Howdy ho, lovelies.

You know, even with all the hubbub I had the day before, I’m pretty sure I still woke up today without my alarm. This would be the last time that miracle would occur. I think it had to do with some magical mixture of jet lag, lots of light creeping past the curtains starting at 4:30 in the morning, and the fact that I was basically sleeping on the floor.

Above, you’ll see my first bed in Japan, a very traditional cushioned mat that is rolled up in the morning so that the “bedroom” doesn’t really look like a bedroom at all due to its lack of beds. Kind of strange, but surprisingly comfortable, and it’s probably good for your back.

So again, I was up early early and was able to get all my things together one last time before heading out on my three-train route to Osaka in Western Japan.

Now, I was a little silly. See, these long distance high-speed trains all have a couple cars that are for non-reserved seats, but with my JR Pass, I could also reserve a seat for free. I hadn’t planned on reserving ahead of time, but when I went to activate my pass, the service man asked if I was going to Osaka and then offered to reserve a seat for me. He explained that the train was a bit full, so I could either have an aisle seat on “mountain side” or a window seat, but this was on “not the mountain side.” I decided to go with the aisle seat because I figured that way I could still get a decent view of these so-called mountains.

When I arrived at my seat on the Shinkansen, however, my row buddy had elected to sit in the aisle, so I got the window after all! Yay! I snuggled in and got to figuring out where I would be sleeping that night, since, you know, I was being really lazy on planning for this trip.

It all went wrong when I decided to map my chosen hostel and see how to get there from the Osaka train station, and as I peered at the screen of Google Maps, I noticed that my train seemed to whizz right past the little icon of Mt. Fuji. I looked up and out my window to see yet more farmlands. You see, for the most part, my head was down, trying to sort through hostels, but every few minutes, I glanced up to see the view and continued to puzzle over the fact that though I was sitting on the “mountain side” of the train, I still had yet to see any glamorous mountains. And that was when I realized that the “mountain side” meant “the side that Mt. Fuji is on.

I realized this about five minutes after we passed Mt. Fuji.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYY.

So yeah. That was not my best moment. I pretty much just sulked for the rest of the ride and only picked a hostel as my train was finishing up its two and a half hour ride. I hate missing travel opportunities for silly reasons.

But I keep telling myself that I might not have seen it anyway due to the fog. Meh. Hard to say.

As I finished up my ride, I nibbled on this little sandwich variety pack and wished we had cute little things like this back home.

And then I stuffed my backpack into a locker and went off to explore Osaka!

My first attraction was Osaka Castle, tucked into a walled fortress and surrounded by a moat.

There was one mysterious building that I didn’t check out that seemed to be spilling out children after some sort of martial arts practice.

There was a shrine outside the castle, as well.

And then I got my first good view of the castle!

Gorgeous! Can you even imagine how pretty that would look surrounded by cherry blossoms? I swear eighty percent of the postcard pictures of Osaka Castle are taken during cherry blossom season, but my luscious green view wasn’t too shabby, either.

Osaka seemed big on this cherry blossom champagne, as I saw it around a couple tourist attractions and it was always hard to resist the bright pink bubbles.

And then I approached the castle.

Pictures weren’t allowed on most floors inside the castle museum, but here are some legal ones:

One floor depicted the life of a great warrior and leader in a series of live action characters projected onto three dimensional paper backdrops. Very interesting.

And the top floor had a viewing platform! Yay!

You know how I like my tower views.

I was really into these giant golden fish.

They’re not fully golden anymore, but I believe they were at one point in the past.

Once I had all that out of my system, I marched back down the eight flights of stairs to get another pretty view from the outside of the castle.

I was s-s-s-starving by this point. Like, so hungry that I was walking in circles and hyperventilating every time I couldn’t decide which way to turn. I wanted something ramen-y, but all of the closest ramen places were over twenty minutes away because I had to first get out of this blasted castle fortress! I changed my mind on which place to find three times because I kept going the wrong direction and making my route to one longer and the other shorter, and vice versa.

