Osaka / Shin-Yokohama

4 Jul 2025

Today, unfortunately, Jill+family and I will be parting ways- their tour group is headed to Hiroshima and while I could follow, I’ve got hotel reservations in Shin-Yokohama, back toward Tokyo, tonight and some hiking plans for the coming weekend.  Plus, while the bullet train is fast, I’d have at least 5 hours of travel time at a cost of like Y30,000…

or I could spend the morning exploring Osaka (since we’ve visited neighboring areas, but not Osaka itself) then hop the train and spend like half the cost and half the time getting to Shin-Yokohama.

So I decided to be a tourist and visit Osaka castle.  My hotel had free bag storage (up to a week! so Jill+family will be using it as well, as they’ll be coming back to Osaka in a few days), which was super convenient! I mean, I could have just stored it at the train station (for a fee), but this was climate controlled and free!

I spotted 2 different covers on my short walk:

Approach up to the castle- this was a popular spot for couples photography:

It wasn’t until I zoomed in with the big camera that I noticed part of this building (Sengan-yagura Turret) is overhanging the wall:

I named this piano rock:

But first, a slight detour to Hokoku Shrine:

(I especially liked the digger re-graveling the pathway)

Wind chime walkway:

Success!

Year of the snake:

Rear exit:

But, onward, before the day gets hotter and the crowds pick up.  Through Sakuramon Gate:

I liked the way the gate framed the castle, but I’m not sure why this shot came out so over-exposed 🙁

Some sort of festival was going on:

Osaka Castle, people for scale:

Originally built in the 1580s, this castle, like so many of the buildings here, was destroyed and rebuilt several times before this iteration, which was constructed in 1931.  You can tour it- it’s a museum now and modernized inside, but you can’t take pictures, which is lame, so I wandered around the grounds, finding fun angles to photograph from, like this pond:

Time capsule, to be open in the year 4970 (5000 years after it was buried in 1970)…

good luck with that?

New city + old castle pano:

Kanagura Treasure House, a storehouse for gold and silver back in the day:

That’s my next stop- a stroll through the park:

Tall walls + moat:

My path looked much shadier from up above:

Props for these plum trees:

Sweet shade!

I grabbed an ice cream from a vending machine on the north side of the castle:

and watched the tourists go by:

Though the boat ride looked like fun:

I crossed the bridge back to the castle and came out around the side:

But I’m hot and ready to be done for the day so, farewell, castle!

I grabbed some lunch from the local Lawson:

My butter chicken naan wrap was better than expected- cold, but I trust refrigerated meats more than the shelf stable kind.  The other pack was frozen grapes- candied, but SO TASTY!  It probably helped that it was super hot out and they were a cold refreshing treat, but the purple ones were grapey without being cough syrupy while the green ones were more like a white wine? I’m not sure how to describe them but they were SO GOOD!

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Before heading back to the hotel, I made a short detour to this shopping district:

to this candy store:

which had a large assortment of KitKats!

Matt and I like to taste test fun-flavored candies, so I always try to pick up stuff when I travel- there were almost too many choices here- I’ll definitely need to come back and get some more, but I settled for these 5:

A couple “safe” flavors (the bags on the right) and a few… interesting… flavors (the boxes on the left).  Hopefully I can get them home without having them get too melty!

Oh, and while the internet told me this place was cash online, they had several registers and they all accepted cards (IC or credit), so I totally splurged!

Then, it was back on the train, back to my hotel to collect my bag and start making my way toward Tokyo.

I walked this stretch almost every day on my way to and from the train station, but never during the day when all these bikes were parked:

I struggled way less booking this ticket- the kiosk took my card so while I had a bit of wait for my train (I wanted a window seat to hopefully catch a glimpse of Mt. Fuji), the process was much smoother than my first attempt:

Train snacks!

That cake tasted exactly like you’d expect an orange-flavored bran muffin to taste (not a bad thing) but the juice… Google translate tells me it’s supposed to be apple+mango but I definitely didn’t get that- apple/orange? maybe? not my favorite drink.

Countryside as seen from the train:

Unfortunately, the mountainous stretches were cloudy and rainy so Mt. Fuji once again eluded me:

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I started running low on data earlier today- not a problem- I got a 5 Gb plan from booking my Osaka hotel, but I could not for the life of me get it to activate (I had tried unsuccessfully yesterday when I noticed I was starting to run low on data and switched to the larger plan, then had a small moment of panic when I needed to reload my IC card partway through a trip and couldn’t get the transaction to go through. Switching back to my original eSIM solved that problem).  Fortunately, the bullet train had WiFi, so I just bought an extra gig for the eSIM I had been using, except I couldn’t get that one to activate either.

