Japan 2012 Travel Diary, Day 9

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The original plan for Hiroshima was to head to Miwajima in the morning before jumping on another Shinkansen to Osaka, but Wifey was still struggling with her cold/flu bug so we decided to have a bit of a sleep in to rest up, had the hotel hold our bags then went to spend some more time exploring around where we were staying in Hiroshima.

It’s a pity we only stayed overnight as Hiroshima is a beautiful city that balances the new and the traditional sides of Japan, with an amazing social history and is super clean and pristine. We went for another wander down Hondori and a few other spots locally, stopping for lunch at a Doutor for a lunch of lettuce dogs (!), matcha cake (again) and some tea. While we were there an old lady wandered up to our table for a chat – turns out her son and his family live in Canada and we had a chat that intermingled between Japanese and English, and at the end of it she also passed along an English guide map of Hiroshima for us. It’s things like this that really make stints overseas memorable, and certainly solidified Hiroshima as a city we wish we had more time enjoy. If we have the opportunity to return to Japan in the future, I know we’ll be earmarking more time to spend here – the city and its people are wonderful, and the Book Off was well-stocked and full of awesome 🙂

After lunch we picked up our luggage and jumped on the train back to Shin-Osaka and managed to get in by late-afternoon. Transferring from Shin-Osaka through to Osaka Station we had our first experience of Osaka people – people were actually having animated conversations on the train! In the other places we traveled, the advised maxim of being quiet on public transport (and in public in general) was shunned by a city’s occupants who seemed naturally more boisterous in public than we had noticed elsewhere. Was very interesting and certainly rides home the difference between east/west in Japan!

After arriving at Osaka Station we found our way to the JR Line to take us to our hotel, the Universal Port Hotel located near the Universal Studios amusement park and the adjoining Universal City Walk. Dodging the allure of the Universal City Walk, we exited the station and turned left to take a pedestrian road to get to our destination. The hotel was all sorts of awesome – a porter took our luggage up to our room (I helped her load the bags though, as by this stage our bags were hitting around the 20kg mark and the girl helping us looked like she was going to struggle!), showed us the amenities and complemented me on my command of Japanese; while I think she was only being polite, it was a nice gesture nonetheless!

The hotel room itself was also incredibly spacious – as we went from place to place In Japan the rooms seemed to be getting bigger, and what I loved about this room was that the bathroom was very Japanese – sink grate on the floor with a stool to sit on with the shower head mounted above to wash yourself, and then a full separate bath next to it to unwind and enjoy a furo Japanese style 🙂 Truth be told, I got a little carried away with the bath thing while we were in Japan – most nights after we got back to the hotel I ended up scrubbing down and then relaxing in the tub afterwards 😛

But the real magic was the toilet – I’ll let the panel above espouse the majesty (and complexity) of the thing. It was even fitted with an infrared sensor that automatically opened the lid when you entered the separate toilet room. Very 2001/HAL. Oh Kubrick, you so visionary.

Now being Australian, the whole Halloween thing isn’t much of a deal down our way, but in Osaka it was on. Probably due to where we were staying, we noticed when we were coming to the train station that the carriages soon became packed with teens and uni students dressed up and ready to have a good time. While Japanese girls generally show off a lot of leg here, everything was out there for Halloween – boobs and legs were equally at ease with some amazing and elaborate costumes.

While the guys didn’t seem to get into it as much as the girls, we saw an amazing Edward Scissorhands there, and another dude looked like a stripper cop, complete with fake gun and smoking a cigarette, with his girlfriend also dressed like a stripper cop (the fake gun would also have been a faux pax back home considering how realistic it looked!).

Universal City Walk is an amusingly Japanese take on the boardwalk – neon and LCD screens line the multi-story shops, and we checked out the Jump Store (Shounen Jump goodies therein), a collectables shop full of all sorts of Japanese and American paraphernalia (Batman, Superman, Ben 10, Garfield, Aliens, Back to the Future, Astro Boy, etc) which also housed a museum of classic Japanese and American properties. There were also clothes shops selling new and vintage clothing, and plenty of places to eat. After a stop at the awesome Takoyaki Museum (highly recommended!) we tucked into one of the local takoyaki places to dig in while the hilariawesome Takoyaki Museum theme song played over the mall’s PA system. We had saved ourselves for takoyaki until we got to Osaka and the wait was worth it – we picked up a mixed plate of takoyaki with different toppings and washed it down with melon Fanta (tasted just like Midori, but without the fun alcohol content!).

After eating some food we ventured back out onto the street to continue checking out stores and go people-watching. There was a great Universal gift store with all sorts of gear – they had a pretty sizable collection of Peanuts goodies there, but that seemed to be common around the traps while we were in Japan, Snoopy & co were regulars on all sorts of gear, from bottled water to plushies. We ended up walking the length of the pedestrian street until we hit the Universal Studios Japan theme park entrance, but we had decided to skip visiting the park while we were in Osaka to occupy ourselves with other stuff. Still, it was cool to see that the theme park was also getting into the Halloween spirit!

We grabbed a couple of drinks from the Starbucks at the train station end of the Universal City Walk (noting the crepe stand along the way for another evening when we weren’t stuffed full of takoyaki) to take back to the hotel and were fortunate to have wifi in our room again, so we were able to drop family and friends a quick hello before getting some sleep. Osaka certainly put up an amazing welcome for us after day one.

Oh, and a quick update – the last couple of posts had the landscape shots a bit smaller than usual (500px wide vs 750px); I’ve re-uploaded them with slightly larger images and also re-uploaded some of the panorama shots from the Takao climb as well (1200px instead of the 750px versions added previously).

To view all posts on the Japan 2012 Travel Diary, just use the 2012 Japan Trip tag, as the whole series will be added to it over time.