Our next summer adventure was a two week trip to Japan.
A little background on how this trip came about.....
The 2020 Summer Olympics were going to be held in Tokyo.
We had talked about going to an Olympics.
We thought to ourselves, "Hey, wouldn't it be GREAT to see the Olympics in Tokyo?!?!?"
So, we decided to start planning.
The first step in our vacation planning is to usually come up with a general plan and then find some samples of places we could stay.
I wasn't having luck finding anywhere to stay.
Nothing was available.
Maybe we were looking too early or not at the right places?
I reached out to a travel agent to see if I was missing something and to get some help.
She laid it out for us.
If we wanted to attend the Olympics in Tokyo, it would cost us anywhere between...
Are you ready?
$35,000-$50,000.
And that didn't include tickets to Olympic events, food or any extras experiences we might want to add.
Yikes.
Although it would have been REALLY awesome to go see an Olympic event or two and experience the Olympic vibes, it just wasn't THAT worth it.
We looked at the calendar and said to ourselves, "Well, hmmmm, we have two free weeks at the end of August this year....."
And that's how we ended up in Japan.
We started planning in earnest in March.
We came up with where we wanted to be, what we wanted to see and planned around that.
We booked our stays, booked our flights, purchased Japan Rail Passes (which makes it super easy for tourists to travel the rails in Japan), got some currency made reservations at the places that needed reservations and finally booked a vacation package at the Tokyo Disney Resort to end our trip.
Our flight to Japan was on Sunday, August 18th.
We would leave at noonish on the 18th and arrive at about 3:30 on the 19th.
Here we are, ready and rarin' to go.
The jets seat configuration allowed us to have one adult/one kid together.
I really enjoyed this, as it made it feel like there was more room for some reason.
My flight buddy.
It was about a 10 hour flight from Seattle to Kansai International airport.
The
flight was non-eventful.
We each got a free blanket, a pillow and slippers to wear.
The service on the flight was
fantastic and super polite.
I was able to order the kids special meals pre-flight, so that I could be sure they would eat. Mikey got a kids meal (it was meatballs and other stuff) and Katie was able to get a GF meal (I'm not sure what she had). Delta assured me they didn't use nuts in any of their meals.
We pretty much watched movies the entire time on the free movie system.
The last 30 minutes of the flight, there was extreme
turbulence due to heavy rain and thunderstorms in the area. I didn't quite like that so much.
And then, we landed.
This is Kansai Airport.
The kids enjoyed all the billboardy signs in Japanese.
We made a bathroom pit stop here before heading to Customs/Passport Control.
We made our way through passport control/customs with no
problems.
Sorry, no pictures were allowed in this area.
All of the agents were very friendly and helped us out by speaking a bit of English when we must've looked really confused.
The kids were a little nervous when they had to go through passport check by
themselves, but all was okay.
We got our bags super quick - they were on the conveyor when we walked up - and made our way to the train
station attached to the airport.
When I really started digging and researching to flesh out how to get everywhere we wanted to get on our vacation, I found that Japan has A LOT of resources to help.
There were written instructions - in English - on the airports website about how to get to the train station. There was even a very helpful video.
So, I knew exactly where to go before we had even landed.
We found the train station and proceeded to the JR office. It was here that we had to trade in our vouchers for our JR Rail Passes. These passes would allow us to use Japan Rail (a specific rail company) lines throughout the country for the next two weeks without having to purchase tickets (even including the shinkansen (aka bullet train)). The agent we ended up with spoke really good English. Yay for us.
Now that we had our rail passes in hand, we really had to start acclimating our brains to the language change. All announcements on the train platforms are in Japanese. The signs in the stations bounce between Japanese and English.
We knew which train line we needed to get from Kansai Airport to Osaka. The first
train we found, we hesitated getting on. Was it the right one?
This is the first of many, "Are you sure this is the right train? Do you know where you're going?" faces that we got from the kids.
We took a chance and got on. It said on the sign that it was a, "rapid service
to Osaka Loop Line", which was the train line we needed to end up on.
On the train, Rich put a Japanese SIM card in his phone so that we could access the internet.
He used it to pull up Google Maps to see if we were headed in the right direction.
We were.
Although we couldn't make phone calls or text, with the SIM card we could use Japanese WiFi, search the internet and communicate via WhatsApp.
We made it to the Osaka Loop Line with a transfer of one train, and finally made it to our stop in about an hour or so.
It
was raining pretty hard.
