Osaka – Where to, Gumshoe?

Osaka/Tokyo (Day 48): Konnichiwa, Tokyo!

April 17, 2016

This morning we woke up earlier to finish packing and to check out of our hotel. I’ll miss all the comforts of that hotel room for the rest of our trip. We were spoiled!

7 Yi-Ma met us in the lobby at 10am to bring us to her church for Sunday Service. The church that 7 Yi-Ma goes to is called Osaka Chinese Presbyterian Church. The congregation is 80% Taiwanese people living in Osaka and the rest are mostly Japanese people. The service is an hour and 45 minutes (a lot longer than a Catholic Mass), and is said in Mandarin and Japanese. It’s no wonder the service is long, because everything has to be repeated twice.

When we walked into the church, the greeter asked 7 Yi-Ma to write down our names and where we’re from so they could introduce us to the congregation at the end of the service. Tim was able to understand the majority of the service and translated bits and pieces of it to me on the spot. It was nice to be part of the service, even though I didn’t understand anything, I’m glad 7 Yi-Ma took us to her church. It felt like a very good community to be a part of and I’m glad that she has that in Osaka. We sat beside Tim’s extended relatives, they are 7 Yi-Ma’s oldest brother’s son. I know, a bit confusing, but they’re related to Tim (Tim: my first cousin, once removed, or more specifically, the oldest brother of my paternal grandma’s second son). Tim’s Dad’s side of the family is quite extensive and seem to be all over the globe.

After church we took the subway back to our hotel since we left our bags there. On the way to the restaurant for lunch, I noticed a cookie counter that Tim mentioned he really liked at Takashimaya, called Yoku Moku. I pointed to it to show him. 7 Yi-Ma saw me pointing to it and Tim told her that I recognized the brand because he told me about it yesterday. Then she b-lined it to their counter and bought us a variety of cookies to take with us home and for our train ride. That was very nice of her, but we also felt bad for pointing it out since she’s already been so generous to us during our time in Osaka.

The cookies are really good. I can see why Tim enjoys them. I just googled Yoku Moku and it looks like you can get them at Neiman Marcus and Shirokiya in Hawaii, so I won’t feel too bad if we eat them all before we get home (Tim: because we go to Hawaii all the time?).

For lunch, 7 Yi-Ma treated us to an unagi lunch. We went to the same restaurant as we did the first night we arrived in Osaka since that restaurant specializes in unagi. The unagi here ranged from 1,500 JPY = $17 CAD to 3,100 JPY = $36 CAD. As Tim mentioned before, 7 Yi-Ma takes her unagi seriously and ordered the three of us the 3,100 JPY box. The set was presented in a square box and was delicious. She told us that you don’t have to eat all the rice, but we both did. We liked to pour more unagi sauce over the rice. They could probably tell we weren’t Japanese when we did that. It’s like people pouring soy sauce over their white rice (Tim: nothing wrong with that :P).

After lunch, we took the subway towards Shin-Osaka Station, our Shinkansen (high speed rail) to Tokyo was leaving at 3:16pm. 7 Yi-Ma took the train with us until we had to transfer. I felt sad saying goodbye to her as we waved goodbye from the train. I think having to say goodbye to family on this trip has made me very emotional.

We got to Shin-Osaka with about 45 minutes to spare before our train left for Tokyo. I walked around the station looking at the bento box counter, which serves really good looking train food. Unfortunately, we were really full from lunch and we had cookies to eat so we didn’t get a bento. William had mentioned these specific boxes because there is a set that comes with a ceramic bowl that you can keep.

Our train ride was just under 3 hours because our train made quite a few stops along the way. It went by quickly since I got to watch the Amazing Race and the Mindy Project. Then as usual, I fell asleep until we got to Tokyo Station.

Tokyo Station wasn’t as crazy as I imagined it to be. Maybe my expectations of the crowds here are very high so when we got there it was manageable, and I suppose it was a Sunday, and not a weekday. We transferred to the Chuo Line to get to Shinjuku Station. We booked an apartment on Airbnb that is about a 7 minute walk from Shinjuku Station. We followed the host’s instructions and didn’t have any problems finding the place. It’s amazing that you can go from an area with thousands of people to an area where it’s clearly more residential and is very quiet within a couple of blocks.

