[Kirk in normal font. Elaine in bold font.]
Not sure if it’s the coffee, the beer or just being away, but I am still waking up way too early! It was another early wake up of 3:45 - I am getting only a few hours of sleep a night since coming over here.☹️.
Elaine and I spent morning coffee time trying to figure out how to get from Osaka to Nikko. Our trip itinerary is: Land in Tokyo, immediately train to Kyoto. Then to Osaka. Then Nikko. Then Tokyo at one hotel, the switch to another Tokyo hotel. We hadn't booked the Osaka to Nikko train yet.
During the planning stage, I had booked one night in Nikko, and almost from the date I booked they wanted to know when we would arrive in Nikko so they could coordinate the shuttle pickup to the hotel
Both Kirk and I tried to sign up for access to the online booking system for Shinkansens. It would not work for either of us with our current credit cards. After some hemming and hawing Kirk signed up for another credit card that we were hoping would work. Sadly the new credit card did not work either. This meant we would not be able to prebook our Shinkansen to Nikko and would have to wait until we could go to a ticket booth in person once we actually arrived in Japan.
Normally this would not be an issue, but it being (1) post COVID; and (2) holiday season in Japan; we were very worried about getting tickets. Fortunately there are many Shinkansens running every day so we were able to book our trip to Nikko!
Sad to be leaving the Ace Hotel. It was great.
The Ace Hotel was amazing. I don't think we've ever stayed at a nicer hotel.
I ended up taking the kids for a coffee once they woke up. Elaine and I have been waking up before 7am. I guess we haven't adjusted yet. Going to bed some days late. 3am the other day.
Left Kyoto for Osaka this morning. Normally (for lack of a better word), we'd take the Shinkansen. But, there was some sort of technical track problem and lots of delays. We hadn't pre-booked anything, luckily. So, instead we took what's essentially just a local train. We got a seat, so we were okay. It's basically like riding a subway for about 45 minutes. Not bad if you get a seat and don't have luggage to deal with..
The trip to Osaka was supposed to be one of the least stressful but there were delays on all the incoming and outings JR lines with no real idea of when it would be resolved. Other options were smaller lines that reported that they were running at their busiest.
We've read and watched so many videos about how locals are really unhappy about all the tourists overcrowding the local trains and buses that we were not keen on overstepping. To make it worse we were loaded down with our dirty laundry and all the new purchases - thankfully no large luggage as they were meeting us in Osaka. The travel ended up not being too bad and we got into Osaka pretty easily.
Something to note, the last two times we were in Japan the streets and the trains were incredibly clean and quiet. This time around we noticed that there was a lot more litter and noise. I'm guessing the litter is by tourists but the noise were from both tourists and locals alike. Not sure if it is a result of it being post-COVID or the holiday atmosphere, but it was definitely different than it was in 2016 or 2018. People are more talkative on the trains and kids are free to run around and generally allowed to behave like little kids.
We got into Osaka too early to check in so we stored our luggage at the hotel and went for a walk about.
We got to the hotel around noon. Check-in wasn't until 3pm. There's free self-service luggage lockers for guests to use, so we dumped my carry-on and our backpacks in there. The rest of our bags were getting shipped from the airport when we landed a few days ago.
We walked less than 5 minutes, and I found a store and bought something off my wish-list. It's a Tailor Toyo Souvenir jacket. The store feels like an old Japanese denim shop. There's an elderly couple running it. I don't know if they're married or just coworkers, but my guess is married. They have all the brands I'd think I'd find there. Buzz Rickson - William Gibson, Full Count, Sugar Cane.
I got to visit some shops that I've been following on Instagram for a long time. Happy to finally get to go there in-person. Loom Osaka, Fascinate.
Within an hour Kirk picked up a couple of the items on his wish list.
We tonkatsu curry for lunch. It was so much food! We didn't realize until later that you could actually choose the amount of rice you wanted for your meal., you select the size based on the number of grams. It would have been nice to have understood earlier because it was A LOT of food!
We still had some time before we could check in to the hotel so Kyle and I headed to the Pokemon Center in Osaka to check it out. The Pokemon Center DX is touted as being the best one in Japan. No exclusives here, but Kyle did say it was bigger than the one in Kyoto.
The Pokemon Center is located on the top floor in Daimaru, a really big department store. As we were going down the floors there was no mistaking we were in Japan! There were departments for Pokemon, Cap Com (Street Fighter), Kiddyland, Card Captor Sakura, Studio Ghibli, San Rio, Rilakkuma, Sumikkogurashi, etc. There was so much that even I couldn’t take it any more! My teeth were starting to hurt looking at everything. It's amazing that we got out of there with minimal purchases!
