Great balls of octopus tenticles.

With the majority of my Golden Week vacation spent in Osaka, I really wanted to try the local specialty, takoyaki. Unfortunately, about half of Japan seemed to have the same idea as me. As we walked, if you can call sliding your feet two inches at a time walking, across Shinsaibashi. It became apparent that we were not going to get any delicious goodness unless we waited about an hour in line. Absolutely every shop with either takoyaki or okonomiyaki on its sign had lines spanning a hundred feet or more. After a couple hours of walking, we gave up, and sat down at a run of the mill ramen shop.

Come Tuesday, our savior arrived. Walking to Universal Studios, through the shopping mall outside of Universal City Station on the JR Yumesaki Line, a big yellow and brown character was calling to us... Yes, it was the Takoyaki Museum. Like the Ramen Museum in Yokohama, the Takoyaki Museum is a gathering of 5 famous Osaka takoyaki shops in one convenient place. Admission is free, but plan on shelling out some dough, especially if you enjoy your takoyaki with beer. All of the stalls had offerings starting from 500 Yen, beers were about 400 Yen each. We ended up spending between 1500-2000 Yen at each stall... for one or two plates of takoyaki and two beers. I was pretty full after our adventure, and we only hit three stalls.

First off was 十八番 (Juu-hachi Ban), which was impressively good stuff. The outside was nice an crispy, and the inside remained creamy.

Next at bat was Aizuya (no picture), which was featured in the manga Oishinbo. We ordered normal takoyaki with green onion topping, which costs an extra 100 Yen. What is interesting about Aizuya is that they recommend eating the takoyaki plain, without sauce or mayo. Aizuya was also excellent, and even though we ate them plain, the takoyaki were perfectly flavored... Aizuya, the purist's takoyaki.

Finally, we ended our journey with a box of gooey goodness, unlike anything I've tried before: the mochi and cheese takoyaki from Kukuru. From a texture standpoint, the outsides do not get crispy like the others, because the cheese and mochi just melt together. However, the flavors are absolutely incredible, and match perfectly. The box you see below was emptied in seconds... a perfect ending to our takoyaki journey.