We broke out umbrellas/rain jackets from suitcases on the train
platform (it was deserted) to walk to the hotel.
The Hotel New Otani Osaka was a 5 minute walk from Osakajokoen station.
We walked into the lobby pretty soaked.
Bell services met us before we even approached the check-in desk to take our luggage.
They took our wet jackets and umbrellas and put them in separate hotel-branded bags and then proceeded to wipe down
our wet luggage.
Check-in went smoothly.
The kids were glad to take a break and wait.
We were then escorted to our room by a bell services guy who not only dropped off our luggage but then stuck around to answer any questions we had about the room. We didn't have any.
Then he wished us a good night and a good stay.
There's no
tipping in Japan.
We got settled in the room.
First order of business was to use the potty. The kids were fascinated with it as it had all the bells and whistles (bidet, sprays, sounds, heated seat, different types of flushes). Katie might've hit a wrong button as she elicited a "AHHH! HOW DO YOU TURN THIS THING OFF?!?!" scream. Huzbend di the same a minute later.
After this entertainment, we headed out to find dinner.
Not only did I research all the places we were going to visit and how to get there, Huzbend also took a few weeks to research different GF food options everywhere we were going to go.
It was a team effort.
We decided to try a nearby Italian place called, Italian Dining
Natura, that was rumored to have GF options. It was a few minutes walk away from the hotel, located in the park next door.
Just in case, we stopped at a convenience store called Lawson's to pick up some things that we knew Katie COULD eat. She got a sort-of salad made with cabbage and corn. We also picked up a cup of pineapple chunks.
Convenience stores, called konbini, in Japan are just that...convenient.
They carry all sorts of food and actual meals - that are FRESH - that you can take with you.
The clerks will even warm them up for you.
Also, most importantly, the food looks delicious and tastes good too.
Konbini are the polar opposite of the typical gas station convenience stores in the U.S..
When we arrived, the restaurant was empty.
English was spotty, but Huzbend was able to communicate via "allergy cards" and with an assist from Google translate (Gtranslate from now on) what our kids couldn't eat.
Here are the allergy cards we created.
These were translated using multiple sources, including Gtranslate, and vetted by actual Japanese speakers.
We found out that Katie couldn’t eat anything
there.
We had bought that stuff at the Lawson's, but we weren’t entirely sure it was appropriate
for her to eat these in the restaurant. In the U.S. it is (sometimes), but was it in Japan?
At this point, she was super hungry so we told her it was okay to eat them even if it might have offended.
(We made sure we didn’t do this for the rest of the trip - just in case).
The rest of us ordered flaky puffed-pastry pizza.
Mikey had
cheese and we had sausage and mushroom.
It was seriously flaky and messy pizza.
But, it hit the spot.
Although the menu had English on it, we found that it wasn't totally correct.
Huzbend ordered a beer listed in the
beer section of the menu, but it turned out to be hard alcohol of some sort. Oops.
We ordered Katie some unsweetened tea to which she added cream and sugar syrup.
She actually ate most of her cabbage/corn salad and all of her pineapple even though her facial expression is not very pleased in the picture below.
She must've been hungry.
After dinner, we headed back to the hotel to get to sleep.
We took this quick photo to let everyone know we had made it safely.
Our hotel was located directly across from a pedestrian bridge leading to the very pretty, and empty at this time of night, Osaka Castle Park.
That's our hotel in the distance.
Mikey quickly turned on the TV to see what he could find to watch.
He ended up watching golf.
I don't know.
There really wasn't much else on.
We figured out the shower and everyone hit the hay by 9:30 that night.
Golf helped lull them to sleep.
I was the last one awake.
We each had our own twin bed to sleep in, which was nice.
The room itself was a bit dated. It was very 80's, maybe even 70's?
It smelled faintly of cigarette smoke, even though it was a non-smoking room.
The mattresses, I thought, were hard AF. Same went for the pillows.
The rooms definitely could've used some general updating, but were clean and convenient.
The room key had to be placed on a switch-type thingie by the door to activate power in the room.
So, when you left your room, you would take the key with you and the lights would automatically go off and save power.
I was able to turn off the golf when everyone fell asleep, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to turn off the main ceiling lights in the room. There were no switches anywhere.
I didn’t want to push any buttons that might wake the others up - especially on this weird radio clock looking thing in between the headboards of the beds (see picture above).
So, I just took the key off of the switch-type thingie by the door and shut them ALL down.
Which meant there were no lights at all.
Oh well.
Hello, Japan!
