Tweedles in Japan

Our second day in Osaka we went to a little coffee shop for breakfast that was 0.1 miles from our hotel.  It ended up being my favorite meal of the trip!  I don't know what magic the owner put in the breakfast but it was delicious.  I had bacon and egg on toast.  It sounds so simple but the flavors were so good I thought I tasted horseradish and husband said dijon.  Plus the coffee was superb.  It was so good that we ended up going back the next morning. On our way back from breakfast we saw a giant purple santa clause, so we went and checked it out.  It was some sort of Christmas Chapel.?! Then we used the metro system to make our way to the HEP 5 building for our first destination of the day.  We had reservations at the Gudetama cafe!  This flower thing was in one of the stations on our way.  A mall pops up near every train station it seems and photo ops are plentiful. This is in the HEP 5 building on our way to the Gude...

We got an early start Saturday morning knowing we had some long bus/train/subway rides ahead before we would get to Osaka.  A typhoon had come in, but it ended up not being too rainy at all.  This is us at the bus stop near our house.  We took the bus to the train station. My sensei had prepped me on how to order Limited Express train tickets at the station.  You have to pay extra for this train, but then it doesn't stop at all of the local stops and is WAAAY faster.  We learned a lot about riding trains and made a few mistakes, but nothing that took us the wrong way.  I'm sure we'll be pro's at this by the end of our stay in Japan.  I think it took about 3 hours or so total to get to our first adventure in Osaka. Since it was supposed to by typhooning we planned indoor things for Saturday and our first stop was the Cup Noodle Museum.   The thing to do at the museum is to make your own personalized Cup Noodle.  You wait...

This is the first temple we went to. This looks like fairy house. Buddhist figure. This is a bell inside the walls of the temple. This is the second temple we went to and is a little more than1000 years old!!! Part of the temple the park we went to. the bride to the castle ruins Really old stone carving. Mom and Glenna on top of the ruins Us walking to the ruins. These are graves. And that is the end of our day.

This past weekend we went exploring in Suzuka on Saturday!  This is Koyasu Kannonji.  On the brochure it says deep faith for 1300 years!!  Whoa!  Amazing how old some things can be here. This is a buddhist temple which known for safe births and fertility. We really enjoyed wandering around, because there are actually quite a few temples and old looking things in the area.  Little Buddy took his camera so that he could practice his photography skills.  Getting there was insane, because we missed the (really large and obvious) parking lot so ended up on super slim streets in what looked like a really old part of town.  If I was driving I seriously would have gotten out of the car and left it.  There is no way I could have navigated it.  Husband is amazing and got us through without hitting anything! We came home after this to eat lunch and regroup before taking the train that runs near our house one stop down to do some more e...