More deer, more lights, more trains and planes

Saturday morning already and it was our last full day in Japan! Last time Willow had loved seeing all the deer in Nara so she wanted to go back. Nara is about 45 minutes outside of Osaka but that's not really that far so off we went for a quick visit. It was lovely seeing all the deer again - apparently they had suffered a bit during Covid without all the tourists to give them their crackers! 

Back in deer land (Nara)

Feeding the deer crackers

I still can't believe how tame they are, and how they wait for the tourists to buy the crackers from the stalls rather than just take them from the stalls themselves!! Ryan didn't get bitten on the butt this time either 😂 although they did seem to do more nuzzling into your knee if you had crackers than I remember from last time. It really is a beautiful place, so we wandered around for an hour or so, but we wanted to be back in Osaka for lunch as our time for yummy meals was limited!

A beautiful place

Deer everywhere

These trees were all Autumn colours last time

Before we knew it we were back in Osaka and found a place for lunch - the place with the big crab down in Dotonbori! The big crab means it sells crab - and only crab. It was another place where we sat down in those sunken tables (horigotatsu) after taking your shoes off, and I again cursed myself for wearing my Converse boots with the double knots 😖

Crab, and only crab

Crab many ways

So we enjoyed crab many ways - Willow attempted some crab croquettes, and we had crab sushi, tempura and crab gratin! After popping back into Don Quijote for some souvenirs, we went back to the hotel for a little R&R as we had one last eventful evening planned! We had an early dinner at Gyozaoh! - a place we went to a couple of times last time that we loved. And they still had the sake tasting flights, woohoo! So some gyoza, takoyaki, pickled cucumber, chicken karaage, cheesy fried potato and sake-infused clams later, we were full and ready to head to TeamLab Botanical Gardens 

TeamLab Botanical Gardens

TeamLab Botanical Gardens

Truth be told I only found out about this TeamLab installment in Osaka when I was sitting at reception at our Tokyo hotel at 2:30pm waiting for our room to be ready 😂 So I bought tickets right there on the spot without a thought. This one is outdoors and only at night, so quite different in a way. And it was beautiful - everything interacting with real nature (as it is literally in some botanical gardens). Unfortunately being in real nature in the outdoors meant it was much harder to capture it on camera!

Couldn't capture how cool it was

This "egg garden" thing was super cool

Always have to try and get a family selfie

Willow mastering the Instagram pose

There were about 7 or so different areas, all beautiful and accompanied by that familiar cinematic ambient soundtrack that TeamLab does. We stayed for over an hour - I could have stayed longer but Willow was pretty beat. Can you blame her? We had packed so much into our 10 nights! But weary bodies aside,  none of us wanted to go home and we found ourselves talking about "next time" 😜

Sunday was just a travel day - a sleep-in, packing up, getting the Shinkansen back to Tokyo (thank God that went smoothly as Golden Week of holidays was about to start when apparently transport is mayhem). 

So we wrap the blog up here for now, back at home in Sydney, until the next same-cation in Japan LOL 😂😅😆😘

Lines, rides and sticks

Friday morning was an early morning as we were headed to Universal Studios Japan (or USJ as they call it). I had been to Universal Studios a couple of times in Hollywood, but long ago and never to the one in Japan. After some research, apparently it is SUPER popular, especially with the more recent additions of the Harry Potter area and Super Nintendo World. 

Running into Universal Studios Japan 🏃

The Wizarding World of Harry Potter

Super Nintendo World is so popular that you have to aquire a separate entry timed entry ticket to it, and even though you have bought entry into Universal Studios a lot of people can't get into Super Nintendo World!! On top of that, some of the rides are so popular with long waits (sometimes over 2 hours!) that they also sell separate "express passes" which allow you to skip the queues. But would you believe these cost and extra A$150-$250 PER PERSON on top of your park entry. I found that whole aspect a bit gross because that is potentially an exorbitant amount of money.

We got in! Super Nintendo World

Sup Nintendo World was super popular

The layout was pretty cool

Anyway, the other way to make sure you get into Super Nintendo World (which apparently was one of the main things Willow was looking forward to on the entire trip!) was to get there very early - at least an hour before the park opens (officially 9am) and as soon as you walk through the gates you go on the app to get a timed entry ticket into Nintendo, while you are running over there as they let a certain number of people straight in to Super Nintendo World without timed entry tickets at the start of the day. 

