2016 Japan - Osaka

25 Nov 2016

After a few months of hard work planning the itinerary, transportation, accommodation and food, it was finally the day to start our journey. I was excited, at the same time a little nervous to carry the responsibility as a tour guide for my parents. The journey started from 25/11 and ended on 4/12. 

As usual, we took AirAsia budget airline to Osaka, which only costed us about RM 1,200. This gave us more budget to spend throughout the journey.

Here we arrived Kansai Airport. We were boarding shuttle train to transit to another terminal  

Well I know I was not supposed to use camera at the immigration, but I just wanted to show you these interesting machines which captures tourists' bio-metric data including fingerprint and face.

Japanese people work a lot and therefore value convenience. This makes vending machines a unique culture in Japan. You can easily buy SIM cards from vending machines.

  

The queue at the tourist information center was long. I guessed most of them were queuing for Japan Rail Pass. We decided to do it in the rail station instead. 

Japan Rail Pass has to be bought outside of Japan. It needs to be exchanged to a valid pass upon arrival in Japan. As the pass was expensive and we would not make enough travelling on JR trains to cover the cost, it was difficult to decide to buy the pass eventually. 

When we reached the station, the queue for Japan Rail Pass was even longer. It took us closed to an hour to settle the pass. It was about 12pm now. We had not had any food since we boarded the flight the previous night. 

Despite the hunger, we decided to leave our luggage to our hostel

I regret bringing a 23' hand carry suit case as there were too many steps to walk in stations and most of our accommodation places required us to climb for 2 - 3 levels of steps. 

We could not stand with the starve anymore and grabbed some food from the mart.

I must be too hungry that I found this Oden was amazing. Oden is Japanese one pot winter dish consisting of several ingredients such as boiled eggs, daikon, konjac, and processed fishcakes stewed in a light, soy-flavored dashi broth. Simply take an empty bowl from cashier and fill up with ingredients you like. The cashier will tell you the price based on what you choose. I like the tofu most. The hot broth warmed us up while we were eating in the cool weather at street.

  

Kuromon Market was just within 2 minutes walking from our hostel Shell Nell Namba. Here we spent lot on street food. Food here was new and interesting to us. And we were too hungry. Generally the food here were not cheap. 

  

My mother didn't waste any drop of essence from the scallop. I found it too salty and buttery

Quail egg in mini octopus

The winter melon was even more expensive than the same imported melon we could have in Malaysia and Singapore

Kobe beef must not be missed. We were given a certificate as souvenir.

The beef was simply served with salt and pepper. It was not up to my expectations as it didn't melt in the mouth

The castle is one of Japan's most landmarks and it played a major role in the unification of Japan during the sixteenth century of the Azuchi-Momoyama period. We didn't explore the castle after my mother found out she lost her phone. We searched around and walked back to the station in order to lodge report.The 

The castle tower is surrounded by secondary citadels, gates, turrets, impressive stone walls and moats. The Nishinomaru Garden, encompassing the former "western citadel", is a lawn garden with 600 cherry trees, a tea house, the former Osaka Guest House and nice views of the castle tower from below.

We went back to the hostel and rest.

It was an interesting experience staying in capsule hotel. The amenities provided was awesome. We were given pajamas, slipper, make up removal, towel, rubber band, hairdryer, hair straightener and many more. Everything you need is provided.

It was little stuffy and hot to be in the capsule. I ended up not using the duvet at all and keeping the curtain opened thought-out the night. I didn't have a pleasant sleep as I could easily hear the walking and snoring. I would not recommend capsule hotel for light sleepers.

A tour of the hotel