Osaka Day 1

We woke up this morning, finished getting packed up, and went out to grab some more chocolate croissants for breakfast (Mmmmm). From there we hopped onto the train to Tokyo Station and boarded the Shinkansen (bullet train) for Osaka.

The ride over was pretty interesting. As we were leaving the Tokyo area we saw we were headed into the mountains. Like, INTO the mountains - we ended up passing through a ton of tunnels on the way. We also got a surprise view:

Mount Fuji! We weren't sure we were going to see it this trip, because evidently the skies most of the year aren't all that clear which obscures the view. It's BIG, guys. REALLY BIG.

The other interesting thing we noticed on the train ride was that we didn't really pass through any uninhabited areas - it made it seem like every single area of Japan is full of people. I think maybe it's just that they built the train through the most populous areas, but who knows.

The train ride took 3 hours (it looked like we were going about 150mph or so, which was kind of scary when another train going in the opposite direction passed at the same speed, but totally awesome). We arrived just before lunch into Shin-Osaka station.

We thought about stopping at Curry Curry restaurant in the station because it looked delicious, but it was kind of small for us to have all of our bags at and we really wanted to get to the hostel to put them down.

We bought a day pass for the Osaka City subway line and headed to the station that was supposed to be pretty close to the hostel. It ended up being a lot longer walk than we thought, through this kind of shady (though not as shady as we've seen) residential area. We arrived the shopping arcade that the hostel was in, only almost getting run over by bikes and cars a couple of times along the way.

When we came in, the wife owner of the hostel greeted us, cute child in arms, and welcomed us to Osaka. She gave us a bunch of information and gave us the tour of the place. Every staircase is really steep, but the whole place is very quaint. Our room wasn't ready but she showed it to us anyway. It's just big enough to put down two traditional Japanese futons to sleep on (on a tatami floor) and still have room for all of our baggage. She showed us how to work the electronic lock outside and showed us were we could leave our baggage until our room was ready.

By this point we were pretty hungry for lunch and went exploring through the shopping arcade. The owners of the hostel had given us a little information sheet with a bunch of places they liked along the arcade. There were a few places that didn't open until dinner, so we ended up just grabbing some yakisoba from a shop and bringing it back to the hostel to eat.

While we were eating we looked through some pamphlets that were at the hostel to figure out what we wanted to do in Osaka. There's both so much and so little to do, we had a hard time figuring out exactly what we wanted. We ended up deciding to check out the Umeda Underground for the afternoon/evening, since it was supposed to be really big.

Before leaving, we decided to buy Meghan some tennis shoes, since the pair of shoes she brought just weren't cutting it. We stopped at a little shop in the arcade to pick some up, which turned out to be a little more difficult than we thought. I had a hard time figuring out what the lady running the shop was saying at times, and we had to have her figure out the conversion of sizes. Once we had established that, Meghan tried on her first choice, which was way too small. The woman explained that we would probably have to buy men's shoes in order to get the size that Meghan needed, which explains why we couldn't find her size at the Tom's store in Tokyo either... Japanese women's feet are tiny. We finally found a pair to buy and Meghan wore them out of the shop.

We had learned earlier that there was a private rail station a lot closer than the Osaka City subway station, and that it was pretty cheap. We soon realized that buying the Osaka City subway day pass was a waste, and that we'd be using this private line and then JR lines for pretty much everything. We took that down to the Umeda Underground area and started exploring.

It was huge. And very confusing. Umeda Underground is kind of like a collection of malls rather than one big mall, so the whole layout was never posted anywhere. We found a cute little parfait shop and got a tasty chocolate cookie parfait:

The shop was called Milky Road, but I'm pretty sure the text said mirufi (so, milfy)... Awkward?

*Geek Note from Meghan: Sharing a parfait with Ryan was one of my secret goals while in Japan. The reason? Sailor Moon. Total nerd, I know. Let me give you a run down. There is an episode of Sailor Moon where Molly (who is in love with Nephrite but doesn't know he is a villain) tells Nephrite that she has always wanted to share a parfait at this cute little shop. Nephrite then promises that he will take her and they will share one (he is falling in love with her). However, before that can happen he ends up dying. As he dies in Molly's arms he comments about how he broke his promise to share a parfait with her. That's it. I believe this all happens in one episode and since seeing it I've always wanted a parfait.*

After eating our parfait we continued to walk around, and as we were trying to find a particular sight from the pamphlet, we found this crazy shopping building, Osaka City Station (it basically built on top of the JR Osaka train station). It was HUGE - two buildings connected with 25-ish stories in each building.

There was a shopping area that had just opened up at the beginning of the month in it called Lucua. It felt like a really big boutique mall, with all sorts of expensive, unique clothing and some shops with stationary and boutique kitchen items. Also, a Krispy Kreme - which had a HUGE line. In case you didn't know, Krispy Kreme doughnut dough is made ONLY in Winston-Salem, NC. For the entire world.

*A note from Meghan: The shopping here was crazy. Everything boutique. It was impressive. I don't think I saw a thing I DIDN'T like. Each floor was different too and had a sort of theme or style all it's own. So while one floor specialized in beautiful home accessories, another specialized in regular accessories. On this floor for instance there was an entire little shop dedicated to the fashion of socks. Socks in Japan is serious business. It's important to note that I only saw maybe two stores in this entire complex with men's fashion in it. It almost leaves the assumption that while young Japanese men work hard as business men to earn money, their girlfriends or whatever work hard to spend it. Also there was crazy amazing food in half the building for about 10 floors.*

Osaka City Station also has these balconies that look out over the city, and these crazy escalators crossing them:

After shopping for a while, we took a break and tried to figure out what we wanted to do next. I remembered that the Pokemon Center Osaka was actually in one of the buildings in Osaka City Station, and we soon found it on a map inside.

We stepped out of the elevator and I was instantly impressed. Far from being kiddy, it was a pretty classy establishment (more like a department within the building than it's own store), and they had some really nice items on sale. I REALLY wanted to buy a nice looking tie that they had, but it was 4000 yen (about $50), which was a little much. There was also a nice polo that was 3800 yen, but that seemed kind of out of the question too. I ended up with a nice DS strap as a commemoration of being there.

We left from there to go meet our friend Chris outside the station near where he works. He had told us "the big open square outside Kyoubashi station." We had already clarified which of the couple Kyoubashi stations he meant, but upon arriving at the station, we had to choose from 3 different exits... And we ended up having no idea what he meant. We were walking around for a while, trying to circle the complex, but weren't having any success. We ended up trying to head to the business park that was on some signs because I thought I saw a sign for an actual park next to it, but we found map that seemed to indicate that probably wasn't the case. Luckily, Chris ended up passing by that map as we were starting to lose hope of finding him. He ended up showing us what he meant, because needed to walk through it anyway to get to the restaurant he was taking us to.

We went to this yakitori place whose name translated to Brotherhood of the Chicken. It was DELICIOUS. We had a large assortment of yakitori, including chicken hearts (soooo tender), breast meat, something labeled as "bland" chicken meat, some beef, and some fried chicken pieces (kind of like nuggets). Everything had awesome flavor and was really affordable.

*Note from Meghan: Everything was actually really delicious, even the chicken heart which tasted quite a lot like fillet mignon. Sorry we didn't get any pictures of the food.*

We made plans to meet tomorrow in the evening, and headed back to the hostel. Tomorrow we're going to see Osaka Castle, Dotombori (the main restaurant street), and this really tall building I don't remember the name of that has an observatory on the top.

Pictures from Today