Moé Moé Rabu

One of the places that I have always wanted to goto was Osaka, but unfortunately the last trip I didn’t have enough time. This time though, with an entire month to burn, I could fit in the time. Well 3 days and 3 nights to be exact. Though it does seem to be a rather short time to head to Osaka but I figured 3 nights should be more than enough. So hit the jump to check out my first day experience of Osaka, the second largest city in Japan.

The first thing we had to do from our Tokyo hotel was to make our way to Tokyo station, cash in our JR pass voucher, and get a shinkansen ticket. But there was one thing that I was fearing about heading into Tokyo station at 10am. The amount of traffic. My last experience of heading through Tokyo station to head onto the shinkansen with all my luggage was quit a nightmare especially with all the amount of people criss-crossing. Luckily this time around it wasn’t so bad. Acquiring the JR pass was quite easy. Simply head into the ticket office and cash it in, at the same time you can also book a shinakansen ticket. However the JR pass only allows for travelers with a JR pass to ride the Hikari or Kodama type but most of the time it’s usually Hikari that’s easily available.

This is a Mega Muffin from McDonalds. We saw this when walking past one day and thought we had to try it out. But in the end it was no different to the regular McMuffins.

Traveling from Tokyo to Osaka was a 3 hour trip. Personally I thought it would have taken 4 hours given that my last trip to kyoto was about 3 hours (but then I was pretty dead after a day of Comiket69). Upon arriving at Osaka station we decided to take a cab to the hotel instead of trying to find the place. However the worst luck had struck us. The address/map given to us for the hotel was the incorrect one. So we got stuck at the incorrect hotel and having not been to Osaka before, we were a little lost. Thankfully I had the name of the hotel and decided to take another taxi to the correct location. Also by this time it actually started to rain lightly in Osaka. Eventually we got to the hotel, which just so happens to be on the OTHER SIDE OF THE RIVER, dumped our luggage and went exploring.

Wondering around we came across pretty much nothing around the hotel. The hotel we were staying at was based in the business district of Osaka, or northern section. This isn’t exactly the ideal place to be since it’s a little far from the JR Osaka station itself and the room was quite small. From the looks of things, if I’m coming back to Osaka I’ll definitely be choosing a hotel closer to the central station. As we walked along we stumbled upon a takoyaki store and at the same time got to experience a bit of Japan’s emergency service as there was fire trucks and an ambulance right out the front of where we were buying. I find it amusing how almost all the neighbours on the street start coming outside to see what is going on.

Exploring a little further we stumbled across a train station. We had trouble finding our bearings and what the closest station to the hotel was, but this station was pretty far out. Continuing on we found a shoutengai and it was exactly what we needed. My fellow comrades required to find new clothes and I required new shoes. Though I’ve been to shoutengais before, this one kept going. Once through one we came upon another, and then another. Buying items along the way, we walked through 3 out of 5 shoutengais before giving up and taking a taxi back to the hotel.

Resting at the hotel, and my feet were still killing me from Wonderfest’s adventure, we headed out to dinner. We did find a rather interesting place that caught our eye on our earlier exploration. One of my comrades is pretty big on eating and has created a list of places that he wanted to visit to eat. The first thing on the list was fugu (blowfish), and this restaurant we went to was specialising in fugu. Personally I wasn’t too keen on trying it but you know, you only live once. We opted for a course meal and by god a lot of it was delicious. The following pictures show what dishes were included in the course, keep in mind I don’t actually know the name of the dishes.

So a whole night of eating fugu dishes and sake was pretty awesome, and we were the only customers that night. So despite the minor setbacks upon arriving to Osaka it was a great end to our first night in Osaka. Oh and I had sake with this course set as well. Still going strong with the alcohol!!