Osaka Castle & Museum

Our last day in Osaka we decided to revisit Osaka Castle and some museums before heading to our welcome dinner. Pretty relaxed start so we decided to checkout and head to our new hotel closer to Osaka train station. Dropped off our luggage and then wandered over to Osaka castle using some local trains.

Now this castle doesn't even come close to the experience we had in Himeji, but it was still very pleasant to look at. The entire building is a rebuild of a rebuild of a restoration of a rebuild and so the exterior looks pristine, minus the modern lift attached to the side.

We ended up queueing up for about 30mins, and gained access to the structure for only JPY600. As we walked up the stairs to the castle there were two queues. Left was for the elevator to the top floor and the views, the right side for stair people. Advantage of the stairs, other than there was no queue is that each floor of the castle was actually a bespoke museum describing the history.

We worked our way all the way to the top, took a few photos and then enjoyed the view, then walked down all the stairs and wandered around the castle grounds.

We walked to the south west exit and set our sights on the Osaka Museum of History, which was located in quite an interesting and modern building. Entry was another JPY600, would have been cheaper had we planned ahead and bought tickets for both attractions but still, AUD6 isn't going to break the bank.

The premise of this museum was that guests took the lift to the 10th floor and then had to work their way down through the attractions back down to the entrance. A method we later adopted when visiting another multi floor museum in Tokyo. It was a good museum, although about half of the artefacts didn't have English translations.

Once we were done, we jumped onto what was quite possibly the busiest rush hour train we'd ever been on. A literal squeeze, but not long after, we managed to check into our new hotel, The Hearton Hotel with views of the train tracks and also sounds of the train tracks.

We had our G Adventures meeting for the start of our tour and met the travel team made up of English, American and Canadian travellers. Disappointingly and totally against the norm, there was no team dinner, so John and I wandered around Osaka looking for a dinner option.

We walked over to Sonezaki, a suburb made up of alleyway, over and underground local restaurant. A promoter caught our attention at the aptly named 個室居酒屋 久兵衛, trying to beckon us in, and when we went back to take him up on the offer, leaving him flustered that his efforts had worked, he called his boss to see if they would be okay with a pair of Gaijin, he sent us down reminding us over and over "fresh food, fresh food".

This basement restaurant consisted of two corridors layed out in a T-Junction with a number of private booths with sliding wooden doors. We were the only english speakers and there was no mobile signal to help us scan and translate the menus, so we just tried to get them to bring us a selection, as well as expensive whiskey. Put that down to the language barrier, and of course John's first portion of mochi. Ice cream wrapped in a gelatinous rice skin. Delicious.

Fast forward to a mildly tipsy walk back to our hotel, ready to travel to our next stop in the town of Koyasan.