When in Osaka EAT TAKOYAKI!

When in Rome do as the Romans do and when in Osaka eat takoyaki balls nonstop until you are so full of octopus legs that you have to be carried out the door! So, what exactly is takoyaki? Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

Takoyaki (たこ焼き or 蛸焼?) (literally fried or baked octopus) is a popular Japanese dumpling made of batter, diced or whole baby octopus, tempura scraps (tenkasu), pickled ginger, konnyaku, and green onion, topped with okonomiyaki sauce, green laver (aonori), mayonnaise, and katsuobushi (fish shavings).

Although takyoki is sold everywhere in Japan many Japanese agree that it is best when eaten in Osaka, the city where it first originated. Takoyoki can be made at home with a special skillet thus it is common for Japanese, especially those in Osaka, to have takoyaki parties. Takoyaki can also be bought on the streets from venders and from the supermarket in the frozen foods section.

Recently, Koko and I visited Osaka and on the top of our things to do list was to eat lots and lots of delicious Osaka made takoyaki. I’m sure you can imagine how excited we were when, by chance, we stumbled across the Osaka Takoyaki Museum. Of course, we didn’t have any choice but to go and check it out! Inside we found 5 of the more famous takoyaki restaurants in Osaka all selling a unique version of the octopus ball. Not knowing which restaurant to try we decided that we would try them all!

We started off strong and after visiting the first 2 restaurants we had both consumed about 15 balls each. By the 3rd restaurant we had another 6 balls each bringing our total to 21 balls. At the 4th restaurant we each ate another 10 balls bringing the new ball count to 31 balls. By that time we were stuffed!! We thought hard about whether or not we should just suck it up and hit the last restaurant, but in the end we didn’t have it in us. We weren’t too hard on ourselves though, besides 4 out of 5 insn't all that bad. Not to mention we had just eaten 31 octopus balls EACH!