Japan 2016 ~Spring~ Day 8: Osaka

[anko_kun]

Pictures clickable for full size

• Japan 2016 ~Spring~
  Day 0 & 1: THURSDAY
  Day 2: Ueno Park, Skytree and Super Robot Spirits 2016
  Day 3: Yokohama: Chinatown, Waterfront & Cosmo World
  Day 4: Tokyo Disneysea
  Day 5: Nebukawa and the Hakone Disaster
  Day 6: Shin-Yokohama Ramen Museum & Pacifico Yokohama
  Day 7: Odaiba & Tokyo Tower
  Day 8: Osaka
  Day 9 & 10: Universal Studios Japan & Hometime 

We woke up early to travel to Osaka for the early afternoon, I think we had to catch it at around 10, but we had reserved seats this time because of the Japan Rail Pass so we checked out of our hotel and made our way to Shin- Yokohama which was a lot less busy than the last time we were there so, no worries there.





I started the morning off right with R2D2 coffee made from C3PO

Click to view

This line uses the N700 trains as you can see from my video above, we got on but my suitcase was way too big for the luggage rack and the train usually leaves pretty quickly so I started to panic a little bit!! Thankfully tutu was just the right height to have it in front of her legs and use it as a table for the journey, I would have struggled with that or would have to had a leg out in the aisle if I was alone, thanks!!





Mt.Fuji at several 100s of km/h

The 3 hours went pretty fast, tutu slept for most of it and I wrote postcards to people. We also FINALLY saw Mt Fuji!!! after the Hakone disaster trip, it only lasted for a few seconds but it was nice to finally see it.





The weather in Osaka was not good, but the mascot was super cute.

We arrived in Shin-Osaka station, which had some really nice flowers everywhere for a 5th anniversary? not sure what for though. We found a locker to dump our luggage in and went off to do stuff.





Not sure what the anniversary was for? but it looked nice!





It also smelled nice..... wait what...





uh....I'm sorry ladies? XD

We headed into the mall that was connected to the station because.... the Osaka Pokemon centre is in there!! but, being honest the line up wasn't too different from the Tokyo store that we already went to, so I didn't end up buying anything from here.

Also I don't really know why but I was really, really feeling stressed and anxious on this day and just couldn't relax and enjoy myself. Maybe from the travelling? I don't know. I found myself relying on tutu for help a lot and I really have to thank her a lot for everything, even just for being there with me. Thanks tutu!!!

Anyway, for some reason when we were done with the stores in the mall we somehow managed to get lost inside of it, the exit bridge to the station (on one of the upper floors) was on one floor and we kept missing it somehow, haha. We ended up walking around in circles on a floor trying to find it at one stage.





Esaka?

At my request, we headed to Esaka! Tutu had no idea why I wanted to go here, and 99% of you reading this probably have no idea why either, but the answer is SNK!



SNK was a large videogame company back in the 90's who's HQ was in Esaka, but also occupied many arcades for their videogame systems including 3(!) in Esaka itself, not only that the area was featured in their videogames multiple times so I wanted to look at these locations while I was in the city.



This is what the HQ used to look like





But this is it now D: you can kind of see where the logos used to be





But the window washer bucket lives, hooray!!!!





The newer looking karaoke building on the right is what was built on one of the old Neo-Geo arcades



Neo Geo Land in the 90s



This is what it looked like in the game, King of Fighters '95





And now it's a car park :|



Japan stage from KOF'98





And in real life!

The above is what I really wanted to see! it's right under the train station and was featured in KOF'98 one of the best games of the series and one I played the most.
It's sad that a lot of the places are all gone now, including the former Neo Geo World I went to in a previous entry, but it's nice to make this pilgrimage to a historic place. Here is a link from someone's visit during 1999 which has a lot of historic pics of the buildings, it looked a lot different!

Click to view

The above is also a little video I made of the games being played on the Esaka stages. I think I got all the times Esaka was featured in King of Fighters.

The weather was bad so we didn't hang around for too long, the new SNK building is actually nearby but I didn't want to drag tutu there in the rain, so we didn't go. But, it's nice that SNK is still going in some way! They have a mobile version of KOF '98 (which is making them the most money, weirdly) and KOF XIV is doing well for them!





We headed back into the city, another Yodabashi!!

