Advertisement
Published: March 12th 2018
Edit Blog Post
It immediately started to get very confusing as soon as I stepped out of the airport. This is not the first time for me to have absolutely no clue how to get out of the airport so I wasn't panicking. I tried to figure out the machines that were selling train tickets but to no avail. So I asked a guy at the booth and he pointed me to the room that sells tickets. I was told by a Filipino woman who's a resident of Japan at the airport in Manila that the unlimited train ticket was expensive so I just bought one way ticket to my AirBnB. Thank God for Google Maps! You're never really lost wherever you are even if you don't speak the language there. I just followed Google Maps and found my hostel. It was cold in the room. It was maybe about 3C in Osaka that night. The cold was a welcome relief that brought back memories of Canada. If you read my blog you know how crazy I am about Canada.
The next morning I discovered that there was a heater. I only found it after shivering from the cold after washing my face.
There was free breakfast of rice and a tube of salty paste. I couldn't understand the microwave so I ate the cold rice. I spread the paste on the rice only to find out later that it was miso that I had to dilute in hot water to make miso soup!
With my 9kg bag on my back I explored Osaka. I didn't enter anything that had entrance fees like the Osaka Castle. To be frank I wasn't impressed and I already knew I wouldn't be. Then I explored a bit of the city. There were a few malls on the itinerary that I found on the internet and decided to follow. Not all of them were worth it. But what was I thinking following an itinerary that had malls in it anyway? There was one that was supposed to have interesting hobby items that could only be found in Japan but I didn't find anything interesting there. There was one mall dedicated to gadgets though that I enjoyed. There was an entire floor dedicated to cameras! I got to try some very expensive cameras I can only dream of. Well I can afford them if I didn't have
to travel but I'd really rather travel and make do with my beginner DSLR. I felt more comfortable in Osaka than I did in Tokyo. It felt less cramped and less busy. I found it more difficult to navigate though because the trains were more complicated. Or maybe that's only because I only stayed one day in Osaka.
Dotonburi is their answer to Tokyo's Shibuya. It was crowded and filled with huge billboards and neon lights. With the added feature of a river. I went looking for vegan food and I couldn't find any. Or at least any that I could afford. I found one Indian restaurant but it was expensive. The only vegan food I found was fries in the famous roofed covered arcade. It was $5. I would have cost about $2 in the Philippines but I was in Japan so of course everything was more expensive. I found Lawson soon after finishing the fries and bought onigiri. Filling food at last! I basically lived off of onigiri sold in convenience stores like Lawson and 711 most of the time. It was the cheapest vegan food I could find. After exhausting myself from a whole day of
walking, I took the train that would take me to Nara.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.052s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 33; dbt: 0.0312s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Ake Och Emma
Ake Dahllof and Emma Holmbro
When we go to Osaka we are going to see this
We will also go to Osaka one day because we just have to see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gate_Tower_Building /Ake