2019 Japan Part 5 - Osaka

What typifies a city? History, culture, relative accessibility to places of interest/sight-seeing, food, shopping? Osaka, famous for Takoyaki and other delights, is a self-proclaimed food heaven. We wanted to experience how a 'street food' can elevate to become fine dining. http://www.takoriki.jp/ is our choice.

Decent drinks with enough dosage to go with the balls.

 The cheese is the best.. ...yumz

La wife's love for a bun whose head is bitten off every episode and the father rebakes it back? The idiosyncrasies of Japan!

 Read

Osaka. can you see the 381 people.

 Yes our contribution to Japan's economy. Really good shoes btw!

I was KO soon and time for rest time and animal cafes are the way to go. Having visited numerous cats, owl and 'regular' cafes, le wife chose her spirit animal, the Snake! #Gasp

Snakes, reptiles, what's the difference. This little thing grew impatient and it shat on me! And I dropped him....(luckily it was like a 5cm drop onto a table), else I've no idea if they can withstand a 1meter drop?! Yes we had to agree to be bitten but the clauses didn't include being shat on!

 Yes, swallow from the head.

Anyway, reptiles are pretty harmless, their texture is much less leathery/rough then what wallets and bags have made us think of them.  Cool creatures un-deserving of the tag that they're poisonous and kill lots of humans. It was a bad KO after this. Going to the maze in Osaka station, hunting for panadol, sitting in an onsen to get blood flowing especially to the feet)...

 On the final day, both of us coughing bad, we hunted down 2 more eating places.

 can't rem the name of this. it's 'duck broth soba with michelin star'. nothing worked here. le wife's tofu broth was better!

 Okonomiyaki....again, no clue what 'status' a street food can be elevated. A snack at most, sorry no gourman or ratings will be given.  First word is 'ki'. sorry can't read the 2nd word...damn!

It was an amazing race rush to the hotel to lug the bags to reach the airport limousine (near intercon). We made it with 30s or so to spare!

 really amazing engineering that man can build an airport in the middle of nothing. Kudos to Osaka/Japan for showing the world frontier engineering!

Summary. A great trip especially the first half, even though the lack of snow was a meh, I needed just moments to be 'one' with the mountain...to be happy. Riding puts a smile....supermaket raids too. Driving /sliding in snow..is ooh. Togakushi is wow... The cities Kyoto and Osaka are nice, but I prefer the wild.... Japan, we'll meet you soon again!

2019 Japan Kyoto part 4

the little rock garden from our hotel.

it was meant to be an super early trip to the Bamboo forest but guess what, we were lazy haha.

The first stop was the Tenryuji temple, very pretty. Costed a few bucks to get in.

The forest is right next to the temple perimeter. It's FULL of peeps, and the only way is UP!

yeah ..

It's december and a rare red coloured tree had people queueing to take photo with!

yeah the temple with the golden exterior. would be tops if it's covered in snow.

 Yes this is a ZEN Garden of 15 rocks. Legend was there some monk discovered them, made a garden and nice story out if it, and they have been charging entrance fees for 500+ years!

Yes,ROCKS ROCK!

 It was getting dark and a trip to Ippodo tea house. Had an epiphany moment here with the very best Gyokuro ever. (video of my expression available!)

Yums yums yums. Umami's definition is right here!

Tea, me or Tea?

 An 'no' opera house with an Soba noodle with Herring as the mains. The salmon flakes on the rice was #OMFG nice.

 It was more temples and shrines

Yes a black rabbit in the background to bless us with fertility.

Yet to have a good tofu session ( Tenryuji was meh, and others all tasted like mua-chi), this  was the finally a super good soft/hard dual type tofu.

can't rem what this was... probably for the nice bonsai in the garden.

very cute kyoto shop, couldn't find this on TB!! damn!

 v nice weather for this angle of the kyoto shrine.

The tofu shop. 

 yes all tofu-ish dishes were good!

 The angle for the postcard shot (if there's no one, during sunrise/set,snow..) can imagine right?

nice door.

 it was a trek to the Sake places again...this waterway, imagine Sakura....

 yes...Sake time

 boring boring sakes

 yawn

streets similar to takayama

 all yawn

 pit stop.

 dinner in Osaka. tired like dogs already and we skip the pins on our google maps and hope to something 100-200meters from our hole.

 Good-ish sake, meh Sashimi

But super uber good Kushikatsu! so good we went to another shop nearby for another round.

Did I mention that I dislike cities, all the 10k + steps by mid afternoon and the constant need to hydrate and look for toilets is really tiring. Yes..we were falling sick,...very sick!