I managed to get Ryan and Willow out of the hotel room at 7am, and USJ is only half an hour away so we were lined up at 7:30am. Of course there were already hoards of people there but I was pretty happy with our position in line. We were expecting to have to stand there until 9am, but I had read that sometimes they randomly open the gates earlier, whenever they feel like it. And soon enough the line began moving! And we were through the gates before 8am! Eeeeeeeep!!!! 

Mario Kart ride

So we quickly hopped into action, half walking half running over to where Super Nintendo World is, and while we were I managed to get a timed entry ticket for us at 9am!! Woop woop woop! So then we quickly switched direction and went straight to Harry Potter land to go on the Forbidden Journey ride there that normally can have at least a 90 minute wait. 

I had looked it up briefly before, but Willow has never wanted to watch Harry Potter or read the books with me, despite my pleas! She will one day although it may be a bit scary for her yet. Anyway, I didn't even expect to get onto this ride as we didn't have Express Passes. Also, to go on you have to be 122cm and when they measured her she made it by barely a whisker! I swear it was her wild curly hair that got her over the line. Anyway, the staff were satisified she was 122cm so in we went! To be speedily walking all the way through the long elaborate lines through the castle at 8am (with Super Nintendo World entry tickets aquired as well) was a lovely surprise for me. We had to put our bags into lockers and then straight on we went! The 3 of us were in a carriage of 4 sitting in a line with the safety bars so big that we couldn't actually see each other but I could hold Willow's little hand. This was a simulator ride but it also moved along on a track (which I didn't appreciate when I looked it up) so moving along it was quite scary, flying along with Harry. Then it suddenly took a turn with a dragon breathing fire on us from the screen, but then it was a dragon breathing real smoke onto us next to the track we were on! It was pretty terrifying (but also fun and hilarious) and then there were massive spiders!!! Oh god the spiders! So I was yelling out to Willow apologising for the ride being so scary and telling her to close her eyes (as that's what I was doing with the spiders). Anyway, the ride was actually awesome, Willow survived, and I would have liked to have gone on it again, more prepared, but the wait time didn't dip under 70 minutes for the rest of the day.

So over to Super Nintendo World with our special tickets! The whole area looks amazing and I can imagine anyone that grew up with Nintendo must have been in absolute heaven. Willow had a "power up" band that she got from her school friend who went there last year - what a money saver as those things cost about $40. Willow got to go around and hit cubes to get points just like she was in a real game. Ryan took Willow around the various things - I waited for them on a mushroom but it was all a bit lost on me, not being a massive Nintendo fan, and when Ryan said they had inadvertently joined a 50 minute queue for the Mario Kart ride I decided to go and take a wander around the rest of Universal Studios, which was pretty cool.   

Not too long later we reunited and went to Minion Park - one ride which was a bit lame for the wait but the Despicable Me simulator ride was awesome! Then we went on the Jaws ride - super old school, but hilarious, especially when it is all in Japanese. Then over to the Waterworld stunt show - that was quite a highlight actually, and Willow had her hand over her mouth in shock and horror at one stage! She was very pleased that a girl was the hero of the day.

In Minion Park

The Waterworld show

By about 4:30 we were pretty ready to leave, which seemed early, but I guess we had been there since 7:30. So we went back to the hotel for a super quick refresh, and then back to Dotonbori for some dinner. It was already heaving being a Friday night at 6:30pm and we just wanted somewhere pretty quick and easy, so guess what - stick place it was!! Haha. So we ate more random sticks, which are actually called kushikatsu, along with our favourite takoyaki and pickled cucumber of course! 

Ryan was not sticked-out yet so stopped by a street stall to get some famous (and expensive) Kobe and Wagyu beef skewers on the way home. Phewee!!

Dotonbori by night

Kushikatsu

Ryan got some Kobe and Wagyu skewers

Tokyo - > Osaka

Waking up on Thursday morning after a well-earned sleep-in, we could not believe how fast those seven nights in Tokyo had flown by! So it was time to pack up our stuff in our tiny hotel room, but before we left, we went for a brief morning walk to the nearby Shinto Hikawa Shrine. This was up a hill just 5 minutes from our hotel, and lucky for Willow and I, there were escalators in addition to the big staircase up the hill! 

Taking the escalators while Ryan takes the stairs

Beautiful wisteria

It was a beautiful place so close to our hotel and in the middle of bustling Akasaka. There was also a section of small torii gates which resembled the famous Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto. It would have been nice to walk down it but there seemed to be an Instagram photo session happening in them, as there often is in the picturesque places in Japan! Anyway, walking down just means you have to walk back up and we had a Shinkansen to catch.

