Jaunted Embedded Travel Guides: Osaka After Dark
10/04/2007 at 1:00 PM
Tags: Embedded Travel Guides, Japan Travel, Osaka Travel Guide, Bars, Nightlife, Osaka-Embed-Map (all tags)
Embedded Travel Guides: We are searching the world for folks who can take you on a field trip of their "backyard." When we find these folks, we then stealthy embed them into their local travel scene and ask them to be our eyes and ears out in the field.
We are expecting the same sort of grainy video, choppy sentences and snapshot photos that you are use to seeing from other sorts of embeds. At the end of the day we should be left with a backyard travel guidebook like no other.
Our man in Osaka is AJ McGuire, and, wow, does he have stories to tell.
Nightlife in Osaka will teach you what your Learn Japanese in 24 Hours tape couldn't. While there are enough foreigner bars to stay in an English-language bubble and still have a decent Saturday night (some of my friends have been doing this for years), it's a far better thing to let the drink drop those inhibitions and push you to trot out some phrasebook communication. You won't regret it.
A good starter while you're still lucid and timid is the cozy Gorkha Bazar, a Nepalese bar and grill that serves as a hangout for the multilingual and a more diverse crowd of gaijin than the usual crop of English teachers. Barman Diwarker Thapa speaks four languages, and the happy hour plate is the best value in town for pre-booze munchies. And it's convenient to the Tani-9 zone of love hotels so Gorkha might be your last stop of the night, too.
Other options in the Uehonmachi/Tani-9 neighborhood include Papa's Pub, Mahi Mahi and Bar Le Degree Zero. Papa's plays it fairly straight with a sports bar kind of look but has a house specialty that involves a cobra and a scorpion in a bottle of what tastes like jet fuel. Mahi boasts "We have Engrish Menu!" and has a multi-page beer menu that runs from complex Belgian brews to Mickey's malt liquor in the green grenade bottle. Bar Le Degree Zero has a high-class ambiance, good jazz and precision mixed drinks.
A good place to start getting twisted is the pleasure zone between Shinsaibashi-suji and Sakai-suji. The good times start getting thick when you spend a whole night seeking out the weirdest named clubs and bars stacked like cordwood here. Note: Just because the place's name is some strange English phrase doesn't necessarily mean it's trendy. It could very well be a smoky shoebox filled with grim Japanese versions of your dad. Choose carefully.
For a good time in a shoebox that's filled with anyone but your dad, head over to Bar Y's and talk to this guy. That's Masa. The bar is well stocked with liquor, Masa knows how to mix 'em and there's more than enough music on the wall to find something you'll like. Just ask.
This area also houses the trifecta of quintessential foreigner bars: Cinquecento, the Pig and Whistle and Murphy's. The Pig and Murphy's are nearly interchangeable: darts, beer, fish and chips and soccer on a few screens around the room. The Pig has a better view but Murphy's has live bands every now and again and a nice back room. Cinquecento is where everyone eventually stops once a night. The bar is shaped like a horseshoe, all the food and drinks are ¥500 ($4) and by the time I leave, it usually looks it does in this picture.
A nice addition to the scene is Zerro, managed by Anthony, formerly of Papa's, Cinquecento and just about everywhere else in town. Its tastefully modern decor goes well with its anyone and everyone clientele and affordable drinks and food. It's also the cheapest place in town to get a Czech absinthe, but you have to ask for it.
Clubs come and go but for a consistent bacchanalia, Pure is where to look. It's all-you-can-drink, all night and damn, do folks ever take that seriously. Although it's significantly cheaper for girls than guys, the gender balance does tend to lean a bit male, a situation the management tries to rectify by featuring go-go dancers doing things that I previously thought you needed extra limbs for. The fun gets started around midnight and the place starts looking like the fall of Rome around 3.
For a more contemplative evening, the nearby neighborhood of Kita-Horie has Cafe Absinthe. This place is straight class from the street-side tables to the bathroom sinks. This would be the only place in town to make eyes at the girls at the bar while puffing on a hookah with a flaming glass of absinthe in front of you. If the prodigious drink menu doesn't turn you on, the deserts and tapas will do the trick. Avoid the moussaka, but go for the pasta or whatever the specials are that night. The homemade cassis sorbet alone is worth the trip.
Convenient to none of this but not to be missed is Tsuruhashi's Doghouse Pub. Run by Anglophile and local character Osegi-san, Doghouse styles itself perfectly after a small-town English public house. A Quadrophenia jacket hangs in the corner, packets of jerky and cheddar-onion crisps hang over the bar and they've always got at least four beers and a cider on tap. Try whatever's on tap from the local Aji microbrewery and if you're brave, order the haggis plate. Doghouse is a really comfy, local place where you're a regular the second time you show up.
Related Stories:
· Embedded Travel Guides coverage [Jaunted]
· Osaka Travel coverage [Jaunted]
· Japanese Love Hotels [HotelChatter]
· Osaka Hotels [HotelChatter]
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