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 in a line to buy an empty cup from a vending machine and then you are seated at a table to color your cup.
We had fun personalizing our cups.
The next stops are filling your cup. You give your cup to a worker and then you get to turn the handle to add the noodles to your cup. You get to pick your broth flavor and four ingredients.
And then they put a lid on your cup and shrink wrap it. It ends up looking exactly like one you'd buy in a store but with your own artwork on it.
The funny thing is you then put it into a special bag and pump it with air to protect it. You tie a string on it and wear it around your neck. It was totally the 'it' thing to do and even I really wanted to wear a coveted Cup Noodle inflatable bag around my neck! the museum itself was pretty small but we watched a video and saw the timeline of Cup Noodle invention.
Afterward we were snackish and stopped at a little shop that sold Chiki Chiki Soft Cream. It was soft serve with caramel and crunchy ramen bits on it. It was yummy and fun.
All of that took a little longer than we thought, so we decided to go check into our hotel. It was right near the Dotonbori street, which is a famous street with soooo many food and shopping choices and at night it's all lit up with neon. We knew the street probably got busy closer to dark, but we thought we'd head over to check it out (and actually our original plan was to walk to a crazy looking shrine, but we never made it there). People started getting hungry and there was just so much to see. G spotted these Osaka Cheese Dogs and had to have one. It's her new favorite food. She likes the one that's cheese battered and fried with sugar coating. They also do cheese with potato crusting and it's equally delicious.
When it was dinner time I was so excited to try 'real' okonomiyaki. I found a recipe for it a while ago in America and loved it but never knew if mine was prepared correctly or not. Osaka is famous for it so I just had to have it! B got some takoyaki to add to the meal as well, although this place wasn't as good as we've had it previously.
I thought the okonomiyaki was delicious. It's a cabbage pancake with meat or other things added. I was excited to find that my homemade version tasted super similar although not nearly as light and fluffy as the 'real' deal.
After dinner we walked around Dotonbori and rode a big ferris wheel at Donkey. It was a two dessert day as at the end of the night we had kakigori. It was so hot and was perfect to cool us off. The streets are so crowded and loud that it's pretty overwhelming, but was so interesting to experience.
For some reason the cool thing to do is to get your picture with the Glico Man. It's an old advertisement and is obviously an iconic image of the area. They even sell things like Hello Kitty doing the Glico pose.
It was a totally fun first day in Osaka and we crashed as soon as we landed in our hotel and showered.
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