Japan - Day 2 - August 20th

I woke up pretty early. It was about 7am. 

Because I took the room key off the switch-type thingie, there was still no power and no lights in the room. 

I couldn't put the key back on there, because then the whole room would light up and wake everyone.

I had to use my phone flash light to have enough light to take a shower. 

Yeah.

Soon, Rich woke up and we slowly woke the kids close to about 9am. 

We wanted to make sure they got a good nights sleep.

We weren't quite sure what the time difference was gonna do to them.

Turns out not much.

They were tired during the day, but kept on truckin'.

Looking out the window of our hotel, we noticed that a huge line was forming outside the concert hall across the way.

If you look behind the concert hall, you'll see Osaka Castle in the distance.

We decided to hit up the hotel breakfast buffet. 

The buffet had many eastern (namely Asian inspired) and western (namely U.S./European inspired) options.

They even had an omelet station, which I took advantage of.

We let the server know about our allergies.

He spoke very good English and we used our allergy cards.

He went through and circled things on a list of buffet items that would be off limits due to nuts.

We were quick to notice that the Japanese take allergies VERY seriously.

He would not let Katie eat anything off of the buffet due to her issues with nuts and gluten.

He didn't even list buffet stuff as an option, as they would've in the U.S. by adding a warning of cross contamination.

Here, it was just a hard NO.

He hooked Katie up with her own safe tray of food from the kitchen.

It was a salad with no dressing and a fresh fruit selection.

We went ahead - shhhhh, don't tell - and tried to find things that Katie could eat safely off the buffet.

 Plain rice was the only thing we could get her to agree to as she isn't a big fan of yogurt.

She adulted and made herself a cup of tea.

At first, Mikey was weirded out by the buffet food.

It’s hard to explain, but in regards to the western food options in Japan, nothing quite looks or tastes like you think it should. Because of this, we had to prod Mikey to try things. 

He tried fruit and some cereal that looked like chocolate rice krispies with milk. 

But the milk was full fat, almost like heavy cream, and so he didn’t eat much of that. 

They had pancakes on the buffet, but they were whole wheat and “tasted weird”. 

We prodded him to try some bacon, which was thick sliced and more like Canadian bacon.

Ladies and gentlemen, we had a winner! 

He liked it and ate a lot of it.

Probably an unhealthy amount. 

Then, we convinced him to try tater tots, which he doesn’t like or eat at home. 

I guess they hit the spot, because he went up two to three more times to get more tots. 

I am very surprised he did not put any in his pockets to take with him a la Napoleon Dynamite.

After breakfast, we we back to the room to gather up our stuff. 

Japan in the summer is H.O.T..

Like, very.

It's about equal to Florida. 

90's and 90% humidity.

We came prepared for the heat. Everyone had their own Camelbak water backpack, we had some cooling towels with us and tiny umbrellas to protect from sun and/or rain.

Our first adventure of the day was to visit Osaka Castle. 

Not only was it hot, it was flipping hot and super-duper humid. 

Ugh. I sweated (or sweat?) like never before and we had only walked 5 minutes. 

Literally.

We found out what the giant line by the concert hall was for.

It was for a four person boy-band that was having a concert later that evening.

The name of the group was UraShimaSakataSen.

If you go to YouTube, you can see MANY videos of them.
If you go to their official channel, they have hour long "chats" with their fans and they fish and have picnics.

There are 4 members of the group and each has their own color - Ura-Tanuki (green - the leader), Shima (purple), Tonarino Sakata (red) and Senla (yellow).

Now, it gets complicated. 

These singers are famous for "covering" previously released anime, video game, J-POP (Japanese pop musci), and VOCALOID songs.

 What is Vocaloid, you ask? It's voice synthesizing software. A person can type in lyrics and melody and human vocals are created from a database of singer/voice actor samples - see Hatsune Miko below. The Vocaloid singers DON'T ACTUALLY EXIST. They do have anime avatars and they perform concerts. That people pay for. Really. Look it up.

Anyways, back to these UraShimaSakataSen guys and their concert.
The giant line was NOT for the concert happening later that evening, it was for merchandise. 

I cannot describe to you how long this line was. 

It had grown since I took the picture above.

And, it was all ladies in line.

We started making our way towards the castle.

