Bright lights, big robots

City day one of four! We arrive around 3pm, self check in to our mini serviced apartment (not an Airbnb I checked rigorously) with only the most demure of hiccups, and prepared to stop bowing and greeting every person we see, lest we be mistaken for the bumpkins we are.

The plan for Osaka is not to try to be everywhere and do everything, we are going to feed our specific interests and mooch the remainder, seeing what we see and getting lost. These interests are: robots; kitchen stuff; Uniqlo; robots; shoes; robots: toiletries; robots; eating tonkatsu and steak, given time on coast felt more suited to fish, and okonominyaki and takoyaki as iconic Osaka foods: robots.

After being pilgrim paragons with our 5kg, 30L backpacks, accruing almost nothing save select meaningful dual pilgrim souvenirs until now, Jim commenced an offensive on a trio of robot shops that raged for three days and resulted in purchasing about 170L of additional capacity across two suitcases. Today was the first battle in this foray, I accompanied for moral support and occupied myself finding the funniest ones, the giggling not super well received amongst the purists.Read more