大阪 (Osaka)
So about that Kyoto trip...
My old boss used to say, "Fail to plan and you plan to fail," to which I generally thought Shut the fuck up! I'm trying to sleep in this staff meeting!. Lo and behold, she was right! Instead of staying Kyoto like we initially wanted to, we wound up spending most of our time in and around Osaka since silly me forgot to look into hotel rooms/hostels well in advanced before we left. Whooops. Don't be like me kids.
We did eventually make it out to Kyoto, but like I said, the first stop on the trip was Osaka. Maybe you've heard of it? Home to Capcom and supposedly the best damn tako yaki in all of Japan? You know, if sucking down octopus tentacles is you're kind of thing.
I got into Osaka on Sunday night after flying into Kansai International and taking the train up north from there. The Japanese rail system is really great, by the way. Once I got into Osaka, I hooked up with MaryAnn and her mom at the hostel we were staying at and, after a while of waiting around and watching sumo matches, we all went out to the famed Doutombori area of Osaka. We ate dinner at Krungtep, a Thai restaurant. It wasn't the best Thai food ever (that award would go to everything we ate in real Thailand), but it was probably better than anything we could get in Okinawa.
We saw this really nice hotel while walking around the area too, and it had this really inviting name...the Water Hotel. Ooooo, mysterious and watery. As we went in, we noticed nobody was around and there wasn't even a front desk attendant. Then MaryAnn spotted this machine that let you pay for your room without need for interacting with actual people. Brilliant, we thought! Right on cue some guy came out and said, "No no no! Couples only!" It was a love hotel. Note to self: no threesomes in the love hotel.
Osaka is really really really REALLY famous for tako yaki like I mentioned earlier. Can't vouch for that myself but there were zillions of people in line at damn near every tako yaki stand we came by that night. And we came by a hell of a lot of tako yaki stands.