First, we had to walk through a gate (Aoya-mon Gate) to enter the outer grounds of the castle.

We passed by a cute train that would shuttle people back and forth to different points within the park. 

It played music. Of course.

I didn't think to take a video of it (but Katie did later during our trip).

The castle grounds cover about 15 acres and include many structures.

Here is a map of the area:

Originally built by the Toyotomi clan in the 1580's, it was taken over by the Tokugawa clan in 1620.

The castle had been rebuilt several times after being destroyed by various fires. Some were natural fires, like lightening striking gunpowder filled warehouses, others were set via civil conflicts. 

So, this iteration we saw was not the original. 

It was a concrete reproduction finished in 1931 with working elevators and a museum housed inside. 

That doesn't take away from the fact that it was still an impressive structure.

Next, we had to cross a bridge over the inner moat.

Yep. Two moats.

As we were making our way there, the kids heard the Japanese cicadas for the first time. 

They continuously commented on how loud they were and continued to look out for them for our whole two week trip.

We were inside the inner walls of the castle at this point.

We could overlook the inner moat.

It was a nice view.

The steps were super steep.

The main castle is surrounded by many defensive walls and is set high up off the ground.

Some of the original foundations still exist around the castle.

When building, each clan under the head clan had to donate funds and workers to the cause of building the castle. 

They would mark their clan names on stones within the areas they were responsible for.

The stones at the base of the castle were extremely large.

The museum in the castle was blessedly air conditioned.

Phew.

I must've lost about 2 gallons and it only took us about 20 minutes to walk to the castle. 

Sorry, no pictures allowed inside the museum.

We made our way up 8 floors of stairs to the top so that we could look out over the park and get view of Osaka.

We walked around the top floor to enjoy the view and then proceeded to go down flight by flight looking at the museum displays (which were mostly all in Japanese) about the history of the castle, Osaka, and its owner.

That fish is giant and, in the past, was covered in gold leaf.

Now, it's just painted gold.

Before leaving (I was in no rush to go back outside) we purchased a magnet and a coin purse in the gift shop. We forgot that the majority of currency we'd use in Japan was coins.

We also made our first purchases out of vending machines.

 Mikey picked out a CC Lemon - like a carbonated lemonade - and Katie selected Japan Cola - a special Pepsi flavor for Japan (which tasted a bit more like Coke than Pepsi).

One last picture before we moved on to our next destination.

We began to walk through the park towards Morinomiya train station at which we would catch the subway to visit the Kaiyukan Aquarium. 

On the way, we found a Lawsons at which we purchased lunch. 

I had an egg salad sandwich. Mikey had a hot dog sausage. Huzbend had chicken yakitori. We ended up getting Katie some kind of fruit.

We found a shady spot to eat lunch on the ground and were inundated with ants.

As we searched for our spot to eat, we discovered yet another line of ladies waiting for another concert in a open air venue nearby. 

They were waiting to see Super*Dragon - a 9 member (yes, NINE!) boy pop/rock band.

Again, I'm pretty sure they were waiting in line just for merchandise. 

We tested the yakitori with the Nima and it came up as GF. We went back in and bought Katie her own skewer or it. She was already tired of just eating fruit and veggies.

During this Lawson's visit is when the kids first discovered Coolish.

Coolish is vanilla ice cream in a pouch. 

It became one of our go-to snacks.

We found our way to the train station and fumbled our way through purchasing ICOCA cards so that we could ride the subway to the Kaiyukan aquarium. 

Mikey took a break on the platform by sitting on Huzbend's feet.

It was nice to sit/stand on the air conditioned train. 

Katie frequently tried to sit/stand away from us.

I guess Mikey was annoying her.

It was a 15 minute walk to the aquarium from the train station.

We walked along a busy street filled with cheap souvenir stores and restaurants.

Finally, we made it Osaka Aquarium - Kaiyukan. 

It's billed as the worlds largest aquarium.

And, I wouldn't argue with that.

The place is huge.

Our first stop was a cute photo op where the assistant took our picture with her camera, but also with our phones.

Very nice of her.

Upon passing through the "Aqua Gate" (pictured below), you enter in different "lands" such as 

Monterey Bay, Japan Forest, Antarctica, Great Barrier Reef to name a few.

