Today was the first and only full day we have in Osaka and of course what do good tourists do, they spend half of it at an American theme park and eat Chinese food. Yes, I'm afraid so. Universal Studios is in the top 3 things to do in Osaka.
The day started early which is usual for us. It is quite cool here, reminds me of a Brisbane Winter, cool in the morning, warms up during the day and cools down again in the evening. It gets windy here and that's what bites,
Before we could do anything we had to activate our JR Rail passes so we decided we would walk to the one of only a few train stations that do it. It was only 7kms away right. We walked through quite a bit of our district and it was interesting to see the neighborhoods change. Around our hotel are clubs, restaurants and more clubs. Early hours of the morning though (8.00 am seems to be too early for the locals) there were not many people around, just a few suits going to work. As we walked our grungy neighborhood disappeared and gradually we wandered into the business district which was all your usual high-rises, plenty of people going to work but super clean. We saw a few older guys in business attire picking up rubbish with what appeared to be long handled tongs. As we kept walking the business district disappeared and we were back to grungy but cutely odd. Various shrines and weird things were outside a lot of the local eateries and the number of people died off again. We came across one of the few waterways that runs through Osaka and it had a few cherry blossoms. Not many but enough to keep me happy. After about an 1hr 20 in we decided to cab it the rest of the way because the phone map said we wouldn't get to the train station until midday.
The cabs, by the way, are great. Again super clean and ours had little lace coverings over the tops of the seats. The driver was really helpful and I was able to try out a little Japanese on him.
Finally in the station and we managed to get our tickets validated. Then it was off to navigate how to get to Universal Studios which ended up being quite straight forward as it has its own railway station. Not a lot of people on the train, we managed to miss peak hour so there was no shoving going on.
Universal was a good theme park as far as theme parks go. I did get to exercise my inner nerd though and saw the new Harry Potter exhibit. Loved it!! We also saw a Sumo wrestler and his wife. Everyone was in awe of this man and he was treated with great respect. It was really nice to see, no one asked for a selfie or an autograph, he was left to enjoy the day with his family.
After a few hours we decided to tangle with Japanese Rail and find our way back home. We managed to get to Osaka without too much hassle but after that, we had no chance. Hot tip, you really should know what station you need to get to and what main line it runs on otherwise you have little hope of navigating your way out. In the end we decided to cab it back which was a blessing because we were tired but Sean will never admit to that because he wanted to keep looking for that elusive station.
For dinner we ventured out into our neighborhood again. It appears that we are smack bang in the middle of the most popular district in Osaka, Dontonbori. It also features in the top 3. It is filled with shops, restaurants, street food, clubs and little weirdy shops that sell plastic cartoon characters, cookies and other odds and sods. Cookies are really popular here, anything that is commercially popular is made into a cookie. We decided to try some street food for dinner which has me a little worried now because seafood cooked on the street may not have been a good idea but we won't know until later on.
Tomorrow we head off to Hiroshima by bullet train which I am really looking forward to. I am searching for traditional Japan and although we found small pockets here, it is quite a modern city. Great experience though.
Photos from today
2018-03-30 - Osaka and Universal Studios
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