When we got into the apartment, everything was exactly like the pictures and it is very clean. The location is really central considering we are only paying $85 CAD/night (before taxes and fees, the list price seems to be around $110 CAD/night normally, but we booked last minute and the room was still available so the price probably dropped). Most hotels in central Tokyo are closer to $200/night. The apartment also has a washing machine, which is great. We won’t have to hand wash while we’re here. The host also provided a portable cellular wif hotspot, which we can bring around with us while in Tokyo. (Tim: Speeds aren’t so great though).

We settled in and I looked up some sushi restaurants in the Shinjuku area. Since coming to Japan, we haven’t really had much sushi since there’s so many other options. I felt like having sushi today and wanted to try a conveyor belt restaurant. Unlike North American conveyor belt sushi restaurants, the ones in Japan seem very popular amongst locals and they serve quality sushi.

We headed out towards the part of Shinjuku where all the action is and searched for Numakuzo. When we found the restaurant, there was a line up (it was around 8:30pm), we waited about 10 minutes before being seated. I actually don’t think I’ve been to a conveyor belt sushi place before. I only remember that Daimatsu (where Ebisu is now) in Richmond used to have one a long time ago.

The restaurant was filled with Japanese people and tourists (I see that it’s been listed in Lonely Planet). When we sat down, there weren’t that many plates going around as I guess we came at a really busy time so the sushi chefs weren’t keeping up. If you don’t see something you like you can order it directly from the sushi chef. After you’re done, the waitress comes and counts the number of plates you have. Overall, I thought the sushi was really good. My favourite was the Bluefin Otoro (fatty tuna) which melted in our mouths. It was our most expensive piece at 520 JPY = $6 CAD. You can get this at some restaurants in Vancouver for about $12-$15 per piece.

We ate more than I expected and it worked out to be about $53 CAD, which isn’t too bad considering we had some pretty special pieces of fish, like the Bluefin Otoro. We walked back towards the apartment and stopped by Lawson’s to buy some yogurt for breakfast tomorrow morning.

My first impression of Tokyo is that the city is huge – taller buildings, bright lights, super wide cross walks and lots of people. I feel very insignificant in a city like this. Even though Shinjuku was very busy (around the few streets that we walked through), it didn’t bother me as much as I thought. I think it’s because it’s like an organized chaos and there’s no one pushing you out of the way to get past you (like in Hong Kong). We’ll see how I feel tomorrow, maybe we’ll see more tour groups.

Steps today: 10,500

Osaka (Day 47): Shopping & Okonomiyaki

April 16, 2016

Today was our last day in Osaka and we didn’t have any day trips planned. We decided to take it easy, go shopping, and have okonomiyaki (since we tried Hiroshima’s style already) for dinner. The morning started off with us watching the news about the effects of the 7.3 magnitude earthquake in Kumamoto. They showed the area on the map where the active fault is and it stretched north to Beppu, where we were last week. We’re very lucky!

We headed out and went for a casual lunch at a restaurant that I had seen around other cities, called Nakau. There was one right across the street from our hotel. It was a casual and inexpensive restaurant that serves rice and noodle dishes. Similar to a lot of other casual restaurants in Japan, you have to order and pay at the kiosk and print your ticket out to give to the waitress when you sit down. The food was good. I would go back to Nakau again. While eating, we were talking about how eating in Japan can be very inexpensive if you go to places like this. No wonder there were so many school aged boys here. It’s cheaper than eating at McDonald’s.

After our lunch, we stumbled upon Kuromon Ichiba Market, which is fairly close to Namba Station. This market is mainly a food market full of fresh seafood and fruit stalls. Since we just ate lunch, we just browsed and observed some of the prices for sushi and gawked at the crazy prices of fruit. Although I really like Japanese food, I don’t know if I could live in Japan and not have access to cheaper fresh fruit. We have been in normal grocery stores (vs. just the high end department stores) and their apples are still about $2.50 CAD each and bananas are around $1.50 CAD each (those were the cheapest prices I saw).

After going through the market, we started to make our way towards Shinsaibashi. On our way there, we came across a large department store near Namba Station called, Takashimaya. The exterior of the building looked very nice so we decided to go inside.

Before leaving the hotel, I was looking online to see if there were any Osaka specific items to buy. I found out that Glico (the company that makes Pocky (Tim: and delicious curry)) has a high end line of Pocky sticks called, Baton d’or (which means “Golden Stick” in French, but obviously it sounds fancier if it’s said in French). They are only sold in two department stores in Osaka. (I later found out they have a location in Kyoto and Fukuoka now… at least they don’t have any in Tokyo (Tim: why is that a good thing?)). I wasn’t going to actively go out of my way to search for them but when we came across Takashimaya, I remembered they sold them there so I wanted to check it out.

