the tower... ALAMAK! (Singlish for Oh my God)
So on the second night, we revisited the place after our day trip to Wakayama. The correct station to alight is actually Doubutsuen-Mae station 動物園前駅, not
Ebisucho station 恵美須町駅. Of course, we could have walked further down yesterday night too.
On our first night, we were hungry and spotted this restaurant called "Kushi Katsu Daruma" with a pretty long queue. Instinctively we felt this might be a place with good food so we queued for 15 min to get in. (Singaporean's way to look for good food)
They served free-flow cabbage to go along with a kind of fried food that they called Kushi-katsu. It's actually anything fried on a stick and is the iconic food at Shinsekai. English menu and instructions were available and there were English-speaking staff too (foreign apprentice?). They had a strict rule that nobody should dip their kushi-katsu into the sauce more than once as the sauce was meant for public sharing.
Surprisingly, we were full after eating 11 sticks and tons of delicious cabbage slices. It cost us less than 1,200yen per person and they were delicious. The batter was crispy and the sauce was flavourful. We were happy :)
On the second night we were at the correct entrance and took lots of photos. We decided to eat something different, such as Fugu (Japanese for pufferfish) from a restaurant called "Zuboraya" that has the iconic pufferfish balloon.
We ordered a set meal that costs 3,500yen. It includes pufferfish prepared raw, fried, grilled, mixed into a salad, boiled in a soup as well as sushi.
It was really good and I highly recommend it as well ;)
We went to Shinsekai during our recent Japan trip too! It was a lovely place with that oldish feel. We also found a sushi/sashimi restaurant named Rokusen located at the foot of Tsutenkaku Tower. That was one of our best meals for the entire trip!
ReplyDeleteFor a short description and some pics, go here:
https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/192173/item/3938940#item3938940