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Published: July 15th 2013
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Since my sister is down in Osaka for a summer internship, I waited patiently until the only national holiday in June and August, and then took a week's vacation down to see her. I'd only been to the Kansai area once before, and only for 2 days, so I was very excited to see more of it this time around. And to see my sister, of course!
The problem was that I had not anticipated the DEMAND for shinkansen tickets due to the three-day weekend, and as such, when I bought my tickets Friday night after work, I could only get a non-reserved seat. The shinkansen ride to Shin-Osaka from Shin-Yokohama is 137 minutes, and I stood in the CROWDED non-reserved section for 80 of them. It was HOT and pretty miserable, haha. Luckily, I grabbed a seat once it cleared out a bit at Nagoya.
Then, I ended up being WILDLY confused once I actually got to Shin-Osaka, because once again, I immediately went to the wrong side of the escalators (it's opposite from Kanto) and then couldn't figure out how to buy a subway ticket from the machine. Not my fault, I haven't had to buy a
ticket in over a year! I use my PASMO card for EVERYTHING back home! So, a nice man had to help my dumb self, haha. Whoops!! It was a long trip down. -____-;;
On Saturday, we ventured out of the city and headed into Nara - which is famous for having wild deer that roam the streets. We walked around to find some shrines and deer, and a five-tiered pagoda, and then continued walking around just to take in the sights while eating some yummy ice cream. The deer are everywhere! I was so surprised, and we saw one girl get pseudo-attacked (kicked) while trying to keep her food away from them. There were a lot of warnings saying that the deer were wild animals and would attack sometimes, haha, but we got pictures anyway.
It was super hot, but we went up to Todaiji Temple and decided not to go in and see the giant Buddha on account of not wanting to pay the entrance fee, which was a bit steep. Instead, we meandered back through the gardens, and then through the backstreets. Eventually we ended up getting lost, and went WAY further than we meant to,
but we did see some really cute houses in the residential areas, haha. Very traditional designs.
Eventually, we stopped for some lunch at Gusto, and then went back to the station and took the train back to Osaka. Once in Osaka, we wandered around the main shopping area, Dotonbori, and saw some of the "iconic" sites of Osaka that I thought were rather silly, haha. We hit Den-den town and a few stores, such as K-books! We stayed there for a long time giggling over doujinshi (manga), and I made a few purchases. By this point, we were really tired and had been sweating all day in the heat, so we decided to head home.
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