Osaka Travel Blogs

...Was our first plan.. lol Started raining around noon. Ayaka, Yasuyo and I were there and wished hard to stop raining but got harder....Messaged to most TBs that hanami is canceled and go to bowling instead. Waited for Simon and Ted. Simon showed up on time at the station where we were supposed t…

I had some meetups in a month with same guys. We really enjoyed nice communication all the time. Here are these joyful moments... on the 14th Oct,I met Dominic/BRYGGEN for the first time. He asked me a lot about Japanese travel info before he come to Japan. He always said to me that "Thank you for…

Satoshi one of the Osaka Tb's is leaving for Phillipines for an internship , so if he was doing a good cause, we thought we should do a good cause to him and throw him a farewell Party, good luck satoshi and have fun in the Phillipines, my friend.  11 of us joined the fun at Ume hachi an Izaka…

Kind of early in the trip for this, but I am experiencing a little "blog burnout." Today I vow not to ramble. This will be a short one. Really. In fact, I am even going to do bullet points. MORNING: up at 6:45 and parked myself at the computer. Blog, blog, blog.  It's like a job! :^) Steve foc…

On March 3rd, in Japan it is Hinamatsuri, otherwise known as dolls festival or girls day. The dolls though are not dolls that girls play with but are dolls that are displayed on a red cloth in the families homes. The dolls are displayed over 7 tiers, with the emperor and the empress on the top tier…

Thousands of people crowded around in anticipation of the danjiri (float) rolling up the street, as the danjiri built up speed you could see the strains on the faces of the people pulling the 3000 kilogram floats . The people all in teams chanting in Japanese the equivalent  of heave ho, heave…

Only had to work a couple of hours in the morning and then I was off to the nearest hiking trails a few stations up.Every morning when I go past Kawachi Iwafune station I see lots of people getting off to hike the mountains. i did some research on the internet and found they had three main hiking t…

I was looking forward to that day from when Gloria & Chris bring plan for this meetup.I went to the meetup with my sister Hisami and my daughter Ayano.We decided go to wearing the Yukata there. Yukata is sort of casual summer Kimono. We arrived first in estaurant "yumehachi". Then we waited a…

Today I went to the aquarium. Bought the one day Kaiku pass for both the subway and the aquarium for 2400 Yen, a few yen cheaper than the single ticket approach. Took the subway to the Osaka Harbor, and it was another 10 minute walk to the aquarium. The aquarium was organized as many subsecctions c…

I get off the train from Nara and I want to take a bit of a walk along a long string of temples and shrines located a bit to the south east of the central part of the city. All the temples are located a bit up on the hill alongside one of the bigger roads in the city. It is a bit late in the a…

I know this blog is not at all travel related but seeing as my son is often featured in my blogs I thought I would write about his graduation from his day care center. My son has been going here since his days of crawling, wearing a diaper and drinking fertilized milk, for five years of his life f…

I went to the USJ(Universal Studio Japan) in Oct. I came in there with my daughter and my sister. Ayaka and Gloria join us after. My daughter watched E.T & Back To The Future before to go to there. She is 10 years old.I thought she should to watch at least them if she want to make enjoyment in…

There is so beautiful illuminations of Christmas at Kaiyukan. I didn't care it till we went to there. Therefore I didn't know even there is Santa Claus in Aquarium.This surprise was really good event for us. Sometimes I go to this aquarium because I feel good in here. Maybe whale shark make me re…

Tonight I had dinner with Masa, the owner of my guesthouse in Namba, Osaka.  Initially we were going to go to a traditional Japanese-style restaurant, on the nicer side, but as we were walking he mentioned some pancake place and I went "pancakes?"  I remembered reading that Osaka was know…

Maybe I should start the whole story from the end... Right now it`s about 3am and I`m staying at an internet cafe for next 3 hours. Yes, I missed the last subway `cause I was having too much fun with all the TravBuddies :D Arrived to Osaka late in the afternoon, checked in my hotel and got ready f…