Thanks, Mechelle!
I can't believe my trip report is coming to an end. I've had so much fun reliving the vacation even when it feels like I'm just talking to myself. I told Chris about it and he came in and read it and he was like "Oh man, what an amazing trip that was." I kind of got teary. It's amazing how many little things I had already forgotten until I went through my phone pictures and was reminded. I mean there's still 4 or 5 days of trip report left but leaving for Osaka really marked the end of our trip looming over us.
Now, if I recall we had packed 90% the night before so we just had to pack the clothes that were drying, take showers, pack our toiletries, and roll out.
We had some confusion the night before. When we were headed to Asakusa, it turned out the Yamanote line was closed a few stops from Shibuya and there were some people who were clearly headed to Tokyo Station to catch a Shinkansen with their luggage. Now, we had been watching the news and they kept mentioning the Yamanote line, but we had no idea what they were talking about. Then everyone got off at the Osaka stop and we were just like "That's weird, we're the only ones on the train!" Finally, a conductor came on the train and was like "You guys, the line is closed, you have to go back and connect on another line." Luckily we weren't on a schedule so it didn't cause us any problems.
HOWEVER, we didn't understand if it would re-open the next day or not. When we were asking at the JR office when we bought our tickets, we were having a hard time communicating this particular question even with Was it closed all weekend (we went to Osaka on a Sunday) or just on Saturday? If it was closed all weekend, we would need to catch Shinkansen at Tokyo station instead of Shinagawa. We ended up just getting tickets out of Tokyo station just in case, but it turned out the Yamanote line was open. At least we didn't have to transfer.
Chris was really nervous about making the train. We had reserved seats, but we also had our suitcases so we wanted to get on early enough to store our suitcases behind the back row. There is no security line or anything, so as long as you get there before the train leaves you're fine. We got there so early it was dumb, but we were really limited in how we could spend our time because we were lugging suitcases. We ended up going down into the basement and having a snack at the weirdest restaurant. It was an Oktoberfest themed Chinese restaurant. The food was fine and all, but it was probably the worst restaurant food we had on the whole trip. Then we went to a confine and purchased some Strong Zeros (this will come back to haunt me later), and then we bought Ekiben to eat on the train.
Look, Ekiben is magical. Why can't I buy all of this in America?
This is not my picture, but you need to see this store:
It is FULL of various bento boxes for the train ride. Some of them had a little string you pulled and then it SELF-HEATED. Ekiben is glorious and I had a hard time picking one because I wanted like 5.
After that we walked down to the train platform and we were still about 20 minutes early which doesn't SEEM early, but it means the train before ours was loading, then our train had to come, then they had to clean our train and flip the seats, so it was just unnecessarily early for us to be there. It did give us a chance to take turns using the restroom, and I FaceTimed my son so he could watch the bullet train pull into the station.
We were the first ones on the train, set our luggage behind the seats, and got situated.
Me getting situated:
You know, The Pacific Northwest is known for their salmon. But every bite of salmon I had in Japan was better than ours in the PNW, what kind of witchcraft is this?
But I also bought this. There's no such thing as too much food in Japan:
We made a well-intentioned tactical error. The train ride was three hours long, we were determined to enjoy ever last minute of our trip, so we each purchased one strong zero per hour. Now, at 9% ABV, that translates to about 6 drinks on the train ride. It seemed like a great idea at the time, and since you're sitting the whole time - you don't really realize how much alcohol you've consumed. WHY DOES STRONG ZERO TASTE LIKE JUICE?
This was a flavor I hadn't seen before, so I used Google Translate to help.
THE GIANT OF THE FLUTTERING FLY GLUCOSE:
Luckily for our boozy bellies, I recalled that I also purchased this salami cheese and I have no idea how we would have navigated Osaka without this to mitigate our Strong Zero incident.
And these helped too. I loved the Calbee snacks so much. In fact, I'm going to see if I can buy any imported.
