Craftman Umami

Weird place. The train above is loud, but the atmosphere is stylish and it was full of young ladies, mostly drinking coffee. The beer menu was singularly unimpressive and equally confusing to figure out. They need to stop relying on the J-Craft beers and get someone to write up a neatly organized menu. Should be more interesting when they start brewing their own.

Strange place under the train tracks near Umeda Station. The decor defies description, but let me try. Kinda sorta somewhere between fancy high-end, steampunk, and creepy, with a touch of Disney via Tim Burton. Loads of dry bushy plants stuck onto the tables. Hundreds of shiny black kegs with the Craftman logo stacked up three meters high in several parts of the room, to no apparent purpose. Huge round black lampshades painted gold inside. Massive concrete pillars to hold up the train line. And then ..... when a train passes above, the noise level makes conversation impossible and the entire places rattles like a roller coaster. Very confusing double menus, one laminated plastic and the other printed on paper, with what appeared to be the same beers. Beer list is very uninspired. The place currently makes one beer, and of course it was sold out. One member of our party took a quick look around, saw the beer menu, and said "I'm outta here," and we followed shortly thereafter. If you are dying of thirst, and are standing right in front of this place, and a server beckons you, holding a tall glass of beer .... well, you should go somewhere else.

A huge, very modern and nicely decorated brewpub, close to Osaka central station. Sadly, they only seem to brew just the one beer here themselves despite the impressive brewing kit, but there is a decent selection of beers on offer from other breweries too. Food looks good, although I didn't eat. English was an issue, but we got by. The major drawback to this place is the fact that it's directly under a railway bridge and it's very noisy indeed when a train passes overhead. For that reason I would not stay here for long, which is a shameas it's a rather nice place to hang out.