Japan: South Side - Osaka & Kyoto

We spent the last 6 days of our Japan travels on the south part of the main Island of Honshū. Our hotel was very centrally located next to the main train station in Osaka. Osaka was a little more sleepy than Tokyo and Yokohama, with little night life in our end of town.

We spent the first full day touring Osaka. We visited the Osaka castle - an amazing area surrounded by a real moat. The castle was rebuilt in the 1930s. Side note: most of the castles and many shrines burned down through time (one of the outcomes of building everything of wood). But at the castle, there were still two original guard houses that were not burned down. The most impressive part of the castle were the amazing stone walls. Some stones were as big as houses. We saw a few more historical sites and walked around some very touristy neighborhood. One neighborhood in particular, Dotonbori, was lined with 3 dimensional creatures hanging off of buildings (crabs, cows, dragons, etc). Very cool. It was an amazing day, with rare nice weather.

We spent the next day visiting Kyoto. I have wanted to visit this historic city since I started working on and off in Japan back in the early 2000s. It was in fact a very beautiful city with amazing shrines, Buddhist temples and pagodas. Unfortunately for us, it was a national holiday in Japan and in addition to the locals, every other tourist in the country was visiting at the same time. We did manage to find some open spaces and take many pictures of this incredible city. I would like to visit again when there are fewer crowds and maybe in cooler weather. We did finally get to see some fall foliage.

The food was harder to come by in Osaka, compared to Tokyo and Yokohama, especially for two pescetarians (ok, I do eat a little meat) and Jos’ shellfish allergy! There was one major exception: we dined our last night at an amazing one star Michelin rated restaurant Naniwa Okina. It had the most incredibly delicious soba noddles (and another dish of baked miso on a stick) 😛  Soba noodles are a Japanese noodle made out of buckwheat. It was a very low key place and the least expensive Michelin meal we’ve had!

After several failed attempts, we finally found a very cool bar that made great cocktails. The other bars were normally full of smoke (you can’t smoke on the street in Japan, but you can in bars....go figure🤪). The bar tender at Bar K worked there for 15 years. He must have started when he was 18.  We also had some nice cocktails on the top floor of our hotel.

We had an early morning flight schedule, so up at 4:00 am. 😕😣 Both of us are excited for our next stop, Bangkok, Thailand 🇹🇭.

btw. For some reasons (probably user error) all of our pictures load in reverse order. Start with the MT Fuji picture at the bottom