I love B1 (Basement floor) in every train station and department store in Japan because it’s full of delicious food. They always have a great selection of take out food as well as perfect looking desserts and goodies. If I were going home from Japan this trip, I think I would buy a lot of my souvenirs from here. But since that’s not the case, we just browsed. While we browsed, we found Baton d’or! There was a line up of mostly Japanese customers buying basket full of them. When we got closer, we saw that each box of 20 sticks were 500 JPY = $5.90 CAD. For the price of a normal box of Pocky here (which is usually around 100-120 JPY), it’s about 5 times the price.

Being a Pocky enthusiast, I felt like it was my duty to try at least one box. We lined up at a good time since the line up only continued to snake around the corner after we got in the line. We (I) decided to try three flavours: Strawberry, Uji matcha and Sicilian lemon. So why are they so special? Apparently the ingredients they use to make these pocky are all fresh ingredients (as they have a fairly short expiry, about a month) and they use real butter. Oh, and their flavours are seasonal and location specific (Asians love exclusivity, and I guess I’m a sucker for it as well).

We walked around and shopped for the next couple of hours before dinner time. We went into a store called, Tokyu Hands, which is a store that I’ve seen throughout Japan and even in Taipei. The Osaka location had 7 levels and we went to each floor to check things out. They have a full range of items, from fancy backpacks to home hardware tools to stationery.

Before finding the restaurant, we walked past the arcade to see if there were any men dancing on the Dance Evolution machine. William showed us a video of a man (who appeared to be in his 50’s) dancing really well and even doing the moves while facing the opposite way (so obviously he had them memorized). We didn’t have any luck seeing any dancers yesterday, but today there were about 3-4 men lined up to dance. These men had backpacks and towels with them. It was sort of like they just danced there to get a workout. We went back a couple of times and watched different guys. The guy who could do the moves without looking at the screen was sitting waiting for his turn, but we must have missed him because when we went back after dinner he was gone. Tim took some videos of them, they were all really good. I guess you have to be dancing in “master mode” if you want to dance in front of a crowd (there’s circle of people watching outside).

William recommended a place tucked away in one of the side streets in the area, which was a good suggestion because so many restaurants on the main drag had long line ups (Saturday night!). After admiring the dancers, we found the okonomiyaki restaurant. We got a seat right away and ordered two okonomiyakis – pork and octopus (800 JPY each = $9.45 CAD). They were smaller than the ones in Hiroshima which is why we felt like we could each have our own this time.

I enjoyed this okonomiyaki more than I did in Hiroshima. There’s less frills to this one and I liked how everything is mixed in and not separate layers. But perhaps I’m just used to eating more Osaka style okonomiyakis since that’s what they would make in Vancouver at Japanese restaurants that serve okonomiyaki.

After dinner, we had one last look at the arcade to watch the dancers and we made our way back to the hotel. We had to pack tonight as we’re heading to Tokyo tomorrow. It was nice being able to stay in one (very comfortable) place for 7 nights. Hopefully our Airbnb is a good one. It should be based on the reviews (*fingers crossed*).

I packed up my backpack and it’s looking pretty full. We’ll have to come back to Japan on another trip so I can bring home all the yummy snacks and skin care products (Tim: or buy them at home/order them online). My cousin, who is living in Melbourne (who knows her cosmetics), asked me to look for a Biore UV sunscreen (it won a cosmetic award in Japan in 2014). Ever since Taiwan, I’ve been looking at the product to compare prices every where we went (I didn’t see it in Seoul). Since this particular cream is made in Japan, it’s slightly cheaper here than in Taiwan. Basically, every time we went shopping I’ve stared at their line of sun screen products and analyzed how much I should buy for myself and if I could fit it in my bag. I think Tim officially hates this product (but is also an expert in the whole product line) because of how many time I’ve gone into a drugstore to look for it (Tim: easily 20+). Having bought all the requested products and a few for myself and my sister, I will (try to) stop looking at them and comparing prices (seems to fluctuate a lot).