Instagrammers getting their shots inside 
the torii gates

With our stuff all bundled up, we checked out of the hotel and hopped a taxi to nearby Tokyo Station to catch the Shinkansen to Osaka. We got there in plenty of time (so as not to cause me any stress lol!) and before we knew it we were sitting in comfort on the 320km/h bullet train. 

All aboard!

Not a bad hotel room view

A mere 2.5 hours later and we were zooming into Osaka! Off the Shinkansen and onto one subway and we were back at Namba station (where we stayed last time), although this time we were staying in a hotel - the one we stayed in in 2010 😂 I sure do love me a same-cation. This room seemed luxuriously roomy compared to the one in Tokyo. Willow declared it the fanciest hotel she has every stayed in. Rather than the three of us squished into one queen bed, we had 3 king singles! We were all thrilled LOL

An old favourite dish - takoyaki

A new favourite dish - pickled cucumber

So a quick refresh and then out we headed to our favourite (and unashamedly touristy) area, Dotonbori! The weather was perfect and we pretty quickly found a delightful riverside spot which not only served our favourites, takoyaki and pickled cucumber (definitely going to be making this at home!), but also served all manner of things deep-fried on skewers. You name it and they deep-fried it - chicken, potato, eggplant, lotus root, garlic, quail egg, whole egg, sardine wrapped in shiso leaf, even mini footy franks! And they were only a couple of bucks each. So Willow fondly named the place - "stick place". 

Ryan seemed happy to be back at Dotonbori 🍺

After we were satisfied with enough sticks, we crossed the river over to the Ebisu Tower ferris wheel at the enormous Don Quijote store, which being the ultimate same-cation, we of course have done before. It's famous for being the world's first oblong ferris wheel so it's something that we thought should be done at least twice in one's lifetime.  

The hustle and bustle of Dotonbori

On the world's first oblong ferris wheel ✌

It's only $6 to go on it too! So up we went, for beautiful views high above Osaka as the sun set. Soon after we headed home as, again, we had another massive day planned the next day! 

View up high from the ferris wheel!

Sunset on Dotonbori

Good night Osaka

 

TeamLab Planets

teamLab Planets

I went out for my early morning espresso doppio at Ily, but this time I noticed there was a TV with a camera which reads your temperature as you walk in. Not sure if anyone is monitoring this or it's supposed to be self regulating but it was a bit of an odd thing to have in a shopping centre.

Big brother temp check

We caught the subway out to the teamLab Planets exhibition at Toyosu. We had also been to this one before but there was a new exhibit called Garden. The carp pond is still probably my favourite part of this, there's milky water that you walk around in and the fish interact with people walking around by swimming away or diving deeper. 

 

 

In the hanging flower exhibit they gave instruction to not crawl and also not to touch the flowers, then when we went in the flowers were lowered so that the only way to get in was to crawl. It was very confusing. Anyway everyone crawled in anyway. I also really liked the moss room, it smelt super earthy.

The whole thing took a bit over an hour to see everything as you're more on a course instead of getting lost like the previous one we went to. After getting out we went to this really tiny gift shop and I am not sure what happened outside once we went in (we were the only ones in there) but a group of about 10 Canadians decided they wanted to come in too. We squeezed our way out and went back to the train station to Ginza.

Please exit through the worlds smallest gift shop

We did some shopping at the Ginza Uniqlo as its the flagship store. Then for lunch I looked up udon places in Ginza as Heidi said she wanted to try some on the holiday. Turns out I had to fall on that grenade and get the massive bowl of udon complete with the massive spoon and hilarious yet practical bibs. I am a big fan of eating from bowls of things so big you could fit your head in there.

We also got some tempura vegetables which Willow had a couple of for a 100 yen challenge. Another thing was the pickled cucumber in a sauce. I am totally getting into the cucumber salad recipes back in Sydney. We've had some format of cucumber salad with most meals out and they're delicious which probably means it's the least healthy way to eat cucumbers.

After lunching we walked to the train station and the girls went back to the hotel and I went to Kappabashi. Kappabashi has a street that's lined with kitchen supply stores. If I was let loose there I could probably fill a shipping container with all the stuff I'd like to purchase but I had a goal of getting a couple of sharpening stones and a knife. I went to Kamata knife store where 2 of my other Japanese knives are from. This time I got a santoku which is a Japanese style chefs knife.

May thy knife chip and shatter

Chilled out for a while in the hotel before dinner at Roppongi, back to our favourite place with the tiger for dinner for a change.