Tokyo to Osaka

We woke up to find that our 8.45pm flight was now delayed until 9.00am tomorrow, so hurriedly booked some accommodation near Kansai Airport (in the same building I stayed with Lynette on our first night arriving in Japan). We caught the connecting trains to Tokyo Station, hopped on a Shinkansen, and got to see Mt Fuji out the window, with barely a cloud to obscure it! Very exciting because that was one thing we would have otherwise missed.

After stowing the luggage in lockers at the very large Namba Station, with google maps pins and photos to ensure we could actually find them again, we set off in the direction of Osaka's version of kitchen street. As we walked put of the station, it started to snow a little. Stopped for lunch on the way at a very cheap but extremely tasty hotpot restaurant. We ordered two beers and the manager came to check we were driving (they wont serve alcohol to drivers in Japan) and that we wanted two. Yes we said. OMG, they were gigantic!

This kitchen street was just as disappointing in terms of closed shops at Tokyo, but it only takes one shop to be open with the thing you want to buy, and luckily a set of cooking chopsticks could be procured.

Our next stop was 30 minutes away by train: Osaka Aquarium. We got there to find you should have ore purchased tickets, and the wait time to get in was 75 minutes. Nope... Kate had just informed us as we walked past the gigantic Ferris wheel next to the aquarium that she had never been on one. Because we are the nicest parents on planet earth, and to ensure we just hadn't wasted a one hour round trip, we went in that instead. According to the sign it was the largest giant Ferris wheel in the world. Looking it up later, I think that claim was short-lived, but it was 100m in diameter, so pretty big.

At Namba Station, we passed a shop selling the special Osaka wobbly souffle cheesecake, so grabbed one of those for later, eventually found the lockers again and headed to our accommodation in Rinku-Town.

Dinner was a nearby, very gigantic, sushi train shop. Good, but not quite as good as our Tokyo experience.Læs mere