Frenz (Osaka II)

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After Lunch ( duck meat in broth plus udon) at a Noodle place called Imai 今井 , in the middle of a busy pedestrian shopping street we went to Shitennoji 四天王寺 the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan, established by Prince Shotoku who introduced Buddhism to Japan in the 6th century. It has a beautiful 4 tiered stupa. There were plenty of statues of the Bodhisattva Jizo too, the guardian deity of infants and children.


To rest our weary legs we ventured to the Osaka branch of Café de Flore, that famous place in Saint Germain de Prés, situated in a underground shopping mall. It looks like a mini version complete with a terrace, bottles of champagne etc. We indulged in Pernod and Suze with water and ice. Great...!!

After a snooze we decided to do Sushi. Takeshi, Teru's friend joined us too. Last year in Kobe he was suffering from a bad toothache and guess what .. we meet again and voilá the toothach is back again. Either that makes me the tooth fairy or he has a chronic tooth ache problem.

Over dinner you hear the strangest things. I knew that the Japanese Business Federation, known here as the Keidanren 経団連 , is a very powerful lobby and part of that iron triangle (Government, Bureaucracy and Big business) but they also manage to block medication to come in from abroad. In this case Takeshi, who is a psychiatrist, cannot prescribe Prozac or other efficient medication for depression because the Japanese pharmaceutical industries are still in trial runs and till they can produce and sell their own they just block the import of it. It's absolutely scandalous since there is a lot of depression related suicide here (e.g. people get together via the internet and commit suicide together). Consumer groups are not big and certainly not influential. The contraceptive pill wasn't allowed in till just about a couple of years ago under the pretext that more trials needed to be done but in reality because doctors here were making more money from performing abortions than writing out prescriptions.
When Viagra however hit the world and was quickly released here without any trials.. they couldn't keep the contraceptive excuse going so now it is finally available to women here too.

Teru and Takeshi were knackered so I had to go out by myself. Ended up in Frenz, a tiny but very lively place run by an English guy called... Paul. Had a lot of fun and talked to a million people (so to speak). Definitely a place to visit again.