Each has its own "tank" and natural area.

Japan Forest was at the top of the building.

We had to walk down and down and down to see the other "lands".

As you moved down through the building, some of the tanks were able to be seen at multiple levels.

These otters were a hit.

The aquarium was SUPER crowded.

Around animals like these, it was standing room only just to get a peek.

A lazy seal and a giant ear.

"Awwww, so cuuuuuute!"

This is what Katie was referring to.

Definitely NOT cute IMHO.

At some point, we stopped for a bathroom break.

Mikey went to bathroom and got weird looks from someone because of his long hair. 

He was asked, “Girl?” to which he answered, “Nah, I'm a boy”. 

This was just the first of many, many times. 

He confused a lot of people.

We finally made it to the main attraction.

The Pacific Ocean tank. 

This tank is 30 feet deep and about 111 feet long and holds about 190,000 cubic feet of water.

In this tank there were TWO whale sharks along with all sorts of fish, stingrays, and smaller sharks.

The whale sharks were mesmerizing.

Giant manta rays swam around in here too.

Because this tank was so big, there were plenty of places to stand to watch the goings-on.

It was hard to pull the kids away, but there was so much more to see.

As we kept going down and around, we got to see the upper tanks but at lower depths.

We could watch the sea lions swimming and playing in the tank.

Katie begged me to take this picture of cuttlefish.

There were many locations at which to view the Pacific Ocean tank.

These pictures just don't do it justice.

It was very peaceful to watch the various species swim around.

As we were admiring the whale sharks one last time, we realized that it was feeding time in the tank.

Whale sharks are filter feeders. They eat small fish, squid, crustaceans and plankton.

They suck in water that is filled with food and the filter out the water using their thousands of tiny teeth keeping the animals stuck inside.

We had a front row seat to watch the fun.

A diver even got in the water to hand feed the whale sharks.

Over in another section of the Pacific Ocean tank, the other sharks were being fed.

This hammerhead looked as if he was going to attack some of the other fish in the tank.

He was so worked up about the fish chunks that they were throwing in the water.

He finally chowed down on a pretty large dead fish that they threw in.

It elicited a lot of "ooooooo's" and "aaaaahhhhh's" and 

at least one "EW." 

That was Mikey.

Such cute signs.

For EVERYTHING.

There was a cute display of tiny creatures of the sea.

It was very skewed towards fish of Finding Nemo fame.

As we went deeper into the aquarium, we got to see the deep diving dolphins.

They had plenty of toys to play with like buoys and rings and such.

Another Katie requested picture of a sea turtle.

The bottom floor hosted a display of all sorts of weird jellyfish.

We then headed to the interactive area.

The first was an open air display of ringed seals with an accompanying display about global warming.

You could see the seals from below.

Then you could see them chilling out on the "ice".

This guy was having a grand ole time doing absolutely nothing.

Maybe he was meditating.

Breeeeeathe innnnnnn.....

Breeeeeeeeathe oooouuuuuut.

Last, but not least, the trip through the aquarium ended with a touch tank experience.

Sooooo, close!

Waiting patiently......

Darn.

I had a feeling that these bigger guys just didn't want to be touched.

Just a guess.

Finally, patience paid off.

A small guy came for a visit.

We picked up some souvenirs from the gift store before we left.

Katie fell in love with whale sharks.

It's kinda hard not too when you see this guy everywhere.

On the way back to the train station, we stopped at a vendor selling cotton candy creations.

Katie picked out a huge cotton candy whale shark.

Mikey was not a fan.

After this picture was taken, a tragedy occurred.

Cotton Candy Whale Shark melted in the humidity.

It took about 2 minutes or less for him to disintegrate.

Katie was sad.

She only got a few big bites out of him.

Cotton Candy Whale Shark.

You will forever have a place in our hearts and in our stomachs.

It was getting close to dinner time, so we headed toward Dotonbori. 

Dotonbori is famous for its shops, eateries, bars, crazy neon and giant signs.

We were on the search for a Mexican restaurant named El Pancho that Huzbend had found in his GF searches.

We walked down Shinsaibashi street.

Shinsaibashi is a covered shopping arcade.

The arcade started off kinda low rent and then, as we got closer to the touristy Dotonbori area, all of sudden had Gucci and high end stores. 

I noticed that in Japan, each place we visited had their own exclusive man-hole covers.

This one has Osaka Castle surrounded with cherry blossoms on it.

It took us some major wandering to finally find the restaurant.

It was inside a building on the 8th Floor. 

We had to take an elevator that barely fit all four of us to get up to the restaurant.

"I'm not nervous. Are you nervous?"

We found it!

Our waitress spoke really good English and we were able to communicate Katie's needs.

Most of the stuff they served there was GF.

The restaurant was covered with graffiti from past visitors. 

Here's a picture of me unknowingly sitting on the valve of my Camelbak water backpack.

It pooled on my chair and I had a wet butt the rest of the night.

And, besides that, it left a small puddle behind my chair on the floor.

I wonder what the waitress thought...

The food was, I would say, average Mexican food.

Just okay. Nothing special.

It was pretty spicy though. 

Katie ordered fajitas.

Mikey ordered what he thought was a plain quesadilla, but it actually had jalapeno pieces in it.

Consequently, it was too spicy for him.

He drank a lot of water.

We promised Mikey we would find him something else to eat somewhere.

That somewhere happened to be McDonalds.

Some research had shown that Katie would be able to eat the French fries at Japan branches of McDonald's.

So, Huzbend ordered a combo meal of what he thought was a burger, fries and a Coke.

The cashier, though, was pretty grumpy and abrupt, so it made it hard to order.

The burger turned out to be a pork patty with bacon on it. 

Mikey still liked it and ate it all. 

Katie LOVED the french fries and talked about wanting to have them again before we left Japan. 

The Coke was actually Fanta.

Right outside the McDonald's was the famous Ebisu-bashi, a bridge over the Dontonbori River in the center of the area full of restaurants and such.

We continued our wandering taking in the sights. 

Of course, the famous Glico man sign was not turned on. Figures. 

The Glico man is the guy with his arms up in the air.
He advertises candy of all things.

Lots of octopus available to eat.

It's a local specialty.

I'll just leave this here because it's pretty.

The kids enjoyed looking at all the creative signage.

I just couldn't take enough pictures of it.

There is a giant hand holding something that is coming out of a wall behind the kids.

It looks like Katie will be hit in the head with a hot dog.

I think this octopus is preparing to eat itself.

It's holding takoyaki (the thing that looks like a cake ball).

It's a wheat based appetizer that has different fillings.

Takoyaki is octopus filling.

The kids liked wandering through here.

Mikey said it matched his vision of what he thought he might see in Japan.

Here's a little clip....

We decided to try to find a grocery store before heading back to the hotel.

We wanted to pick up some stuff for breakfast so that we didn’t have to pay for the buffet again.

Bye, Dotonbori!

This day taught us that finding a store or restaurant in big cities in Japan using Google Maps is pretty hard to do. They are all located in giant multi-floor buildings.

We, again, wandered for a while until we thought we had the right building.

There might've been some arguing on which building it was.

We settled on one and Huzbend volunteered to go inside to find the store.

It was downstairs. He also discovered that it was connected via easy underground access to a subway station. 

We wandered the store for quite a while trying to find options. 

None of the cereals were GF (all of them had malt in them). 

We picked up fruit – apples, oranges, a banana or two - and some raisin buns and croissants that were not GF. 

It wasn’t as successful a grocery trip as we had hoped. 

While Huzbend was checking out, I took the kids to use the bathroom.

We searched around and eventually found it on the way to the subway station.

While I was waiting for the kids to come out, a nice old gentleman asked me if I was from America.

I answered, "Yes" and he gave me a thumbs up, a smile and said something I didn't understand. 

Then, he puttered off.

 It was a little weird and out of the blue.

I'm hoping what he said was nice. 

Our shopping completed, it was time to head back to the hotel.

Sometimes it was hard waiting on the train platform after walking all day.

Katie is just about exhausted here.

We caught a glimpse of Tsutenkaku Tower, a famous landmark in Osaka.

Of course, you can pay to go to the top to look out over the city if you want.

We were able to sit down on the train ride back.

Yay for small miracles.

We made it back to the hotel a little later than planned.

Everyone showered and then collapsed while watching baseball.