Kansai part 1 - Osaka and Nara

This blog post was meant to include Osaka, Nara, and Kyoto, but it ended up so big we had to split it! Fortunately that just means there’s plenty to see and read. Without further ado: Osaka and Nara.

Wednesday 4th June: Zentsuji to Osaka

We were heading to Osaka today so had a yummy hotel brekkie before spending the morning wandering around the local area before our 11am train. We had used the luggage delivery service (an actual dream, would recommend!) so thankfully we didn’t have our big bags, and so we took a nice 3.5 hour stop off in Himeji on the way.

The castle definitely lived up to our expectations. You can see it all the way along the road from the station and it just gets more and more impressive as you get closer. We paid to go into the actual castle and enjoyed walking through the different layers and seeing the history of the feudal and non-feudal era. We then headed just next door to the Koko-en gardens. They were absolutely beautiful and the flowering tree in the entrance really put on a show. There was a lovely lake and a great mix of flowers throughout the park. We wish we had had a little longer there, but we had a bullet train to Osaka to catch, and we all know they don’t wait for nobody!

We arrived at our hotel around 5pm and dropped our little bags into the room before heading out for dinner. We decided to head to Dotonbori. Well… words and pictures can’t do it justice that’s for sure because the neon lights, the amount of people, and the craziness of it all was what we expected, and which didn’t find in Tokyo! That being said we had the most delicious dinner of kushikatsu and okonomiyaki!

Once our bellies were full, we headed to explore more of the Dotonbori area and Mike finally gave in and played the claw/pachinko machines and got himself a tiny Kirby. Safe to say he was absolutely chuffed with himself! After a good leg stretch and stroll around, we headed back to the hotel.

Thursday 5th: Osaka

Another fun filled day exploring Osaka, this time we headed to some pretty crazy shrines and temples. The first stop was Namba Yasaka Jinja or the lion head shrine, I think the picture speaks for itself! We then headed just around the corner to Hozenji/Mossman shrine, again another beautiful shrine, the moss was really different as all the other Buddha statues had been kept so clean and tidy.We stopped next at Ichiran Ramen, honestly probably some of the best ramen we have had, and it well deserves its hype. The broth was delicious and the pork melted in your mouth when you ate it. Yummy yummy yummy!

We then explored the different shopping streets of Osaka, shin saibashi, America Mura, Dotonbori, and one we can’t actually remember the name of. If you love to shop you would have been in heaven but that’s not really us, so it just felt pretty busy. We did go into a Don Quixote which was honestly crazy, there was everything you could imagine from being a drug store to a souvenir shop to a toy shop to a lolly shop. I can see why people end up buying bags and bags from there because it was so cheap and tax free!

We needed some more culture by this point and headed to the Osaka Castle, which was very different to Himeji. The outside and main walls were all white with gold decorations and the inside had lots of different rooms which they explained the use of. The views over the city were nice and the gardens were beautiful and full of flowers too. We lucked out and found the Osaka 2025 food expo round the corner so popped in to try some banana juice, which we are pretty sure was actually just a banana smoothie and some blooming delicious Takoyaki/octopus balls. A lovely treat to get us through to dinner time, still can’t get over how cheap food is over here!

Our next stop was Tsutenkaka Tower. It was pretty cloudy and smoggy, so the viewing point didn’t look great and we decided to do the slide instead. It was helter-skelter style which sounds nice and tame, but when you were up there they launched you down and you picked up a lot of speed. Still great fun though. Oh, and Chloe had a takoyaki helmet! Dinner tonight was the Shinsekai markets. These were HEAVING, but the decorations were great fun. They had rotating sushi plates, pictures/3D structures of the chefs, plastic versions of the food and everything. We settled on some fried chicken and a beef set meal from one of the restaurants. It was really delicious, but we were stuffed afterwards and realised we probably didn’t need the large rice that came with it!

Friday 6th: Nara

Today we did the quintessential day trip to Nara. We got the subway from the hotel straight to the Nara station to explore the park and the shrines and temples which were there.

We didn’t have high hopes about the deer in the park as we had heard some very mixed reviews, but do you know what, we LOVED it. The deer at the front were pretty greedy and didn’t bow, but the further you got into the park, away from the crowds, the more the deer did full bows. It was the cutest thing we have seen in Japan! The ones between the posts near the shrines were my favourite as they just poked their heads out and bowed to you if they thought you had food. We didn’t have many issues with them biting or nipping, and as long as you didn’t tease them they did exactly what we expected. It was a gorgeous and very hot day by this point, and we came across a soft serve ice cream place which had the cutest ice cream decorations, so we went and grabbed one each as we walked between the temple and shrine.

The shrine and temple were lovely, but they were so busy, and you had to pay to get into them both which was a bit disappointing, but we still enjoyed exploring them. After that we headed back down through the park to Yoshikien Garden. This was so nice because the gate to get in was quite hidden and so it meant the inside was so quiet, I think we saw maybe 7 people in the 45 minutes that we were in there! We went onto explore the little streets of Nara township and of course found the Yamamoto Brewery company so went in for some lunch and a banana milk tea beer before heading back into Osaka.

On the way back from the station we stopped by shinsekai again to get hold of a delicious freshly cooked custard stuffed cake thing before freshening up and heading back to Dotonbori one last time. We found a lovely small restaurant, had an okonomiyaki, and some teppanyaki veggies to share along with a delicious piece of Kobe Beef steak. It was delicious but we didn’t feel the 67,000yen price tag was really worth it!

We went for a walk and happened to fall into the 10 yen cheese coin store so we tried one because we felt like we had to. It was an interesting mix of sweet and savoury, a bit too heavy for me but Mikey loved it. A lot of steps for our little legs meant an early night was in order.

Phew, a busy few days. Checkout Kansai part 2 to hear all about Kyoto!