In the end, I made it to the final ramen place but decided to hit up an udon place one block back instead because it just looked so hit-the-spotty at that very moment.

It was delectable.

The beef was mostly fat and gristle, but I ate it anyway. No regrets. Gosh, I can almost taste it now. I am most certainly going to make every effort to eat udon again in the next week.

Finally satisfied in the hunger department, I made my way back to the city area.

And then, I hit up one of the first things on my Osaka itinerary I found online. (I’ll be honest – I wasn’t super into the itinerary. It was basically just a bunch of shopping areas lined up back-to-back. So either the itinerary was sponsored by all of these shopping areas or Osaka really is just a big old city filled with shopping and tall buildings. Not sure which is worse.)

But anyway, the first thing this itinerary told me to visit was basically just a giant department store. I did a quick lap around each of the eight levels in the hopes that I would find something remarkable, but it was really just a department store.

Okay. There was one thing I got a kick out of, though: the toy food-prep contraptions. Literally so cute and unnecessary.

The first one to catch my eye was a little penguin who bows down to pick up a stick of Pocky before sitting up again with the Pocky in its mouth. So silly. So great.

This one is probably my favorite, though. It’s a stamp that cuts a piece of seaweed into the little black parts on a panda face to make your sushi look like a little panda! Why? Who cares! Look at those adorable pandas!

And this one is a little at-home Sub Zero style ice cream maker, where you pour liquid ice cream onto a super cold plate and scrape it up into ice creaminess.

And this is not food related, but I found a tiny, tiny Pac-Man arcade machine!

EEEEEEEP! I wanted it. But I resisted. I think it was like twenty dollars.

When I realized I just couldn’t possibly find anything in this store better than a teeny, tiny Pac-Man machine, and when I had officially visited all eight floors, I hit the streets again and hit up the next stop on my itinerary: a covered shopping arcade called Bashi-Suji.

I took a couple detours along side routes when I grew bored of the arcade.

And I got some matcha ice cream because I’m addicted.

Bashi-Suji spit me out near a river and a very crowded bridge. The area reminded me of Times Square with all of the billboards and flashing screens.

I lucked out and arrived right in the middle of a girl group performance occurring on the other side of the water, so I stopped to watch until they finished. They were pretty cute and very smiley with all of their preppy, happy dance moves.

They weren’t my favorite part of the performance, though. I had two favorite sets of performers, and neither of them were the official ones in the pink skirt get-ups. The first group was a random scattering of fully adult men in the audience on my side of the bridge who were smiling like it was the best day of their lives while trying to dance along with the girls. It was, um… a bit sad, to be honest. But in an adorable way.

The other unofficial performer who caught my eye was very likely also a man based on this person’s tall and bulky stature, and he was wearing all black with what appeared to be a white lab coat over the top. And to finish it all off, he was wearing some sort of full-head mask that could have been Yoda??? It was really hard to tell from my vantage point, but he was on the same side of the river as the girls, on the other side of their tents, and he knew every single move. It was so bizarre. My fabricated backstory for him is that he wanted to be in the group, but they wouldn’t let him because he wasn’t an adorable teenage girl, so he learned all of their moves anyway and piggy backs on all of their performances. There’s no denying this dude was weird, though.

Once the performance was over, I headed across the bridge into the throng of Osaka Times Square, as I have unofficially named it.

From this side, I was able to see that there was some sort of amusement park on the first side of the water, crowned by a super tall and skinny Ferris Wheel of Death, featuring Perry the Platypus. (???)

Anyway. Back on the Times Square side of things was a bustling food street running parallel to the river. This was a fun spot because I’d been craving some street food! But, it was also poorly timed considering I had just scarfed down a bowl of udon. I took note of the most exciting foods and made plans to return at a later time.

There were smaller arcades along side streets of this food street, but the main attraction was clearly the main road.

A fun surprise and escape from the bustle of the food streets and arcades was the small and mystical Hozenji Temple, famous for its moss-covered Fudo spirit statue.

