Another slow day, with some interesting foods. Zaru udon, and zaru soba as well, are noodles that are just served plain and cold, and you dip them in soy sauce before slurping them up (in Japan, slurping is actually kinda polite, as it shows you are enjoying your food). I had some of that for lunch, but dinner was way weirder. Takoyaki is one of Osaka's delicacies, and the other is Okonomiyaki, a type of cabbage pancake with as many different toppings and fillings as there are cultures and sub-cultures. The things I could identify were the cabbage (nothing hard there), bacon, onion, and some tentacles from either octopus or squid, I couldn't tell. And when you get tentacles, you know it. There isn't a single thing done to them when cooked (if they were...) that tries to hide the fact that you're eating a limb that has just recently been hacked off and served. They looked so fresh I was afraid they would start moving.

Observations:
Baseball is huge over here. In terms of percent of population watching at any given time Japan beats the U.S. hands down. Hideo-san watches it every time he can, even getting ESPN to watch American little league.
I saw what I can only assume was a televised Baptist sermon, but it was more like a concert. They were singing some kind of jazz-rock hybrid and the priest started synchronized dancing with one of the singers, who started using a hamster voice. I felt it better to just not ask.