Steps today: 16,600

Osaka/Nara (Day 45): Sakura and Deer

April 14, 2016

After such a rainy night, we woke up to blue and sunny skies. Our plan for today was to visit Nara, a small city that is about 30 minutes away from Osaka. After Kyoto, Nara has the most historical sights (temples and shrines) in Japan. But more importantly (for me), Nara is home to a lot of wild (but very tame) deer that roam around the parks. I had been waiting to go to Nara for a while and was quite excited to see the deer after getting a small taste of it while in Miyajima.

While we were getting ready to head out, I received an email from an old manager of mine from EY. He had just gotten back from Japan (Kansai region, where we are now) and told me about a cherry blossom festival hosted by the Japan Mint (in Osaka) that should be in full bloom right now. It sounded interesting because the Japan Mint has over 100 different breeds of cherry blossom (and over 300 trees overall) that line the river walkway. We looked online and saw that the last day of the festival was today, so we decided to check it out before heading to Nara.

When we arrived at the train station closest to the Japan Mint, there were police all over directing traffic. We thought there was a police incident since they weren’t letting pedestrians through on one side of the bridge. We later discovered that the reason why there was crowd control and so many police officers around was because of the cherry blossom festival.

When we made it to the grounds, it was quite crowded (but not too crazy). The cherry blossoms had fully bloomed and some already had quite a bit of green to them. They all looked so beautiful and I liked how the walkway was one way so you could walk in sync with everyone else down the 500m cherry blossom walkway. We spent a lot of time stopping and taking pictures of the beautiful blossoms and looking at all the different types that we haven’t seen before. We each took a lot of pictures (Tim took over 100 pictures!).

We’re lucky that we happen to be in Japan for their sakura season as many people purposely plan to come to Japan specifically for their blossoms. Japan during April just fit into our trip planning perfectly so that’s why we’re here.

We’re happy that we got to catch the last day of the festival and lucky that my old manager emailed me this morning to let us know or else we wouldn’t have even known it was going on in Osaka (we didn’t do much research).

We had a few hours to go to Nara before we had to come back to Osaka to meet Tim’s Great Aunt for dinner. We took the JR train to Nara Station and walked towards Nara Park to see the deer and also some historical sights. My first impression of Nara is that it’s a very laid back town. I think because when we got to the station and walked out, I didn’t see a sea of people like in Kyoto. Even the main walking street to Nara Park didn’t have that many people walking along it, which was nice and relaxing.

When we made it to Nara Park, there were a lot of deer around. I kept wanting to stop and take pictures and pet them, but Tim kept saying there will be more as we go on so we don’t have to stop at each spot. He wanted to go to Todai-ji, a wooden temple that until 1998 was the largest wooden building in the world (Tim: pretty impressive for something built in 1709).

On our way to Todai-ji, there were crowds of deer, just roaming the park, resting in the shade, or chasing down people who would feed them. Around the park, there are vendors who sell deer food (stacks of round crackers) for 150 JPY = $1.75 CAD. My observation of the deer is that they’re very calm, until they see you have food and then they will follow you around and sometimes even tug at you if you don’t give them the crackers. Some people start to run away from the deer, which make the deer chase them… We saw a lot of Asian tourists hold the crackers and walk around with them holding them up high (teasing them), which made the deer more annoyed and more aggressive.

After walking around for a bit, I decided I wanted to try to feed the deer. I was a bit hesitant since I saw other people who fed them being a bit harassed by some deer in the process. I also figured they were teasing the deer so that’s why they were being aggressive. We bought a stack of crackers and the plan was to just hold on to the stack as we made our way back and we could feed deer along the way. Well, that plan didn’t last long as the deer knew I had them in my hands and followed us down a path. As soon as I turned around and tried to get the paper off that wrapped around the stack, they became aggressive and started to nibble at my shirt and backpack. I was panicking a bit and tried hard to get the crackers out as quickly as possible. One of the crackers got stuck to my shirt on my stomach and a bunch of deer tried to bite it off. Tim was taking a video of me the whole time.

Tim also decided he wanted to feed the deer. The deer seemed to have more respect for Tim and weren’t so aggressive with him while he was feeding them. We have videos of both our feedings, it’s quite a drastic difference.

Despite that semi-traumatizing experience of feeding the deer, I had a lot of fun in Nara. I enjoyed the peacefulness of the area and the deer were pretty cool. On our way back to the train station, we stopped by a takoyaki stand and shared an order of six.

