It was a little stressful getting there. Before today, we basically had our teacher telling us how to get places when she's not with us herself. Today we basically had to figure out almost everything ourselves.
Luckily, Osaka is a pretty big tourist destination with information desks that has workers who speak English. Once getting off the shinkansen in Shin-Osaka, we asked one of these information desks on how to get to Osaka Castle. There was still a bit of confusion getting there, but we got there!
The castle was pretty amazing. There are some small rivers that run around the castle, so we took some pictures before crossing.
After getting to the castle itself, we had a hard time trying to get pictures of us with the castle in the background. We looked like ants when trying to capture the whole thing!
Entering the castle only cost us 600 yen, which is about $5.40. Definitely worth it! Most of us decided to walk all the way to the top, so I got some good cardio in from walking up about 8 flights of stairs. The view from up top was amazing! Osaka is so huge and it was really cool to see it from above.
After this we moseyed are way down, going through all the exhibits as we went. We then went to Dotonbori for food. Dotonbori is basically this huge shopping street that is infamous for having copious amounts of food. This is where I first heard of the term "kuidadore" or "eat until you drop". We had some BBQ for lunch and then gelato for dessert.
You had to grill your own meat. 'Twas great.
We then explored some more of Dotonbori. There were so many places to eat, and I swear at least 30% of those places are dedicated to takoyaki. Takoyaki is basically fried balls of octopus, and it's one of Osaka's famous dishes. This street really liked to boast that. I don't know how many street stands and restaurants we passed by that sold takoyaki, and on top of that many of the souvenir shops sold key chains and what not that was shaped like takoyaki. By then my feet began hurting too much and we kept trying to keep track of everyone in our group (some people in the group have a higher tendency to get lost than others), that I wasn't able to try any. That's the main thing I regret. I might just buy 7/11 takoyaki at some point.
Finally we got back to Kyoto via shinkansen, and now I'm relaxing my tired feet. Tomorrow is another free day, so we'll be visiting the 1000+ torii gates in Kyoto and then the Himeji Castle.
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