LONG! LARGE!
So, we go to get off the train and realized that perhaps Strong Zero does not make you a Strong Hero. Osaka Station was no problem, we just transferred to the line that would take us to our Osaka AirBNB, but then we had problems. The stations in Osaka didn't have as much English as the stations in Tokyo and we were at a smaller stop that was quite old and hadn't been renovated in some time. We had to carry our luggage up like 3-4 flights of stairs, tipsier than we should have been, with no idea where we were headed. I went into action mode, but I was suddenly like "Yes, yes we did definitely overpack."
We had a GREAT location for an AirBNB. This is the place we stayed:
https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/8620958?source_impression_id=p3_1580836974_4VQ6rmnyJIWUxa46
It was right on Dotonbori, and we were about 2 blocks from the heart of it. There was a Lawsons just a few buildings down, and it was so affordable. There is no TV, which I kind of missed because I liked watching Japanese TV while we were getting ready in the morning, but it was fine. I loved the location for the price, for sure. I'd stay there again. We had great AirBNB experiences.
We dropped our stuff off and headed out to explore!
I had this cocktail "Spirits of Japan" and I took a picture of it because I'd never had jam in a cocktail before and I had kind of forgotten about it until I went through my pictures but it kind of mixed into the rest of the cocktail and was just delicious.
I loved Dotonbori. I don't know why I don't have more pictures of it, but we were kind of just taking it all in.
Ok, and this is where our night went off the rails. This part of the trip was intended for us to relax more, take it slow, etc. Our lives at home are crazy. 4 kids who are all in activities, we own a real estate brokerage, my husband is also a business analyst, I'm a city councilor, my husband has a band, and I'm on a few different boards for non-profits. We have a tendency to GO GO GO, and we wanted to take a few days at a slower pace so we could come back a little refreshed.
We wandered down some alleys looking for an Izakaya that had a vibe. No vibe in particular, just a vibe. And did we ever find one. Of all the things we did on our whole trip, building a relationship with Yuki every night while in Osaka was my very favorite thing. People are the best part of travel and when you don't take time to connect with them you really miss out on the soul of each location. Akira was our friend in Tokyo, and Yuki became so special to us that we all cried when we left on the last night.
So, we're wandering down alleys, and Chris spots this guy listening to The Rolling Stones, in a bar that was probably 4x12.
He didn't speak very much English, but he loved music as much as we do, so we just named musicians to each other and then he played a song by them and we all sang it together. We were the only ones there for a long time, and then other people showed up.
There was a young couple from Osaka. She was divorced and had a tattoo which she said she loved talking to Americans about because Japanese people were critical, and he was a mortician.
Two kids from Japan and one from Mongolia:
This couple from Maryland (Yuki's bar is just to the right and we're standing in the alley):
This guy in the back is from Belgium and one of the Japanese kids is passed out on the bar so we're all taking pictures with him:
He woke up for approximately 2 minutes and took this picture with my phone. But notably are my very favorite Japanese junk snack there on the right in the orange bag. I loved those things.
Then the party really got started when Yuki's surfing friends came. They were all hippies (clearly still are) together and these three together were amazing:
We danced all night in the alley.
It's really interesting to me that bartenders can drink in Japan. Yuki was pouring two for himself for every one he poured me.
It was quite possibly one of the most fun nights of my life. Top Ten life experience is drinking highballs with people from all over the world, everyone singing "Yesterday" at the top of their lungs.
Music brings people together, man.
Eventually we wandered home. I was happy I could find it in my state considering that we were just down some random alley in a town we had never visited with a language we didn't speak and headed to a place for which I didn't know the address so I couldn't plug it in my phone. I did stop at Lawson's and get some food we didn't need because it sounded so good in the moment.
We now refer to this as "Being Yuki'd" What we didn't know (he told us later) is that Yuki started pouring us doubles and triples. There was a price to be paid in the morning.