We got back to into Osaka just in time to go back to our room to change (needed to change shirts after mine had deer saliva all over it). We met 7 Yi-Ma in our lobby downstairs and went for dinner in the department store top floor again, but this time to a traditional Kyoto style restaurant.

The restaurant is called Minokichi and is one of the oldest and historical restaurants (opened in 1716) in Kyoto (with a branch in Osaka). 7 Yi-Ma treated us to a very delicious and unique seven course meal. Everything was so beautifully put together and unique in flavours. We haven’t had such a traditional Japanese meal before, so it was a nice change from what we’re used to eating as Japanese food.

Second course was a special (Tim: white miso) miso soup that I forgot to take a picture of.

It was a wonderful meal and we’re so thankful for 7 Yi-Ma for taking us there and for being such a gracious host to us while we’re in Osaka. We’ll see her again on Sunday, before we leave for Tokyo.

After we finished dinner, we bought some yogurt from Family Mart for our breakfast tomorrow and just relaxed for the rest of the night.

Steps for today: 21, 500

Osaka (Day 43): Osaka Castle and Bright Lights

April 12, 2016

Today was another sunny day in Osaka. The temperatures looked a bit better than yesterday which made for a perfect opportunity to go to Osaka Castle and hang out at the park in afternoon. Our only other plan for the day was to meet up with my friend, Mable, and her boyfriend, Keith, for dinner in Dotonburi.

Since it was such a nice day, we decided to have a picnic in the park around Osaka Castle. I’ve noticed that there are so many take out options at restaurants with nice bentos that look so pretty and tasty. Below the department store beside our hotel is a basement full of food options. we decided to go there to see if anything caught our eye. After making a quick loop at our options, we decided to go for battera sushi, which Osaka specializes in.

After getting our sushi, we took the subway to Osaka Castle. We also wanted to get some other food, possibly a salad, from a convenience store. We thought we would find one closer to the castle since convenience stores are everywhere in Japan. But when we got out of the station, we couldn’t find one at all. We walked for about 10 minutes or so down another street and we finally found a Family Mart… There were actually two within a block of each other.

At Family Mart, we got a salad, Glico pudding, and a hot chicken cutlet (Tim: and a grape soda). We headed to the Osaka Castle park area with our picnic food in tow. We were really excited to eat our lovely spread outside on a nice spring day. We found a nice bench under a tree and unpacked our lunch. Tim’s sushi was very pretty, some people even took a picture of our lunch.

After our nice and relaxing lunch, we made our way past the walls toward Osaka Castle. The grounds were quite busy and we noticed there were many tours heading into the castle (lots of cruisers). The castle costs 600 JPY ($7.10 CAD) per person (Tim: or adults) to go in. Each floor has an exhibit and there’s a viewing deck at the top which has views of the city from all sides.

We walked up to the top of the viewing deck and made our way down through each floor (which is their recommended route). Osaka Castle is the nicest castle I’ve seen on our trip so far. Fukuoka’s Castle is basically ruins and Hiroshima’s wasn’t as grand looking. Like many of the other cities, Osaka’s Castle is not the original building. It was rebuilt during the 1930’s to match the original and was funded by citizens of Osaka.

IMG_20160412_152801 — Infront of one of the largest rocks (Tim: I think it’s the largest rock) used to build the original wall.

After we were done with the castle we walked towards Dotonburi, where we were meeting Mable and Keith. We took a leisurely stroll along the Tosaborigawa River and walked along the walkway, which I enjoyed a lot. The city outside of Dotonburi is so calm. It’s not that I don’t like big cities (referring to my post yesterday), I just don’t like huge crowds, they make me really upset.

Eventually we made it back to Shinsaebashi, where we visited a few shops again before meeting Mable and Keith in Dontonburi. There are a lot of shops that sell just Japanese snacks. These shops make me so happy.

We met Mable and Keith infront of the Forever 21. Lucky we picked a store to meet in front of because if we had just said the bridge near the Glico sign, then we would be in trouble as there were so many people.

We headed to an izakaya place called Kitazo, which was more of a local restaurant than a tourist joint. The food was good but a little pricey for an izakaya considering we didn’t order a whole lot. But it was okay since we planned on going out after to try some street foods that are a lot easier to share amongst four people instead of just two.

After dinner we went across the bridge to check out the Glico sign. It was the first time we had been in Dotonburi at night, which looks nicer at night than in the daytime (in my opinion). The neon lights everywhere gave the area so much life!