I found it interesting that this temple was so small and tucked away, but apparently this is because the rest of the temple and surrounding area was demolished during WWII, and this Fudo statue was the only one that survived.

It’s covered in moss because worshippers toss water onto the main Fudo spirit and his two smaller companions after making a wish, and all the extra moisture keeps the moss growing green and bright. So pretty!

Oh, and check out this gorgeous manhole cover.

Never have I ever seen one so glamorous! Osaka Castle and cherry blossoms. Pretty pretty.

After this, I made my way over to Abeno Harukas, a tall office building with a free observatory on the sixteenth floor. The sun was already setting when I got here, so I really had to scramble to the top if I wanted to see anything other than blinking lights.

The observatory was actually a little outdoor terrace and garden, and it really was lovely up here. A bit windy, but lovely.

I only got views in two directions up here thanks to the architecture, as the building went up many more floors on the other two sides of the terrace.

The garden was so nice and peaceful, though! It was a good escape from the crowds on the food street.

I then went upstairs to see what was on the seventeenth and eighteenth floors.

But in the process, without my even realizing it, seven o’clock came around and the terrace closed! Phooey. The sun went down very quickly after this.

Tired and satisfied with my views, I decided it was too early to turn in for the night, so I made my way back to the food street for dinner.

Gyoza caught my eye first. It was soooooo yummy.

And then I ventured over to try some of this takoyaki stuff I’d been hearing so much about. I’ll admit that I was quite disappointed when I found out those delicious rice balls were not takoyaki, because I could eat those things every day. Real takoyaki, as the internet told me, was not a ball of rice, but rather a ball of a milk and flour based batter with a piece of octopus and some other flavorful things inside. Then these balls were covered in various toppings of choice.

There were quite a few stands and restaurants boasting their takoyaki serving abilities, but the one I chose had a long line, so I figured it must be the best. The cooking process was certainly fascinating. First, they greased the half-sphere metal molds with lots and lots of oil.

Then they poured in the liquidy batter and dropped a chunk of octopus tentacle into each space.

Next, they sprinkled some pink stuff on top and then coated the whole pan with these little crispy rice ball things.

And then they sliced the whole thing up into a grid and expertly turned each half-sphere around slowly until a full sphere formed.

There were a bunch of topping choices, ranging from “salt,” to “sauce,” to “half and half.” I went with the sauce option because it sounded exciting, but I think I should have gone with the straight salt. I ended up really not liking the sauce.

I’m not sure how to describe it. I’ve definitely tasted it before. It was just so strong. So yeah. That was kind of disappointing. I ended up eating two of my six takoyaki balls before giving up and walking to the train station.

The problem is that trash cans are nearly impossible to find in Japan, so I was going to have to carry my four takoyaki balls all the way home on the train. This was not desirable since walking around with food is also very out of the norm.

At one point, I was nearly run over by a group of four tall, white American boys, and immediately after we passed each other, I considered running back to offer them my uneaten takoyaki, but I just couldn’t figure out how I would sell it to them.

Unsure what to do, I ate another, but at this point, I decided that I really, really did not like the sauce and could not stomach another bite.

By some miracle, my train station actually had a trash can. There was a young businessman on his phone standing near the trash can, and I could just see him watching me with dumbfounded confusion as I walked up and guiltily disposed of three precious takoyaki balls. I thought about offering them to him, but that seemed out of the question. So, I dumped the takoyaki and ran back to wait for my train.

Sorry, takoyaki. It’s not you. It’s the sauce.

That night, I was reminded what 24-bunk hostel rooms are like. It’s a humbling experience every time. These ones were nice in that they were deep instead of long so that your feet are pointed to the outside of your space as opposed to having your whole horizontal body exposed like a normal bunk bed. The little wooden boxes were honestly pretty roomy, and my thin mattress was surprisingly comfy. Only one night here before I continue this adventure! Stay tuned.

私はあなたに最高を祈ります/ best wishes,

-Lizzy-wa