After I resigned, I decided I should go 'see the red leaves'.
In September, I saw a nice deal on FlyScoot's Facebook advertisement, so I booked an 11-day, three-adult-one-child trip to Osaka. As I wanted to be there for the autumn foliage for my mother and me, it was still school term for Coco so she missed our second Japan trip.
We would visit:
1) Osaka
2) Himeji
3) Kobe
4) Hiroshima
5) Miyajima
6) Nara
7) Kyoto
It must have been a long time since I travelled far, because I went ahead and booked 4 different hotels, forgetting how much hassle changing hotels would be.
Japan is one hour ahead of Singapore, so although the flight itinerary showed that it's a 7-hour flight, it really was a 6-hour flight.
We only had a rough itinerary of where we wanted to go. I asked William to find out the directions for every destination, which I later found out he did not.
Tip: Plan your how-to-get-there way in advance. Don't do it on the trip itself. It's very stressful and it wastes a lot of time.
Flying off from Singapore
Kansai Airport staff moving the luggage off the belt
It was a very unprepared trip. We didn't book a pocket wifi in advance.
We just went straight to the counter and paid for one.
Namba Nankai Station is a train interchange linked to JR Namba Station and Kintetsu Namba Station. People usually just call it Namba Station so it can be confusing for people who are unfamiliar with Osaka like me.
I would probably sum it up this way:
To take JR train, you go to JR Namba Station;
To take subway, you go to Kintetsu Namba Station;
To take Nankai Express, you go to Namba Station.
What's more confusing for me is that different types of trains eg. local or 普通 and rapid express would arrive at the same platform so you have to board the train according to the corresponding departure time. For example, if the train time indicated on Google Map and the LCD display on the platform is 1.45pm, the train could arrive at 1.35pm and that would be your train as it would leave at 1.45pm.
They use different tickets so you have to buy the tickets at the respective stations.
The crowded Nankai Express to Namba
By the time we checked into our hotel at Hotel Ilcoure near Namba Station, it was 7.30pm.
It was a four bedder room. Room was quite small and beds were twin beds. One bed could sleep two of us so we could have done with at most 3 beds and would appreciate the space instead.
We put down our luggage and headed out to hunt for food at Dotonburi, following the must-eat guides on the internet.
The first being the famous Kukuru Takoyaki.
Singapore sells these balls in small boxes of four and they are usually covered and overpowered by dried bonito. I usually eat the ones with prawn fillings but in this takoyaki shop in Dotonburi, the popular filling is octopus, other than cheese and bacon, so we had that.
I thought it could not have been too different from the ones in Singapore. After all, they are made of flour right?
I was not quite right.
Firstly, they came in a box of six. The balls were bigger. When we sank our teeth into them, we found them to be softer. Diced octopus pieces were soft too. Were there bonito flakes? Not that I remember.
Hot and good!
The box on the right was the fried noodles my mother requested from the same stall. Too sweet, we thought.
We had the same takoyaki at least 3 times in our stay in Japan!
Tried their cheese and bacon but octopus was better.
Then we went on to try kushikatsu at Daruma which was just down the same street.
Kushikatsu are deep-fried meat or vegetables on skewers, dipped in Japanese sweet sauce before you bite into them.
The crowd in the restaurant seemed to be young, in their twenties, who had their kushikatsu with booze and beer. We seemed kind of odd to be there. Not sure if I was too sensitive but I felt stared at by inquisitive eyes.
There was a few 'packages' on the menu and we took the cheapest just in case we didn't like the taste.
It's fried food after all, you know? We also have them at pasar malam.
The kushikatsu are breaded and deep-fried so the flour stick closely to the food. Quite different from our pasar malam fried food though.
I read that we could only dip our food into the sauce once, before we put the food into our mouth, as the same tin of sauce is shared by all diners seated at the same table before and after us.
Baby was shocked,"Why didn't you tell us?"
We took their A Combo for 1400 yen.
Not repulsive. Definitely edible, but it's not something I would want to have dinner as since it's all fried.
By then, it was 9.15pm. Restaurants were closing. We had no luck with a sushi restaurant or ramen restaurant so we continued to roam at Dotonburi food street to find more 'must-eats'. And we were glad that Chibo restaurant was still open, till 1am.
Chibo is famous for its okonomiyaki, a Japanese pancake made with flour, eggs, shredded cabbage and meat.
We were seated at a four seater with a hotplate centre. After placing our order, we waited for a chef or server to come and perform some hotplate cooking stunts for us. Much to our surprise, a female waitress came and placed a okonomiyaki on the hotplate and went away!
The four of us looked at one another, wondering if we should wait further or if we could just tuck in.
William felt that we should wait for the server to come back to cook it.
I felt that it looked ready to eat.
Then the server returned and gestured that we could start eating.
Hmm ... just scrambled eggs lor ... sauce was sweet, like takoyaki sauce.
Not impressed.
Mother and Baby didn't eat much so we ordered noodles for them again.
After our dinner at Dotonbori, it was late, and cold, so we made our way back to the hotel. Along the way, we saw a tank of fish, with two huge pufferfish!
Before we reached our hotel, the father and daughter wanted to eat their Japanese ice-cream, on a 11 degree celsius night.
Yummy though!
1-15-15 Nambanaka Naniwa,
Namba Osaka
Japan 556-0011
Nearest train station: Namba Station
Dotonbori
10 minutes' walk from Namba Station
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