After taking multiple pictures on the bridge, we headed to a store called Don Quijote. This is a Japanese department store (Tim:ish) that literally sells everything. You wouldn’t think so, but the top floor has high end luxury goods! This location had 6 floors of food, cosmetics, electronics, clothing… everything! The busiest part of the store was probably the first floor full of Japanese snacks and treats. Mable and Keith are in Japan for a total of 3 weeks, and heading home next week, so they were able to buy a lot of stuff. When I saw them loading up their basket for gifts to bring home, I was a bit jealous. She said she has one dedicated suitcase full of food! In some ways, I was able to live through Mable telling her what I would buy to bring home, and she would end up putting it in her basket.

After the takoyaki and gyozas, we had the best thing for dessert, a warm melon bun filled with vanilla ice cream. A melon bun is basically like a Chinese pineapple bun (bolo bao), but the Japanese version of it. Tim and I ordered one to share and it was very good. Tim says it’s one of his favourite things he’s eaten all trip. The melon bun was freshly baked, which was a nice surprise.

This part of Dontonburi had stalls/food trucks around with a seating area. We sat down and ate our ice cream and then ended up getting some drinks (beers for them and a peach Canada Dry for me) and sat around to chat for a bit. It’s great to hear about their adventures in Japan as we’ll be going to some of the cities they’ve already been and vice versa. They liked Sapporo the best and made their food sound amazing. I can’t wait to go visit ourselves!

I know I’ve always said it’s nice to see familiar faces while you’re away, but it’s even better to see good friends. Mable and I agreed that as nice as it is to travel with your significant other, it’s great to be able to see friends, as you can try more food with them, they can take pictures for you (instead of asking randoms (Tim: with questionable photography skills…)), and you can talk to someone else besides your significant other in a country that doesn’t speak English. I’m glad we were able to meet while we were both in Japan.

Today was a fun day. It also turned out to be a longer day since we didn’t come back to the hotel at all. We’re thinking of heading to Kyoto tomorrow for the day, it only takes about 15 minutes on the Shinkasen from Osaka. It’ll take us longer to get to Osaka Station than it will to get to Kyoto.

Steps today: 25, 200

Osaka (Day 42): Overwhelmed in Dotonburi

April 11, 2016

It was our first morning in Osaka and the sun was shining. We didn’t have any plans for today, which was nice. We took our time getting ready and did a bit of planning for the upcoming legs of our trip. The hotel has a pretty large desk that both Tim and I could work on (perfect set up). We decided to just walk around the city and head towards the popular Dotonburi area for lunch.

When we walked outside, the sun was shining but it was very windy and there was a cold breeze that we haven’t felt since leaving Vancouver at the end of February. We walked briskly and made sure we were on the sunny side of the sidewalk to stay warm. It was about a 10 minute walk to the Dotonburi area, not 25 minutes according to Google Maps.

Once we got to Dotonburi, I was feeling very overwhelmed with all the craziness and frenzy of the area. There were so many tourists and people in general that it made trying to decide where to eat difficult. The prices around that area are a lot more inflated than what we saw on the way to Dotonburi (obviously). There were a lot of takoyaki street stalls, which Osaka is famous for, that we’ll save for another night. We walked up and down the streets and couldn’t decide or find something that we thought looked like good value. We decided to walk one block out of the craziness and ended up going to a ten don restaurant (tempura restaurant).

The restaurant is called “Tenya”, it’s a casual Japanese restaurant that serves assorted tempuras over rice. It’s a Japanese chain that is based out of Tokyo. Inside the restaurant were a lot of locals having their lunch breaks (I guess they know not to even go into the main part of Dotonburi for lunch).

The food came quickly and it was tasty. I think we were both very hungry as we ate pretty fast. After we finished lunch, we continued to walk around the shopping area, hoping to make it to the Yodo River. We ended up in an area called, Shinsaibashi, which is Osaka’s main shopping district.

We went into a Uniqlo and stayed there for about an hour. We’ve been into multiple Uniqlos in Taiwan, Seoul and now Japan, but this is the first one I’ve been in where I actually tried on some clothes. I had a basket full of clothes to try on and went to the fitting room. When the sales associate lead me to the room, I walked in and she politely told me I needed to take my shoes off. Now I know that you have to take your shoes off while trying clothes on in Japan. I’m a North American small or sometimes medium, but here, I’m a medium or large(!!). At first my basket was full of items that were good deals but not practical for the trip, so after some thinking, I ended up buying practical items that I would need on this trip. These were mainly their Airism tank tops (light fabric that’s anti-odor and anti-bacterial) and a HeatTech long-sleeve (that I feel like I’ll need for here and for Sapporo). Airism tank tops and HeatTech were all 990 JPY = $11.80 CAD). Tim ~~was~~ [is] very patient with me ~~at Uniqlo~~ (Tim: fixed that for you), he found WiFi and sat on the bench and waited for me.