Shoot.

The good news is that every city so far has had a map just outside the train station, and my hotel was super close, so I just navigated based on that.

My room, much smaller than the first:

and you have to step up to get into the wet bath:

It also has this sink/shower combo I hadn’t seen before, where you turn the knob on the right to select sink or showerhead:

Divider line:

Shoes off, slipper on!

It also had a select your own pillow station:

I picked that guy in the upper right slot, the “puffy pillow” 🙂

(they also have pajamas, which is that gray/black stack in the lower right, but I didn’t realized tops were gray and bottoms were black- just grabbed one and ended up with only a top- oops!)

It took me longer than it should have to figure out that the wifi password was on my TV, but in the meantime, my data plan started working again!  And it looked like the big 5 gig plan kicked in, so now I’ve got plenty of data to get my through the rest of my trip (I had used 1 gig so far, but probably could have stretched it a bit further if I hadn’t obsessively checked my route when I was in charge of navigating for the group).

And now, since I’ve got data squared away, it’s time to find some food!  I had originally planned to hit up the Ramen Museum, which was like 2 blocks from my hotel and would have tons of noodley choices, but we just had ramen yesterday; one of the things I’d been told to try was okonomiyaki, a savory pancake that originated in Osaka.  I meant to try one before leaving but ran out of time, so I found a restaurant just a short train ride away that made them and hopped back on the train

And promptly got lost.

Well, I mean, I got off at the right stop, but I struggled to find the place.  I walked past it several times before realizing I had to go up this sketchy staircase:

to find this hole-in-the-wall restaurant:

Eight tables, no English- this was the experience I was hoping for!

I relied heavily on Google translate to help me decipher the menu:

then pointed and “kore kudasai”-ed (this, please!) my choices.  I opted for a corn and mushroom combo (there were a lot of seafood tempura options, but I’m not really a fan of fried things so I stuck with veggies) and a lemon squash soda (because I’m determined to figure out this squash thing):

I tried to discreetly watch other tables to figure out the process- Do I flag someone down to flip my pancake? (they had given me a sand timer) Do I flip it myself? I ended up flipping it myself under the watchful eye of the woman in the apron in the first picture (she seemed to be flipping pancakes for everyone, but it looked like fun and I wanted to try!).

Then she started adding toppings to the pancake?!  I let her put most of them on (a swirly red one, a flaky green one and one other that seemed innocuous enough), and declined the white one, which I think was mayo? and some sort of fish flake, which she let me sample first (I totally struggled to pick it up with my chopstick and she tried to give me a fork but I’m determined to master chopsticks!):

My veggie option may have been one of the more bland choices (or maybe I should have let her put all the toppings on?), but it was still quite tasty!

The table next to me had 3 older folks who were finishing up as I was starting, and one of the ladies kept giving me what I interpreted to be encouraging gestures.  She said something as they were leaving, but I have no idea what she said so I just smiled and bowed my head and “arigato gozaimasu”-ed (thank you) and hoped I read the situation correctly.

There was one phrase I vaguely remembered coming across that basically meant “hats off to the chef” or “the meal was delicious” so I frantically Googled under the table so I could “gochisousama” at the end of my meal.

Was it perfect? Nope! I was slightly terrified that I’d inadvertently insult someone or do something wrong, but they seemed amused by my attempts so even though we mostly just charaded through the meal, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience!

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It was however, rather draining, so I decided to unwind at my hotel’s onsen, or as they translated it, “large public bath of separately”:

I’m planning on visiting an onsen tomorrow after my mountain excursion, so I figured this would be a good test run to figure out how this whole process works.

I made my first mistake by wearing my regular shoes down to the bath- apparently everyone else just used the slippers from their room?  Noted.  (though it made finding my footwear super easy afterwards- my sneakers stood out in the sea of slippers 🙂 )

After stashing my clothes in a locker, I scrubbed down at one of these washing stations:

You were supposed to bring down a towel from your room, and they provided a little loofah and a scrubby cloth along with soap/shampoo/conditioner.

Once you’re clean, you can get into the tub:

This one is was like 40C/104F, which was way too warm for me, but it carbonated, so that was still fun to sit for a bit and watch the bubbles accumulate.

But I’m wiped and I’ve got bigger plans for tomorrow, so good night!