Tsuki no Shizuku 月の雫 – Shin-Osaka

I absolutely LOVED, LOVED LOOOOOOOOOVED our first dinner/meal in Japan.  As we arrived quite late in the day in Osaka, we decided to spend the night at a hotel near the airport in the city of Shin-Osaka.  After we checked in, we walked around in search for food.  We were hungry!!

Just across the intersection of our hotel, we saw this big light box with the words “Everything 270Yen”.  It was Tsuki no Shizuku.  They had their menu placed outside so we took a look.  They even had a sign that says they had English menus!!!  As we were hungry, we quickly decided this would be the place and we stepped inside.

And MAN the Japanese are AWESOME!!!  When they say they have English menu, they meant that their TOUCH-SCREEN MENU has English!!!  A TOUCH-SCREEN MENU YO!!!  It was really fun and awesome!!!

Oh ya, we started off with Plum-wine drinks.  I had the Apricot Brandy and L had the Green Tea one. You got to pick it “on the rocks”, “with water”, “with soda water”.  We both had it with soda water.  It was a pretty big mug when it arrived.  We were so estatic~!!!

I found the apricot better as the green tea kind of brought a weird flavor to the plum wine.

When we sat down one of the servers very enthusiastically, using a combination of limited but passable English and hand gestures, recommended their homemade tofu.  As that’s one of the things I’ve always wanted to try while in Japan, we ordered it.

It was really really nice.  The aroma of soy bean was very prominent.  The texture was not what I expected though.  It was more of a grainy texture, not yet gritty though.  It was simply served by a sprinkling of salt on top.  I loved it.

Ooh  they also gave us free edamame!!  It was nice to know that these are not frozen!!  At least I don’t think so…

They also came on their beanstalk it was pretty cool to see~

On to the more adventurous stuff!!  Well…not really to us but maybe to some of you readers out there.

This is the Spit-roasted Chicken Gizzard.  We get to choose whether it was seasoned with salt or soy sauce.  We picked salt for all our food.

YUM YUM YUM!!!  It was chewy and muscle-y.  Can you believe you get this much for 270Yen?  Which comes to about just over $3!!! Per dish!!! Oh my god we were in heaven.  We were SO SO excited while we were browsing through the menu and each time the food came I had a mini heart-attack haha.

Next up, the Boiled and Roasted Whole Sea Eel.  At first I thought it was going to look like the eel we always see here with the sweet soy sauce, so I was surprised to see a pale white fish in front of us.

The texture was for sure different.  It was borderline mushy which really was what I loved about it!!!  It had a slight sweetness to it along with the salt.  It tasted so fresh to me it was absolutely amazing.  I kept telling L throughout our trip how much I enjoyed this.  This really probably was my most favorite food I had in Japan this whole trip.

This was called the Generous helping Fatty Flesh of Tuna, Salmon, and Harasu.  We thought of it as the toro of everything.

It was indeed fatty which made it really really delicious.  But it did all look the same (all looked orangey!!) so we couldn’t really tell what was what.  No matter though.  Every morsel was delicious!!

The Salted Cod Roe Spiced with Red Pepper and Carbonara w/ Udon in the Hot Stone Bowl was L’s choice because she likes the salted cod roe, aka. Mentaiko.  Don’t you just love how the English name basically is the description of the dish??

It was very very creamy with a tinge of spice.  I’m sure there was cheese in it too.  The combination of all that with the chewy udon made this very very enjoyable.  This was basically our filler of the night.

Alright now peeps, this may be my second favorite food of the whole trip.  What is this???  Well ladies and gents, this is Spit-roasted Chicken Skin.  Now, many years ago when I first had this in Japan, I didn’t know what I was eating and once I found out, I was insanely grossed-out.

But now I couldn’t wait to devour this!!!  In fact I had wanted a second order (but alas we didn’t…).  Again we chose it to be seasoned with salt.

The charred bits were a perfect crisp.  You might think the non-charred bits will have a nasty texture in your mouth.  Well, to some, it may be, but to us, they were bits of heaven.  Please don’t knock it ’til you try it~

We decided to try some Sea Urchin Sushi also, since it was so cheap.  They were actually quite small in comparison to what I was use to in Vancouver.  Another thing was that I noticed a tinge of bitterness in the uni flesh.  Honestly I didn’t enjoy this very much.

We wanted to try some more sashimi so we ordered (or thought we ordered) some form of chopped tuna.  But we don’t think we pressed the correct button…so we’re not really sure what this was haha.  It was some sort of chopped fish but it was quite salty.

Lastly we managed to order dessert.  This is the Melty Hot Cheese Cake.  Now when I picked it I thought it was going to be cheesecake, served hot.

But it’s actually a sponge/chiffon cake with cheddar and cream on top.  Interesting right??  It was actually very good and satisfied our sweet tooth.

In the end, this meal cost us around $40CAD.  For those of you interested, here’s the Japanese address:

大阪府大阪市淀川区宮原3-5-36
新大阪MTビル2号館 1F
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(It’s the place right behind that triangular thing…)

And the English address:

3 Chome-5-36 Miyahara, Yodogawa Ward, Osaka, Osaka Prefecture, Japan