Transit to Osaka

After running and picking up out luggage we even managed to get to the train station in time. But having 10 minutes time to buy the tickets was not enough. For the Shinkansen you always have to buy two tickets - one to enter the train and one to reserve a seat in the train so that it is guaranteed that every person has a place to sit. So first we bought the wrong ticket and then our credit cards were not working at all and we missed the planned train and had to take the next one which luckily just came 15 minutes later.
The Shinkansen is an amazing and luxurious train traveling at around 300 km/h per hour! It’s in almost all cases the fastest and most convenient way to travel in Japan. It just took us 90 minutes to cover the distance of over 300 km to Osaka even stopping a couple times in the bigger cities in between. You have an enormous space for your legs so that even René didn’t not have any trouble and we enjoyed a nice beer :-D
When we arrived in Osaka, Claudi immediately took the train to the airport which is on an artificial Island in Osaka-Bay but still quite far away from the city center and we directly went to our airbnb apartment which is located in the Umeda one of the busiest districts in whole Osaka :D
In order to get there we had to pass a long street with tons of banners, luminous advertisement, small shops, gaming halls and everything crowded with people. That’s how I fancied Japan! And right when the all the bling-bling started to get less René said that we’ve reached our destination. Right under a huge luminous advertisement and next to a small bar was the entrance to the apartment closed by a sliding gate to prevent people from mistaking it as the entrance to another bar^^ Going up a narrow stair we found out that our direct neighbour was a shot bar anyway. We opened the pin-locked which led to another stair to the first floor of our flat with the kitchen and the living room equipped with Tatami and a Kotatsu - a heated table which still is the major heat source in traditional Japanese houses. The apartment consisted on total of three floors and we found the toilet and to bed rooms including two small balconies the upper one. But there was also a slight problem… We didn’t find a shower! At first we were very concerned but after climbing the floors a couple times more I found it behind behind a inconspicuous curtain and were very relieved!!
After unpacking our stuff we went shopping a huge amount of food for dinner to welcome here parents with some nice sushi. Some fruits are extremely expensive in Japan. In this shop the apples for example started from 1 Euro per PIECE and went up to 5! Soon after we came back also Claudi arrived with her parents and we had a traditional meal on the Kotatsu sitting on the Tatamis :D
Since everyone was a little tired we went to bed early after to start well motivated into the next day!Read more