Day 3: Universal Studios

Breakfast:

"We were too hungry to notice the name"
Type: Stand up Udon Bar
Location: Umeda station outside JR station entry
Food:
1. Set A: Kitsune Udon + Onigiri
Kitsune udon is always good. So it Onigiri (It was a "sandwich" variety where the topping was squashed between two layers of rice rather than buried in middle. Rice is less "packed" than that of family mart, more amount of filling)
2. Set B: Seaweed Udon + Ricebowl
Rice bowl was fantastic. This type of seaweed I have never tried before. It dejavu'ed in my mind as being partly like eating my own hair, partly like accidentally eating a fluffy dust ball.
Ambience: Local. Eating a bowl of noodles standing up is harder than one imagines.

After the heartening breakfast, we ventured to UNIVERSAL STUDIOS!!!! =)
this was lots of fun, and we kinda got very distracted by the merchandise... especially those incredibly cute cookie monsters....

Rides:
1. Hollywood Dream: 5+/5, esp after dark
2. Space Fantasy: 4/5, too much like space mountain but not as good, the fire creatures were cute tho!
3. Adventures of Spiderman: 4/5, special effects & 3D stuff was cool
4. Back to the Future: 3/5, similar ride to above, but just not as good
5. Snoopy Sound Adventures: 3/5, simple kid's rollercoaster
6. Peppermint Patty's Stunt Slide: 2/5, too short, we were inside a normal yellow water slide pipe-thing the whole time, got abnormally wet for the amount of water that was actually in the slide



Ones we did not go on as the risk-of-being-soaked factor was too high: Jaws & Jurassic Park. We watched the projectile of water as the boat landed = not worth the risk. Especially as we had already gotten wet during peppermint patty's.... and didn't find the heat radiator until 2 hours later, when we were already dry.

We also noticed that it seemed everyone came prepared with 1. plastic ponchos for the wet rides & 2. pretty plastic sheets to sit on during the parades (not disposable plastic bags, actual plastic mats with hello kitty etc on them designed, apparently, for such a purpose).


The 4D shows (shrek & sesame st) were cool, the latter being better, but that could be partly due to the fact that clara had seen the shrek one already @ movie world...

Lunch:

"SNOOPY'S BACKLOT CAFE"
Location: Universal Studios, Osaka
Type: Japanese Fastfood
Food:
1. Crab Creme Croquette Burger Meal
Where else can you get a running Snoopy stamped on the bun? That's what you pay for. Typical of japanese cusine, the bun is sweeter than even Aussie Macca's quaterpounder buns. The croquette is soft and has discernible particles of shredded crab stick. I don't think i've ever had cabbage in a burger, but thats what Japanese have with their fried foods (ie. katsu), so it goes well. Topped with a tangy ranch dressing. Not bad, if only it weren't the size of my palm.
Sides of 2 chicken nuggets looked sad, had more texture and taste than Aussie macca's. Funnily enough they were the SAME shape and size. There were about 8 chips? Scant.
My iced coffee was good.

Snack Time:

"SIDEWALK CARTS IN UNIVERSAL STUDIOS"
Food:
1. Snoopy Banana Cream & Sweet Bean Paste Bun
2. Hello Kitty Pork Bun with Cheese
3. Dear Daniel Pizza Bun
These three are "man" (pronounced "mun", as in "Pizza-mun") aka steam buns, like char-sui-bao. We tried them for the sake of research. And it was surprisingly lovely. Especially Snoopy's ears, which were black sesame bread!! The banana-cream was a bit weird though. It was strange but also somewhat therapeutic tearing their heads in half and eating them.

Dinner:

"OSAKA TAKOYAKI MUSEUM"
Its not really a food theme park. Or museum. There's nothing museum about it.
Type: Collection of 5 takoyaki stores + gift shop

Location: University Citywalk, outside universal studios.
Food: A Sampler of 3 types of takoyaki
1. Tako-yaki
2. Rice-cake & Cheese
3. Akashi-yaki
Takoyaki is the standard octopus ball. Yesterday's were nicer. Still my favourite of the three.
Rice-cake and Cheese: it muse be a current japanese food phase to add cheese to everything. Like the Hello-kitty pan. And 3 Cup Noodle flavours released this month for its anniversary "Cheese Gratin, Curry Cheese and a cheesy pizza flavour".
The Third and final: very eggy and had to be dipped into the light fish broth before eating. Mine fell apart. I never was a big fan of egg, I prefer them poached or a soft boiled perfection.

Dinner 2: Cup Noodles from yesterday

"MOMOFUKU ANDO NISSIN CUP NOODLES"
Location: Hotel room
Food: Cup Noodles from museum's vending machine.
1. Milk Seafood
"YUM"
2. Spicy Tomato
"Take a original flavour cup noodle, add in a packet of continental spicy tomato soup mix. Add water. This is what it tastes like. Unfortunately its an unharmonious marriage. 2/5"