Day 2 (Osaka)

The day started with my breakfast. Down at the buffet, there was a wide selection for breakfast. There were salads, small running rolls, sausages and bacon, as well as hot miso soup. The small yogurt I ate was a kind of natural yogurt, quite sweet, and the fish I tried was eel. While I found the yogurt quite tasty, I had to realize that eel is not for me for breakfast.

After breakfast, I went to the airport to pick up Nico. Together, we went to the hotel to store his things. Then we headed to Osaka Castle (Osaka jo). On the way there, we stopped at a small shop by the roadside for takoyaki.

On the way to the castle, we walked through the city center and a large shopping mall.

Full of anticipation, we arrived at the castle and after going through the moat and the small park to the shrine there (where we briefly prayed as part of the ritual), we entered the palace. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take photos inside as it was used as a museum. However, it was a different story on the observation deck. There, we were able to capture the great view with a photo and after buying some small souvenirs, we headed to the store "gamers", which Nico really wanted to visit.

It was located an hour away again and was part of the bright and energetic Den-Den District. There were not only maid cafes with young women advertising on the roadside but also a lot of modern Japanese "weeb/anime" flair. Everywhere you looked, there were anime items, and "gamers" was no different.

After Nico finished shopping there, we started to get hungry and went to a restaurant that we had previously looked up. However, when we arrived, we found out that not only did we want to eat there, but there was also a long line of other people. Luckily, we were in a part of the city where there were plenty of restaurants. After several attempts, we still couldn't find anything, as Nico only had an appetite for ramen and nothing else. After some time, our hunger was so great that we simply went into a shop. Inside, it turned out that the menu was only in Japanese and without pictures (which almost all the restaurants we had been to so far had for foreigners like us). At first, we wanted to leave as we couldn't read anything, but when we said this to the owner, he offered to just make the recommended daily dish for us. We agreed, and soon our food arrived. It was still steaming and really hot when it was served. Although it wasn't a large portion, the taste of the meat and the sauce was amazing.

Now Nico's tiredness was starting to show (he hadn't slept for over 24 hours) and we decided to return to the hotel, where he fell asleep right away.