Day 1 - May 27, 2006: Osaka
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We arrived in Kansai Airport in the morning. Since we were only going to be in Osaka for one night, we decided to
send the bulk of our luggage through the Takkyubin luggage delivery service straight to the ryokan we had booked in
Kyoto.
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On the left is the two week JR pass we bought which was expensive but the best thing we bought for this trip because
it took us pretty much anywhere we wanted to go between and within cities. It made last minute itinerary changes possible
and even viable. On the right is the Kansai Thru Pass which seemed cheap at first but was almost worthless outside
of the Kansai area - a total waste of money.
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Our first meal in Japan was at the Osaka JR (Japan Rail) station. The food doesn't come out of the vending machine.
You just buy tickets from it and get served some cheap food.
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The typical view out of the train window. We'd purchased JR passes through our travel agents that let us
ride almost any of the JR lines for two weeks. This turned out to be the best thing we bought the entire trip.
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Our first place of interest in Osaka was a flea market my wife had read about on an internet forum.
It was quite pathetic, as you can tell.
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Breakfast was in a western style cafe run by a friendly lady who asked us many questions about our trip.
She served us coffee, toast, banana and a small cup of tea which tasted like a mouthful of seawater.
The gentleman on the left was going through some boat-racing results in the newspaper - or at least that
was what we understood after a long conversation using our phrase book.
The Japanese are very friendly and will talk to you and try to help you even if they don't
understand a word of what you are saying.
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A sign outside a "love hotel". We walked around for awhile but couldn't find a proper hotel so we were going to stay
at one of these. When we got inside, they all seemed to have nobody at the front counter and you just pay for the room key
through what looked like a giant vending machine. When we finally got someone to come out to the counter and asked
about their "long stay" option (a room for the whole night), the rates were exorbitant and we couldn't check in our
stuff until 9pm.
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After a long search and a cab ride, we found
Hotel Ichiei.
The rates were much better and we got a nice traditional Japanese room with tatami mats and futons.
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The bathroom wasn't so traditional and had these new-fangled features attached to the toilet bowls.
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We spent the rest of the day around Minami, Dotonbori and the nearby streets, absorbing the people and the city.
This giant crab looked like a convenient meeting place in case we got lost. That was until we found another giant
crab around the corner, and another one beyond that, and quite a few more as we walked down the block.
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Chinese peaches - 12,000 yen if you take all five! Fruits are ridiculously expensive in Japan, and there seems to be hardly
any vegetables on the menus as well, so I don't know where they get all their fibre from.
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Dinner was at a yakitoriya. Forgot the name.
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See Ming's favourite avocado sushi.
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Some more pictures of Osaka and its people...
>>> Day 2: Kyoto
