さようなら Japan (Goodbye Japan)

The last day in Osaka was a little more laid back, but still very fun!  There was a famous temple nearby our hotel that I wanted to check out and I hadn’t asked for too many temples this trips, so everyone was agreeable. 

The first view of the shrine is the beautiful archway entrance. It kind of sneaks up on you because this is in the middle of a neighborhood of apartments and businesses. Then BAM! Shrine!

This shrine intrigued me for a couple of reasons, it was close to the hotel, it’s a pretty famous one, and it’s all post WWII reconstructions for the shrine buildings that were burned in air raids.  I like a little double dose of history for my buck. 

This is  Ema-Den 
It is believed that the wide-opened mouth of the lion swallows up evil spirits of worshipers and calls for victory and success. And who couldn’t use a little more victory and success in their lives.  At this time, I had applied for the PhD program, but I didn’t know if I had been accepted yet and I felt like some victory and success was needed. 

Alex wanted to do another wooden prayer card, but at 500 Yen a piece, we can’t afford his prayers!

At the top of the stairs to the Shrine, you put in your offering into the box, say your prayer, bow, and pull the ropes shown which rings a bell. 

Next to this , out of camera shot is a bin of different shaped keychain type souvenirs, and attached to them is a fortune (good or bad). Alex wanted to get one, but we couldn’t translate them and wouldn’t want to bring a bad luck fortune home with us.  

Mark and I had an idea for a B horror movie here, with college kids getting bad luck fortunes and keeping them and bringing the evil spirits back…. if you use that idea, you have to give us credit!

After walking around the shrine, we were ready to go to our second escape room of Japan. now I got no pictures of this escape room, but I will say that I think it was my favorite escape room we’ve done yet.  It’s run by two brothers, called Escape Osaka. And I won’t give anything away, but the story line is super creative, and the room and clues are really well done.  I would recommend it to anyone spending time in Osaka, it’s worth a day trip if you’re in Kyoto too.  https://www.escapeosaka.com/

After we beat the Escape room, we went back to the hotel for a little cool down and rest before dinner.  We decided to go to another ramen place near our hotel, and then walk back to the game station area so Alex could play his new favorite game (more on that later).  I apparently didn’t take any pictures at the ramen place– bad blogger!– but it was terrific, and had traditional sitting on the floor seating, which was the only time we did that while we were in Japan.  It wasn’t a far walk to the game station in town,and I was excited to go back to Daiso and buy more souvenirs and fun stuff while the boys played games.

This time though, we got a little turned around and ended up going to a different game station- there are tons of them all over the city. And of course, this one was nowhere near a Daiso, so instead I watched Alex play his game.  

We call the game Battleship Girls, I don’t know what it’s really called.  You basically choose a character and then it spits out a card, and you can only play characters that you have cards for- and each time you play that character and build up the strengths, it gets added to the card.  Now, Alex only has three cards, but the guys playing next him had several boxes of cards, like you would keep index cards in.  So I think you could spend a lot of time and money on this game if you lived near enough. 

To me, Alex looked like a little old man that you would see playing slots in Vegas… laser focus, not talking or answering questions, he would only talk to us when he needed more coins, and even then, it was only a “Dad”  with his hand outstretched behind him, never taking his eyes off the screen.  After an hour we called it and said he was done.  He would have stayed for much longer if we let him. 

On our way home, we decided to pop into the train station and buy our expensive tickets to the airport for the next morning, since it was going to be really early. 

The next morning, we tried to use the tickets only to be told they were invalid. Since we bought them the day before, they were only valid until midnight that day. So we had to rebuy them that morning anyway.   So if you’re in Osaka, and planning to prebuy your metro tickets- don’t, it won’t save you anytime and will actually just be more complicated. 

And that was it for Japan. We had a great time there, and would go back anytime.  Next up is a trip back to Thailand and other summer adventures!

PS —

I forgot to post about our lunch that day, which was memorable- so I’ve gone back to add it in now. 

We went to a tempura place, because we couldn’t find the original place we were looking for. It was the Angry man place from a few posts ago 

While we were there, the chefs noticed Alex watching them and they got invested in making sure he was having a good time.  So they made him a throwing star… and then several more. 

The chef even made sure that Alex got a little toy when we left- it was a great addition to the final day.   The food was great too, we tried Japanese curry and it was different in all good ways.  We got a lot spoiled by the food in Japan!