Osaka Day 1 | One Day at a Time

Continued from Taiwan Day 7.

Almost 10 years since we last visited Taiwan and it feels like it. Over the past week, both RL and I noticed that people are generally younger. It’s not that they’ve gotten younger, it’s just that we’ve gotten older. We were young last time we were here, and now we are marching into middle aged. My heel has been hurting from a pinched nerve. My back can no longer carry as much heavy stuff without twitchy. But, I guess at least we’ve got three children to show for all those extra years of living.

Today is a travel day. It’s looking like a rainy start to our day, good thing we’ve got a van to take us to the high speed rail station. Would suck to start the day wet by walking to the MRT station in order to connect to the HSR station.

Throat still hurts, looks like I’ve got a viral infection instead of bacterial. With that said, I seemed to have turned the corner and it’s running its course.

Cool green color.

Kids watching a little last bit of TV to calm them down before we get picked up to head to airport.

Got picked up by a car and in a short time we were at the station.

Back to travel party of 5 for this leg of the trip. It feels easier to travel with a smaller group for sure.

Bathroom break, we’ve got a lot of luggage already. And we haven’t even shopped very much yet! Eek.

The train arrives. In our frenzy, we were waiting on the wrong platform, but when this colorful train pulled up right behind us, we realized that this was our train instead. I mean…same platform, just different sides. Either way, we made it.

Chocolate bread.

The telephoto lens on my phone has a different refresh rate that interferes with the refresh rate of the led message board on the train.

Reached Taoyuan HSR, station. Now, we connect to another train to airport.

RL’s eyes says it all about traveling with kids.

At the terminal. There were two old ladies standing in front of us, and one of them wasn’t paying attention when the walkway came to the end and she fell. I was right behind her and it was a pileup since we were getting pushed right onto her fallen body and her fallen luggage. I kicked her luggage out of the way and managed to avoid a pileup and having the kids behind me pile on top too. Good thing someone was able to help her get back up and she was mostly ok, just bruised ego. See kids, stop fooling around and pay attention on escalators and moving walkways.

Check in was a breeze, the line was short.

RL getting stressed about getting past security. We’ve got plenty of time, we got here about 3 hours before our flight.

Heading to the lounge before our flight to hopefully find some food. Security was fast, immigration was fast, but rude. The lady who checked our passport wasn’t the nicest. Again…why aren’t people in Taiwan as nice as they used to be?

At least we get to chill here for bit and relax now that we are at the airport.

Taiwan Beer on draft, yes please.

Pink flesh guava, not often I see this in Taiwan. Usually its the white guava.

Ground pork with rice, yes please. I’m loving this lounge.

Seconds, now with bloodcake.

Everyone enjoying their lunch and chill time here.

At our gate getting ready to board our flight. Yesterday, Air India crashed a Boeing 787…and we are flying on one today. A little unnerving, but I’m sure it’ll be ok, statistically speaking anyway.

Free gift to the kids on the flight.

Do I see a 747 hiding in that hanger?

Goodbye Taiwan. We’ve both changed, but the egg puddings haven’t. thankfully.

We’ve already had lunch, but they served food again…I guess I’ll eat some of it again out of boredom.

Japan in sight after a relatively short flight.

Made it through immigration, and as RL handed me a handful of trash to throw away, we realized that she had accidentally brought down one of the plastic dining bowls from the plane. Oops.

Japan!!!!

Alright, gotta get train tickets to Osaka. Again, times have changed so much. JR Passes are no longer a financial homerun, so we didn’t buy them this time. It also means we are no longer incentivized to only use JR trains, so now we can take any train we want with no financial penalty. Our phones have also come a really long way since almost a decade ago. Google maps now does a great job of mapping out all the public transit and immediately we noticed a lot more people being able to speak some English. We’ve heard of Japan changing to more English friendly from our other friends who have visited, and even from our visit almost a decade ago. They’ve definitely taken another step and there’s now English menus everywhere for the tickets machines.

Train to Namba station.

I need to look at my old pictures to see if the tickets back then had English on them. I am pretty sure many of them didn’t have any English printed on them.

Kids said Japan doesn’t look like what they expected. They said it looks so grey…well kids, we are still in the suburbs.

Reached central Osaka.

Our train looks like a Japanese robot from the front.

Now, we walk to our hotel which is a little bit of a distance, especially with all of our packs on.

See, kids, there are colors and bright lights in Japan.

Glico man! Apparently the original sign was installed in 1935!

Alright, finally reached the street for our hotel, It’s just right up ahead.

Here we go.

Nice, it’s quite spacious. Done enough traveling with kids to realize that if we don’t get enough space and we are all on top of each other, everyone gets super upset and fussy. There are 4 bedrooms, so none of the kids have to share, which has always been a source of conflict in the past. This is what $687 a night gets you in Osaka semi close to Namba Station.

PL’s room. This was the smallest room and most cozy and all the kids fought to have this room actually.

Little KL’s room.

CL’s room. And I forgot to include a photo of me and RL’s room, but it basically looks like CL’s room with two twin beds next to each other.

Ensuite bathroom of the master bedroom.

Kids’ bathroom.

A small kitchen and a fridge.

Even has a balcony, though, we ended up not using it this whole stay due to just being so busy.

Immediately after dropping off our luggage, we left to look for dinner. Everyone’s hungry.

Found a sushi spot close by. Our server was super nice, to the point where the kids were like, “why is he being so nice?” Part Japanese culture, part just being nice I guess.