We did some shopping in the Umeda area for a while, I'm not entirely sure what we did at this point because it was a while ago! but I definitely got the below items :D





I got lucky again and got Summer Isabelle!!!





Kyaaaa!!

We picked up our luggage from the lockers and went on the subway to Awaza station, I've never really been a fan of the combination of the Japanese subway system and luggage and this station really didn't disappoint, haha. Not only were there no escalators or lifts as usual, in this station if you got off the train on one side of the tracks and you wanted to get out, you had to go down some stairs to go through a tunnel under the tracks, climb back up more stairs to the other platform, and THEN you climbed the stairs to get out, fun!





Our clean room after us being in it for 5 minutes

We made it to our hotel for the next 2 nights at the top of the street, it was from the Super Hotel chain and holy crap, they gave us the most incredible and formal greeting ever and we were like wow thank thank you, thank you so much ahh it's okay thank you, thanks!!





The hotel had all this extra stuff

Tutu got a special pack for ladies from reception and the lady at the desk followed us to the elevator and bowed and gave us more formal greetings, both of us were like uhhhh what do we do but... thanks!!! in the lift. This hotel has a hot spring, so maybe that explains all the odd things, but there were more things everywhere lol. In the corridors there were more "special amenities for ladies" on little stands and I think one for free drinks that we never used, plus a asahi vending machine with beer \o/ which we were thinking of using but never did, lol. The room was huge compared to our Yokohama room, and had TWO bathrooms (well one was just the toilet).





The room even had a reception area and a huge rack to hang coats and things

We headed out almost immediately to go to the combini near the hotel to get a couple of things, and as soon as we exited the elevator the staff at the desk (all 4 of them) EXPLODED with loud formal greetings and big smiles XDDDD we wondered if this was going to happen every single time we came in and out....
....it happened every single time. LOL we were gone for approximately 5 minutes and we got a loud chorus when we came back in hahaha it was hilarious. There was also a huge rack of pillows in the lobby that you could choose to suit yourself in your room, we didn't sign up for breakfast but we could apparently still get unlimited free drinks from the machines here too. I would love to come back here to be honest, it's my favourite hotel so far out of all of the ones I've had in Japan, plus it's just so weird. We then left to go explore the Dotunbori street and.... yep, they were so happy to see us leaving lol.





There is just so much to see





There were cute cat banners all over this covered mall area















It's the wonky dragon!





This is the famous Tappanyaki place! basically deep fried things on sticks





So if this is the second most delicious...... where's the first?





It moves!!





Dotonbori-gawa Canal, that yellow building is a massive Don Quixote with it's own ferris wheel





We took a series of failed selfies together on the bridge, these won't be seen without stickers, ever XD





\o/





He goes on a little journey once in a while





In reality it was raining a bit

We spent a long time just basically looking around and seeing the Osaka sights around here, including the Glico man (who has had a makeover recently) the big crab and other places around here as you can see above. Also this area was in a game called Yakuza 5, so I actually knew it a little bit already.

Click to view

We went and got Takoyaki together while we were here, like I said before I was feeling really anxious and actually started to really panic at this point when we were going to buy this, but tutu got them for us (thank you thank you thank you) and we shared the ones in the video above. They made them right in front of us and the reason why all the toppings are moving is because they were really really hot so we waited until they cooled down. So good!





We found tutu's store





Mario keeps escaping so they chained him up.

We just kept looking around for hours in all the stores, I think we even found some more kitkats when I went to a pharmacy to get walking plasters for my feet, they were getting really really sore by this point D:
But we also found SUPER POTATO, I was kind of looking for DenDen town, but this is all we noticed in the dark. I hadn't gotten to go to Super Potato so far on this trip so it was good to finally get in here!!! Sadly they didn't have anything I needed and I ended up leaving with nothing. There was one Disney game for the SNES that I needed but it was like 8000 yen and I thought that was a bit much. Apparently this is the one for tourists (I've seen similar price rises in Tokyo since 2013) and the REAL Osaka Super Potato is a few streets away from this one? Who knows, if tourists know about that one, that one will have the same fate soon XD





I had some.... chocolate chips 8)

We headed back to our hotel to wash up and get ready for the next day, we got a huge welcome again XD

The next and final entry of this trip is..... UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN