We spent probably one full day and two half days plus five evenings in Osaka and really enjoyed it. On the evening we arrived, we were hungry and tired so we decided to try and find food very close to the hotel.

In the basement, there was a stand-up sushi bar. Basically, you order, you eat and you leave, all without actually sitting down. The sushi was very fresh and very cheap compared to what we get at home. The chef was super friendly and spoke just enough English to understand us although we know how to order sushi using the Japanese words for the various cuts of fish anyway.

The next day was purposely not overscheduled as I wasn’t sure how tired/jetlagged we would be. Other than the food tour in the evening which I discussed in the prior post, we were just going to explore a bit.

We started by taking the subway down to the Amerika-mura area (basically little America) where it was kind of quiet earlier in the day. There’s lot of second-hand stores and younger-skewing retail in this area. Lots of skaters and bikers hang out here. There’s also lots of street art around.

We walked from there to Shinsaibashi Shopping Street, which is a huge covered shopping street containing all kinds of stores, both local and chains stores like Uniqlo, etc.

My wife and daughter loved this area and everyone split up for a bit to do their own browsing. I didn’t really find anything, but the people watching (and being out of the hot sun) was fun. My daughter showed me the capsule shop where you can buy all sorts of little toys and trinkets.

After everyone had done their shopping (except of course me who didn’t buy anything), we walked over to Namba station to pick up our rail passes. I bought the JR Kansai Hiroshima five day pass for all of us. It cost about $107 each for the pass, which actually is a great deal even if you just go to Hiroshima and back as that Shinkansen ticket costs about $120 by itself. We also used the ticket for the local train in Hiroshima, the ferry to Miyajima and the local train back from Arashiyama (the one going there was with a different company). We could have used it for the train to Nara, but we took a different train company as their Nara station is a bit closer to the deer park.

On the way to the station, we found ourselves in Dotonbori, the famously packed tourist area by the river in Osaka. We ended up not going back at night as we just didn’t want to fight the crowds.

We found our we headed back to the hotel for a bit of a rest before the food tour. The next day, we took a day trip to the Hiroshima area. I’ll have a full review of that experience in a later post. That night, after we returned to Osaka we went to a sushi kaiten restaurant called Kaiten Sushi Ginza Onodera, a bit like a conveyor belt restaurant in that you order from a tablet, but at this one they brought us the sushi directly. It was good and not expensive.

On the day our daughter went to the concert, my wife and I took a morning trip to Arashiyama to see the monkey park. I’ll have a separate post about that, but in the afternoon, we headed back to, well, the Shinsaibashi area again as there had to be a few stores she missed the first time. We also went to a great sushi omakase dinner which I will review in the next post.

On our final full day in Osaka, our daughter slept in a bit and my wife’s ankle was bothering her, so she decided to do a bit of work in the morning. I decided to check out Osaka Castle. It’s not the original 16th century castle or even the replacement of that or the more modern replacement from 1931. It was destroyed in World War II and rebuilt as a replica to the 1931 version in the 1990s. They added a pretty neat museum in the main keep and there are lots of old cannons and memorabilia around the extensive grounds.

It took about 45 minutes to get to the entrance of the castle itself as the nearby subway stops still require walking through the grounds in a bit of a roundabout way. It was hot, even at 8:30am.

Once I got to the main building, I was a bit early so I bought an online ticket. There was a separate line for online ticketholders that was much shorter than the line to buy a ticket at the site.

Even though the building is a replica, it’s still pretty impressive. There are seven floors of exhibits (yes there’s an elevator). A lot of the exhibits have English explanations so I didn’t get the audio tour, but it’s available if you want it at an extra cost.

There’s also an observation deck on the top floor – what Japanese attraction doesn’t have one? I got some good pictures of the castle grounds and Osaka from there.

I enjoyed my quick visit to the castle and I would recommend it if you want to learn a bit more history about Osaka. From the castle, I took a different route back to the hotel on a couple of different subway lines and then we went to Nara that afternoon.

While we only scratched the surface of Osaka, we got a good sense of the city. It’s a lot easier to navigate than Tokyo and there are lots of good day trips you can take as it’s more central to places like Kyoto, Hiroshima and others.

Up Next: Osaka Omakase Restaurant Review

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