Dinner and Nightlife in Osaka

After we out some warming layers on at the hotel, we headed out for dinner. We walked to a near by street called Donotonbori. It was supposed to be a happening place. The neon lights and shopping atmosphere was quite impressive. We walked the length of the street, when we turned around Bill said he noticed the women who were working the streets. I am not totally convinced they were working girls. But they did seem aggressively approaching young men. Finally after passing up and down the street a couple of times, we headed down a side street and found a place with yakisoba (fried noodles). It was a restaurant where they cooked the noodles right in front of you, the table had a large griddle built into the top of the table. Bill ordered a rice egg with cheese all fried to stick together. It had rice, one egg, cabbage, red ginger, chives and 5 kinds of cheese in the middle, after flipped 4 times, it was topped with bar-b-que sauce, mayo and mustard. Sounds really strange, but it was rather tasty, very different. The rest of us ordered fried noodles with asparagus, cabbage and mussels. We did not know there were mussels in the meal, we thought it was pork. Lucky us. But all the food tasted really good. A funny thing that happened was the fire alarm kept going off in the restaurant, but no one seemed worriedly d no one moved. We are quite certain the manager went outside and unplugged the alarm. I think it was set off by the girls who were smoking didn't seem the least bit concerned that a lit cigarette next to a smoke alarm may have been the culprit. Instead the just lit up another one.
My biggest complaint about Japan is that they allow smoking indoors at all restaurants and most attractions. Such a nasty habit.
After we devoured our food, clearing the griddle in front of us, we walked home. We took a different route. This street was completely covered, it was raining outside, so it was nice to walk completely dry.
We got back to the hotel and I think we all crashed. We started at 7:00am and arrived back at the hotel around 10:30pm---LONG DAY, but we saw a ton!