Blogs from Osaka, Japan, Asia - page 13

On arrival into Shin-Osaka station from Hiroshima, we had to take another 3 trains to reach Namba, an area in Osaka renowned for it's crazy nightlife and neon madness, that we had chosen to stay in for our last night in Japan. Namba is only a couple of stops south of Osaka station but as we wanted to use our JR passes instead of paying for the metro we took the long way round. Upon exiting the station at Namba (which is massive) we got lost and ended up walking around with our heavy backpacks on for about 45 minutes, asking several people for directions and getting pretty stressed until we eventually found our hostel for the night, Base Point. We checked in, freshened up and headed out for a bite to eat in a great ... read more

So, Osaka is supposed to be the second biggest city other than Tokyo, but I don't really see it. I stayed in Hirakata, which is considered to be like a farmtown because it's pretty small and it's mostly made of foreign and Japanese students that go to Kansai Gaidai, and there isn't too much to do other than go to the stations or eat at Sukiya. But, on weekends we usually either went to Shinsaibashi or Umeda. Umeda is like the rich part of Osaka, where there's all designer things like prada, gucci, burberry and all the fancy stores (I even found an outback steakhouse) so there's not too much for a broke college student like myself, other than the pokecenter. I was really excited to go to see all the pokemon and relive my childhood, ... read more

Guess my body was really tired I only woke up around 10am but just waited lying on the mat till like 1130am. Decided to walk about the Shin Sekai area and explore things around where I was staying. There are many restaurants with this “Billiken” statue, and at the bottom is a phrase says “God Of Seeing Things As They Ought To Be”. Having done a bit of research on the internet, Wikipedia states that it is a charm doll created by an American art teacher who saw this figure in a dream. It is for good luck and represents a “no worry” ideal. This figure got to Japan in 1912 and is still there a sign on how much Japanese stick on to old trends and fashions while continuously embracing new ones. Afterwards I decided ... read more

In early May I was able to go to Osaka for two days for a judo tournament. The team left on Saturday, using the Shinkansen to get there. The Shinkansen cut what could have been a 7 hour bus ride into a three hour train ride. (yay!) The Shinkansen is a nice way to travel by in Japan but it is very expensive. It cost around triple the price of bus ticket. The train took three stops on the way to Osaka. (Shizouka, Nagoya, and Kyoto) We got to Osaka in the afternoon, which gave us plenty of time to play around in Osaka. Osaka is famous for its okonomiyaki and takoyaki. So of course I had to go try it. My friend and I found a small okonomiyaki shop that could seat only ten people ... read more

We took the Shanghai ferry to Osaka, a two-day journey accomplished during beautiful, calm weather – thank goodness. Most of the time, Tom the Sailor said that the wave height was 3-4 feet, but the ship just smoothed them out. We traveled on the Suz Hou Hao (www.suzhouhao.com) for two nights; our comfortable room was a double, though there were also dorm rooms and a couple of “VIP” rooms that weren’t much nicer than ours. We only had a couple of complaints: first, there was no water to drink, except that in the vending machines, which quickly ran out. We thought we might have been the only ones worried about drinking the tap water, but quickly realized that everyone else wanted the bottled water too. Second, although the web site states that departure time is 11:00 ... read more