It’s too bad that for Tax Free shopping in Japan, you need to buy a minimum of 10,000 JPY = $119 CAD at one store in order to get 8% tax back. In Korea, you only needed to spend around $30 CAD. A small annoyance about Japan is that they charge tax on top of the marked price (just like North America) (Tim: Not universally, some places include tax, some places don’t). This is uncommon in Asia, as all the others countries I’ve been to have tax included in their prices.

We walked a bit more through Shinsaibashi and went into a couple more stores to browse. There was a 3 level Sanrio Store, which got me excited. My Mom used to own a Sanrio Store in Vancouver when I was young and I have always loved Sanrio stuff. I went to each floor and looked at everything, the one big difference between the Japanese Sanrio store and ones they had North America (do they even have any stores left?) is that they don’t have a candy section. I was looking forward to getting some cool gum or suckers.

After a fairly draining afternoon in Dotonburi and Shinsaibashi, we went back to the hotel to rest and do some work before we went back out at night. I ended up watching two episodes of the Amazing Race while I unpacked and repacked everything in my suitcase, did some laundry and took inventory of my Korean socks and face masks. Tim worked on his blog post about our final spending summary for Korea (which will be posted later today). Before we knew it, it was already 8:30pm when we went back out for dinner. We thought we would just stay close to the hotel and not go back out to Dotonburi as originally planned since we were likely going to end up there tomorrow night with my friend Mable and her boyfriend, Keith (who are also in Osaka for the next few days).

We went back to the top floor of the department store beside the hotel, where they have a bunch of restaurants. When we went outside for the short period of time to cross the street, it was really cold out. I think it was about 5 degrees Celsius, so it was good we stayed in tonight as we weren’t dressed appropriately.

We ended up picking a restaurant that had an assortment of udon and rice dishes. Tim got an Oyako Udon and I got a beef an egg donburi. Our dinner was very simple and quick. The food was good, but a tad overpriced compared to donburis outside of a department store.

Tomorrow we’ll be going to Osaka Castle and then meeting up with Mable and Keith for dinner around Dotonburi. We’re thinking of going to an izakaya since we’ll have more people so we can order and try more items. Looking forward to meeting up with friends from back home.

Today was a good, restful, and productive day. Osaka is a sprawling city and we’ve only ventured into a very narrow part of it. I’m looking forward to going to the Castle tomorrow and walking through the parks, away from the crowds for a nice afternoon stroll. I think I’m a mid-sized city kind of girl (if that’s even a thing). In terms of liveability, I can see myself living in some of the cities we’ve visited but it’s hard for me to picture living in a city as big as Seoul or Osaka. I enjoy big cities but I think large sprawling metropolitan areas intimidate me.

Steps Today: 14, 500

Miyajima/Hiroshima/Osaka (Day 41): Oh Deer!

April 10, 2016

We woke up later than we planned on but the bed was really comfortable. Tim researched that high tide in Miyajima was around 11:00am so we were still good on time. We checked out of the hotel and left our bags there around 9:30am. We decided to just walk to Hiroshima Station since we just missed one of the street cars and didn’t see any other one in the near distance. The walk was actually really nice and refreshing.

We made it to Hiroshima Station with a bit of time to spare as the next train leaving for Miyajima was at 10:13am. I bought a tuna onigiri (110 JPY = $1.30 CAD) and grape juice (100 JPY = $1.20 CAD) from 7-Eleven for breakfast on the train. The train ride to Miyajima was only about 20 minutes (Tim: we caught an express train that only made a few stops), so it was a quick ride there. Once we arrived, we had to take a short ferry across to Itsukushima, where the famous O-torii Gate is in the water.

When we got off the ferry and walked a short distance through town towards the shrine and O-torii Gate, we were greeted by some friendly Japanese deer.

After we finished walking through the shrine and temple area. We walked around the streets of vendors, which mostly sold a Miyajima specialty called, “Momiji Manju”, which are pancake like cakes shaped in a maple leaf. Another popular local dish are oysters prepared all ways: fried, grilled, or raw.

