Japan September 2016 - Part 13 Osaka - End

Our last destination was Osaka. We stayed for 2 nights there but on the last day we had our flight home early in the morning. 

The trip to Osaka from Kobe after our steak lunch was smooth, it took merely half an hour to get there. We arrived at Osaka Station before dark and walked to our hotel. For our two night stay, I had booked New Hankyu Hotel Osaka, where the stop for the Limousine bus to the airport was. I imagined we would have had to leave very early in the morning so I wanted less hassle in getting to the bus stop.

At Osaka Station

View from our hotel

Elevator button

Evacuation chute instruction on the 9th floor

One of the things I was looking forward to in Osaka was to visit Atelier nani IRO, a boutique shop for Nani IRO fabrics. They are hard to come by outside Japan so I was very excited. It was only about 2 km away from our hotel so we decided to walk there. On the way, we found a tree that looked like a Canadian Maple tree but we weren't sure.

We passed a Shell gas station on the way and here's a picture of their hanging gas pumps. Pretty cool, I'd say!

We finally arrived at Atelier to nani IRO. I was like a kid in a candy store, DH got tired of waiting for me he took off to scout the neighborhood for a while. When he came back, I was not quite done yet. The poor man! Lol.

We left the store with a few kilograms worth of fabrics that DH carried for me and I obligingly followed DH to a beer spot just a few buildings away. I ordered a Japanese grape juice for myself and it came in a wine glass :D We sat by the bar and the bartender was very friendly and chatty. It was actually quite fun!

Next, we wanted to have dinner. On our very first visit to Osaka a few years prior, we had kaiten sushi (sushi on conveyer belts) in Namba shopping street. DH mentioned that he wanted to go there again. So we headed to Namba area but weren't sure if we would be able to find the same restaurant. We passed by a kaiten sushi restaurant and went in, knowing that it wasn't the same one and ate there anyway. It was pretty good, though nowhere near Midori Sushi that we had in Tokyo just the week before. Little did we know, had we walked a bit farther down the same street, we would have found the very same restaurant we had been looking for before. Oh well...

We purposely didn't eat much at the kaiten sushi because we wanted to try other food around Osaka. We were in the food central of Japan afterall. I had this idea of going to Dotonbori area and have a snack by the river. However, when we got there nothing by the river looked interesting enough, so we went over to a parallel street and decided to try these attractive looking gyoza and noodle. There were some confusion about ordering gyoza here. If you want to buy for takeout, you lineup at the front. If you want to eat in but ordering only gyoza, you also need to lineup at the front. If you want to eat in and ordering other food with or without gyoza, you can go directly upstairs and get a table. So how were we supposed to understand this when very little English were spoken? Lol...

Do you think the actual gyoza looked like the giant building display? I'd say very close!

Roast beef ramen

The Dotonbori shopping street had banners up representing different countries at that time. Here is the Indonesian banner. 

We stayed late at the Dotonbori area but we made sure not to miss the last train back. We still had our JR Passes active so we went to the nearest JR Station to catch the train to Osaka Station.

New Hankyu Hotel

Cookies from my friend in Kobe

The following day was practically our last day in Japan. There was nothing else that we really wanted to see in Osaka, so we pretty much just bummed around near Osaka Station. It was a bit of a waste considering we still had our JR Passes.

Crayon in Tsutaya Osaka Station

Osaka Station

Light sabre chopsticks at Kiddyland Osaka Station

Got myself a sewing pattern

In the end, we got really tired of browsing aimlessly, we decided to head back to Kobe to have more Kobe beef! Lol.. We went back to Steakland, but the street level location that was smaller. It was very early for dinner so we got seats right away. The restaurant however, was quite full. We were just lucky! This time, we opted for the fancy stuff. Premium tender steak and Premium Kobe steak. We were already there, so might as well have a taste of their top of the notch stuff, right?! Our meal costed us almost four times our lunch on the previous day. I must say, they were soooo good! They just melted in your mouth...

That evening, way past midnight, we walked to Don Quijote because I wanted to buy some Kitkat and Pocky for souvenirs. Alas! This location did not have any! We were sooo tired in the end, especially because the walk to and from the hotel became longer since the shortcuts through the station were already closed.

The following morning, we hopped on the bus to get to the airport, and flew home.

Upon arrival in Jakarta, we were still on vending machine mode. We bought this Tehbotol from a vending machine at the airport. Well, it was not cold at all! Check out that annoyed face... Lol

 This post concludes my Japan September 2016 series, thank you for faithfully reading my blog. Untul next time!