Next was the Pokemon Centre and a bunch of wandering around inside the big malls, Parco and Daimaru. There's tons of cool shops in there, and we spent a long time wandering around. Kyoto was all about visiting the Shrines and ancient places. Osaka for us is just shopping and city life; no sightseeing. Big photo dump.
It's still crazy to me to see people nonchalantly riding bicycles through huge crowds of people on the side.
Almost every sidewalk is packed with pedestrians, but cyclists have no qualms about weaving through the crowd. They aren't rude, they don't ring bells or yell. They are patient and just look for openings in the mass of people. Cyclists ranged from young kids, to parents with children on board to seniors.
Something different in Osaka than Kyoto - following pedestrian traffic signs. In Kyoto everyone follows the walk/no walk signs; in Osaka, not so much. It was so weird - we would stand at the corner waiting for the walk sign while locals would just cross the street - where are we? I guess we are not in Kyoto any more.
We didn't wander far. Our hotel was in the middle of everything. We're in the Amerika-mura area, Staying in the Henn Na hotel, which is a "robot" hotel. They have animatronic dinosaurs that check you in. It's one of those "it looked cool on-line" things. Rooms were small and okay. Nothing compared to the Ace Hotel in Kyoto. But, we're just here for two days. Our bags had arrived (from the airport) and were waiting for us.
In Osaka we are saying at Henn Na Hotel, yes that translates to “strange hotel”. In the Namba location (where we are staying) you are greeted by dinosaurs(?). It was a little odd, an actual human did come out to help us check in because we didn't know their process so that was good. A lot of hotels are meant for two people, three if you have a small child - so for a lot of our stay we had to book two rooms and at the Henn Na Hotel we needed at least one adult in each room.
This hotel is a far cry from the one we just left. Could barely fit our luggage in the room and still move around. Good thing we are used to living in small spaces!
Our luggage arrived at the hotel. We didn’t take a picture but trust me they definitely package it up really well!
One of the features of the hotel is a little robot in each room. It was supposed be able to answer basic questions like things about the hotel, the weather, etc. Not sure if it was poor programming or user error, but the robots in our rooms didn't seem to work too well.
We walked around some more after checking into the hotel. I loved the Yohji Yamamoto Wildside store. Has a lot of everything. I took my time looking through it all. We were the only people in the store.
Kirk was totally in his happy place! He went to Wildside, a store that carries a lot if not all of the lines by Yohji Yamamoto. He was even able to see and try on items from the S'yte line which, apart from the Osaka store, is only available online.
Had to visit Dontonburi, of course. It's so crowded, and this was a Tuesday. Absolutely bonkers. Just ate at a fast-food-like udon shop. Everything else had massive lines.
I really wanted to wander Dontonburi and eat at all the different stalls. Everything looked and smelled so good but the lines and the craziness was not appealing.
Tourists and locals alike didn't seem to mind waiting in lines. Maybe it would not have been so bad if it was just one or two of us, but with four and not speaking Japanese it was hard to not be in eveyone's way holding up the crowd.
Still crazy that cars, people, bicycles are all crowding together.
Elaine and I did found a coin laundry really close to the hotel. Our hotel had laundry, but it was just one machine. We found a nearby bar for few drinks while our clothes were in the machines. One of those tiny upstairs bars. It was just us and a group of three guys, and they left pretty quickly once we got there. The bartender started giving us info for our upcoming trip to Nikko. They were blasting Green Day, Linkin Park, etc. I was wearing a Sub Pop shirt, and they were excited to see it. Lots of drinking and chatting :)
Kirk and I went out later in the evening to do our laundry. Super fortunate that there was a 24 hour coin laundry within a 5 minute walk from our hotel. Bonus was that there were a lot of small bars in the hood! We started a wash and dry combo cycle load and checked out a bar within steps of the laundry. We were drawn in because we liked the music we could hear from street level.
GIG’L, the bar, has a pretty sketchy entrance. The stairs were on like a 70 degree incline with very narrow steps. We should have taken a picture as proof. The bartender was awesome! Super friendly and spoke to us in English so we mosied over from our table to the bar when it cleared up. The bar had a couple floors, the floor we were on only had seats for 6 - 4 at the bar and a side table for 2.
We sat and chatted with the bartender and his buddy for a while. They warned us about snow monkeys possibly joining us in an outdoor onsen when in Nikko. Supposedly snow monkeys like the hot springs too. We talked about how different Osaka was compared to Kyoto and Tokyo. Osaka being much more laid back and friendlier than the two “bigger” cities. It was a perfect way to kill the time waiting for our laundry.
Side note - the bartender at GIG’L recognized the Sub Pop logo on KIrk’s tee - maybe that gave us some cred…