Shopping in Osaka

For Sunday 23 October

We reluctantly said goodbye to Kyoto today and caught the train back to Osaka.  We had a wonderful time in Kyoto and could easily have spent another week or two exploring.

In Osaka, we dropped our backpacks at the hotel and hit the shops – our main planned activty for the next couple of days.  Not much to report here, just shopping, shopping and more shopping.

No John, you are NOT taking that on the plane!!

A band playing on the bridge

Looks what's coming to Osaka - The Sound of Music in Japanese!

We did have a couple of nice interludes along the way.  There was a jazz band playing across the other side of the river, so we stopped to have a listen.

This man was having a wonderful time dancing

by the river to the jazz music

Soon after, we were accosted by a nice young lady who was drumming up business for a restaurant.  The menu looked very appealing, so we went in for a late lunch.  The restaurant had a ‘construction site’ theme, with safety barriers, yellow warning tape, hard hats, a trowel stuck on a half-rendered wall and a chef wearing a hard hat.  The first thing they told us was that our first drink was ‘sabisu’ (free) so that was a pleasant start!  The menu had items from various areas of Japan.  I had some delicious yakisoba (fried noodles) and John had a pork dish.  We both agreed it was about the best food we’ve eaten in Japan.  When we’d finished, the young lady who had enticed us in came and presented us each with some ice cream from Okinawa, which was also ‘sabisu’.  So, with tummies a little more full than they needed to be, we set off for more shopping.

We finally plodded back to our hotel with really tired legs and rested for a while.  Before we knew it, it was time for dinner, so off we went again.

We went back to the place that we’d been to last week, the place of the ‘sabisu’ boiled eggs.  The man seemed very pleased to see us again. 

Our friendly cook

He gave us a ‘sabisu’ drink, two serves of ‘gyouza’ (fried dumplings) for the price of one and he upgraded John’s order of plain rice to a special fried rice.

Look at all this food!

So, once again, we ate more than necessary or comfortable and strolled back to the hotel.

With the journey coming to a rapid end, we did our web check-in for the Osaka to Hong Kong flight, then watched a bit of TV before flopping in to bed.

View from our hotel window

Tomorrow night we will be staying in a hotel very close to the airport, ready for an early start on Tuesday.