We had to keep a close eye on the time since we had to return to Hiroshima, grab our bags from the hotel, and be back at the train station by 4:17pm to head to Osaka. Surprisingly, we didn’t feel as rushed as I thought we would, we were ahead of schedule by about an hour so I felt a lot more relaxed than I did yesterday thinking about today (Tim: just thinking about the possibility of not being on time can stress Kait out).

We made our way back to Hiroshima Station to have lunch. Since we failed at eating tsukemen last night, Tim found that there was a Bakudanya at the train station! Considering we were only in Hiroshima for 24 hours, we were able to eat two dishes that they’re “most known for”: okonomiyaki and tsukemen.

The final consensus was that Tim’s cold tsukemen was better. I can imagine eating it on a hot summer’s day, it would be really refreshing. I like how they give you paper bibs since there is a lot of splashing when you dip your noodles into the soup. (Tim: You can also choose the level of spiciness, with the (sane) range going from 1-20. I chose 3 and felt like it was a reasonable level of spice. You can go extreme and get levels up to the 100s though… I shudder to think.)

After lunch, we walked back to the hotel. We were really full from lunch so it was good to walk it off. The sun started coming out so it was actually really warm walking back. We had to switch to the shadier side of the street. We got back to the hotel and picked up our bags and caught the street car back to Hiroshima Station. I was happy that we were able to walk to and from the station and only took the street car back when we had our heavy backpacks (saved ourselves 640 JPY = $7.70 CAD) (Tim: and more importantly, got to take in the sights and sounds of the streets as a pedestrian).

We got back to Hiroshima with a half hour to spare before boarding our train to Osaka. It was important we didn’t miss this train because we were meeting Tim’s Great-Aunt (7th Aunt on my Dad’s Mom’s side) on the platform at the station. She knew our train number and which car we were in and said she would be waiting on the platform for us (she also does not have a cell phone). Once we arrived at Shin-Osaka station (after a 1.5hr ride from Hiroshima on the high-speed rail), she was there waiting for us!

Tim’s Great-Aunt has been living in Osaka since she was 26 after finishing her medical degree there. She came to our wedding (we just realized it’s our 6 month anniversary already), so it was nice to be able to see her again this year. Tim doesn’t know her exact age, but she’s still working 4 days at week at the hospital (very impressive).

We took the subway to the hotel she booked for us for a week to drop off our bags before dinner. Osaka definitely feels like a huge city compared to Hiroshima and Fukuoka. I could only imagine what it would be like when we get to Tokyo. Tim says it’s good I eased my way into Japan, so I wouldn’t be so shocked going to Tokyo.

Tim’s Great-Aunt is very kind and hospitable and booked us at the Sheraton Miyako Osaka for a week when she found out we were coming to Osaka. This hotel is the nicest hotel we have/will stay at on our trip (Tim’s scared I’m going to get spoiled now). When we walked into the lobby with our huge backpacks and our hoodies, it felt like we didn’t really belong. Our room is on a the 18th floor so it has great views of the city. It is a normal North American sized room, which feels huge compared to the Japanese sized rooms we’ve been staying at the last few days. We’re both really happy to be able to just settled down here for a week.

Once we dropped our bags off, Tim’s 7-Yi Ma (Great-Aunt) took us for dinner at a restaurant in the mall that’s connected to the hotel. The restaurant was on the top floor of the mall and specialized in unagi. Tim mentioned that last time he was here with Jessica, his Great Aunt always took them out for unagi so he predicted we would have that for dinner as well, and he was right. She ordered dinner sets for us as well as an appetizer of tamago (egg) with unagi inside and a skewer of unagi innards.

After a delicious meal, 7-Yi Ma brought us downstairs to the grocery store and bought us fruit. I was joking to Tim that she probably looked at us and thought we needed to eat more fresh fruit. She bought us strawberries and oranges. Japanese fruits are all so perfect looking. We just finished eating the strawberries, they were all very sweet.

We decided to just relax in the hotel and catch up on the blog and roughly plan out our week. Looking forward to spending time in one place (with a couple of day trips close by). I think if we had to move out of a hotel room each night, I would burn out very quickly.

As always it’s so nice to have family around, and 7-Yi Ma has been so sweet to us. I know we are extremely lucky to be surrounded by such loving families.

Our total steps today: 22,000