Japan Day 2 - Let's Explore Osaka!

The journey to explore Osaka finally began. There's lot to explore! Osaka Castle, Minami (Namba), Universal Studios Japan, Osaka Aquarium, Tampozan, Ferris, Wheel, Umeda Sky Building, Abeno Harukas, and many more. On the first day, we planned to go to Nara Park, Osaka Castle, & Dotonburi.

Nara Park

Since we have JR pass, we try to maximize JR Pass when we travel here. It's easy to go to Nara park from our apartment. We only have to transfer train twice, but we decided to depart from Shin-Imamiya Station. So we only took train once. We take train Yamatoji Line to Nara Station. You could ride a bus from Tsuruhashi Station to Nara Park but we choose to enjoy the neighbourhood by walk. Actually, it's quite far to walk from Nara Station to Nara Park. I recommend you to take a bus from Nara Station or get-off from Kintetsu-Nara Station.

Don't be too surprised to see hundreds of freely roaming deer here. If you’re interested, you can purchase Deer Crackers and feed them. All deer here are tamed. So don't be afraid if they follow you, they won't bite you. And remember, do not litter! They might eat the trash. You could keep the trash and ask food vendors around park to keep your trash.

Tips : bring plastic everywhere you go, because there are almost NO public garbage cans in Japan. But you could find them in public parks, train stations, public restroom or next to vending machines. Find the reasons here

If you think you could only see deer in Nara Park, then you are absolutely wrong! Nara has so many things to offer from temples, shrines, gardens, and museum. You need half day or a day to explore Nara if you bring a family.

Higashiyama District

Wait! Isn't the next trip to Osaka Castle? Yes, but we decided to go to Higashiyama first since we finished our trip in Nara earlier than we thought. We took train to Higashiyama Station. Then we decided to walk from Kyoto Station to Higashiyama. Gosh! This was totally wrong!! Remember always double-check your destination from google maps! We should take a bus instead of walking. Because we have to walk 1,4 KM to Yasaka Pagoda T.T

There are many tourist attarction in Higashiyama such as Kiyomizudera Temple, Kodaiji Temple, Yasaka Pagoda, Yasaka Shrine, and Maruyama Park. Yasaka Pagoda is our main destination in Higashiyama. Higashiyama known as a great place to experience traditional old Kyoto. There's soo many tourists since it's weekend. I suggest you not to come in the weekend if you want to feel old Kyoto peacefully.

It was gloomy when we arrived in Higashiyama. Not long after we took pictures in Yasaka Pagoda, the rain fall. We went to Starbucks Coffee near Yasaka Pagoda. But it was full of people who stop by because of the rain. In conclusion, it wasn't a good day to be here.

Dotonbori

After that, we planned to go to Osaka Castle. Unfortunately, we arrived around 6 PM in Umeda Station. And the castle is closed at 5PM.

There's lot of restaurant in Dotonbori. There are many shops that have attractive signboard. Glico Man Sign is the famous one. If you are too tired, you could try Tonbori river cruise to see awsome sightseeing in Dotonbori.

I would like to walk around Dotonbori , but we are too tired after rainy day in Higashiyama. Even we could not eat famous takoyaki because the queue was too long.