Day 0: Arrival in Osaka | 5-day Osaka Kyoto Nara itinerary full of parks and museums
Day 0 - Arrival in Osaka
Arrive in Osaka via Kansai International Airport. Ride train to hotel. My husband handles the train schedules and transfers, and for that, I am grateful. Google Maps was very helpful with the correct transfers, exits, and schedules.
We booked a wifi device through Klook and had it delivered to our hotel. Very affordable rates compared to the ones offered elsewhere (PHP1,631 for 7 days). It also included a mail packet already addressed, so we only had to drop it off at a postbox when we got back to Okinawa. We do have Japanese sim cards but limited data plans.
Check-in at Hotel Livemax Yodobashi. A budget hotel that was central to where we needed to be. This trip was also kind of last minute so we were lucky there were still rooms available.
Pretty standard for Japanese budget hotels. friendly staff. We did not like the bed, having grown accustomed to sleeping in separate futons at home, the bed was squeaky and would bounce at the slightest movement. The hotel highlighted the bed as a special feature but I think it was what we didn't like the most heh.
Walk from hotel to Dotonbori area, Ebisubashi Bridge. Try to take photos with Glico Man. We were over during the New Year holidays so the city was pretty empty but we were taken aback to see the bridge was full of tourists (like us heh). There was also a line to the photo spot that lines up with the Glico Man billboard so we didn't bother with that because we were pretty hungry.
Get takoyaki at Acchichi Honpo. Eat immediately and burn mouth, as it should be.
We walked through a main road on our way back to the hotel and found them lit up with illuminations. As you can see in the photo, I was very happy.
I'm not sure what our original plan for dinner was, but being a go-home type of holiday for most Japanese people, a lot of restaurants were closed. But we lucked out at this ramen spot located in a shopping street: Ramen War Senba Shinsaibashi.
The broth was light and the noodles were chewy, just how we liked it. And slurping down that broth on a cold night was just perfect.
