Month: October 2018

While I forgot to get any pictures of the train to Osaka, it was a really fun ride. Mark and the boy played the new switch and I watched the scenery go by. unfortunately, as is often the case, we couldn’t see Mt Fuji from the train because it was too cloudy.   Alex even got to get an ice cream on the train (because Mark loves him more than I do).  While we were waiting to board the train, because I have to get everywhere ridiculously early, Mark and Alex wandered around the train station and found a place that sold sandwiches- we had french sandwiches and a baguette to share on our bullet train ride.

Upon arriving in Osaka, we had to get on a metro to head to our hotel, and a bit of a walk as we figured out where our hotel was.   We stayed at the Midi Hotel, and while it wasn’t fancy, it was clean and had a huge pull out couch bed for Alex (which was a serious upgrade from the half couch/ chaise lounge thing from the Tokyo hotel).  It had a real key that we had to turn in each time we left the room, which was both quaint and slightly annoying.

After a quick rest, we decided to head to the famous Dontonburi section of Osaka, to see what they had to offer food wise.  It was a little too far to walk, so another hop back on the metro and then a bit more wandering to find it.

One of the first things we saw was a Daiso store.  I had been looking for one in Tokyo but hadn’t come across it there.  For those of you who don’t know, Daiso is a dollar store, but a really nice one.  They are all over Japan, and sell some really cool and unique things.

 

Osaka (and especially the Dontonburi area) is known for the big displays outside of restaurants.  I was not disappointed in the variety and size of them. The boat pictured below was big enough that three or four people could sit comfortably in, with room for gear. And it was hanging outside a sushi restaurant.

While we were wandering through the back streets, we came upon a little temple, and like in Tokyo where we happened to find the world’s busiest street by accident, this time we found the famous Osaka Hozenji temple by accident.

We stumbled upon this at the right time, and the monks were singing. Alex gave them a small offering , and they gave us a small packet of band aids with something written in Japanese.

This is the shelter for the statue. It is a statue of Fudo Myo-O, who is a deity that takes away bad luck and greed.  In front of the statue is a little box to put your donation in, and then you take a ladle of water from the bowl, make a wish and splash the water on the statue (for extra luck we put some on the little statues as well)

It was a really neat experience, and I think it was one of my favorite moments from Japan.

Alex wanted to hang up an Ema, which is a small wooden plague, that you write your prayer or wish on, and then hang it up with the others.  At special times and events, those wooden prayers are burned and supposedly  allow your prayer to come true.

This kid just killed me with his wish, I was trying not to cry, he was so earnest in his wanting another cat.  So he wrote it down and hung it up.

 

After we finished hanging our wish up, we went in search of food (which was really Mark’s wish)   I couldn’t get enough of the fun decorations advertising for restaurants.

 

 

The Octopus is a landmark of Osaka that most people know, and despite saying over and over that we wanted to try them, we did not end up sampling the octopus balls that they sell there.  It is a specialty of Osaka, but by the time we walked by this place, we were always too full!

Dontonburi has a fun and exciting feel to it, lots of people, lots of restaurant hawkers trying to get you to come to their place.

Each place has their own unique sign, and while I am going to bombard you with photos, this isn’t even all of them!

We stood in line for a little while for the angry guy place, but then we found out that it wasn’t actually the sushi place we wanted, but a tempura place.

This first night, we were looking for conveyor belt sushi (which Alex just loved). Mark found a place on yelp and we went to find it.  The line was pretty long, and Alex was getting hangry.  So he waited in a very typical Chinese squat.  

I couldn’t get over his face here, it’s so very him. He’s both happy I’m taking his picture and irritated because it’s taking too long to go eat.

No pictures of the sushi place, because I was too busy eating and being excited about sushi. Alex again ate his weight in salmon and tuna,  Mark splurged on a few nice pieces of tuna, and I discovered tuna salad sushi is actually pretty awesome here.

The crowds were starting to pick up by the time we got done eating, and it started being a little chaotic. So we walked around in search of ice cream and then decided it was time to head back to the hotel.

 

 

Dontonburi was great, and we went there again the next night, so the next post will have some more pictures of that.

 

Our family is pretty into board games, and when I say that, I mean, one footlocker we brought to China was just games.   We also got into doing escape rooms together.  There aren’t any english escape rooms that we could find in China, but we did find two in Japan.  The first was Escape Tokyo I think.   When I booked the hotel I thought isn’t that convenient, it will be walking distance to the owl cafe and the escape room… and it was, but a long hot walk. By the time we got there, I was dying and I think we just barely made it before our time to start.

While in general, I applaud the efforts of the guys running the escape room, it wasn’t our favorite one by a long shot.  I won’t ruin it in case anyone else heads to Tokyo to escape, but some of the clues were ridiculously hard to figure out, and even after they were explained to us, we still weren’t quite sure how the one puzzle worked.

After our failed attempt to escape, we grabbed a Mister donut across the street and recuperated from the walk and running around in the escape room.    As we were leaving, we saw another group of the Mario go-kart Tour.

 

We needed to head to the main train station to buy our tickets to Osaka the next day, so we hopped on the metro and headed to Grand Central.

 

Leaving Grand Central after getting our tickets, we decided to walk to a famous spot in Tokyo, the Emperor’s palace. The walk there (while still really hot) was so lovely. Right next to the busy train station and shopping area was this peaceful little lake and there were two swans swimming around it.

Alex was having such a good time watching the swans it was hard to get him to keep heading to the palace.

The first views of the palace area, it may not look like it, but this is all surrounded by water too, but it’s covered in water lilies so thick that it looked like grass.

The gate way into the palace. There were more people here than I was expecting given the heat.   As soon as we got into the park, there were signs warning about heat stroke and directions to the air-conditioned hut to cool down. That was our first stop.   I was so hot, I couldn’t make it any farther, so I sat at the bottom of a hill and Alex and Mark went up to see the remains of the palace.   The pictures below were all taken by Mark.

After all this, we went back to the hotel to cool down and recuperate a bit (and on the way home clean glasses again)

We had one more place to eat in Tokyo, another Food Ranger recommendation, Ippudo. This was a really great ramen place, and i think my favorite place to eat in Toyko. it was nice because it was a big table that we shared with another family. The food was terrific, i had a spicy tofu based ramen and the gyoza were so amazing.

the other family did rock paper scissors at the end of the meal to decide who was going to pay, and we all laughed and smiled when the son lost and had to pay- and then the mom asked Alex to play. He lost but said we had to pay anyway.

Leaving the restaurant we met a group from China who asked Alex about himself and they lit up when he said he lived in China and knew Chinese. We ended our stay in Tokyo on a really high note, with tons of great memories. Early the next morning, we would leave for Osaka!!