May 25, 2023 • 41 mins
This week on the podcast we're talking about Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe and Nara. We based ourselves in Osaka for nearly 2 weeks and took that opportunity to explore the city of Osaka, including the Osaka Castle, Dotonburi, Universal Studios Japan, as well as some of the amazing restaurants and arcades that Osaka has to offer. We also took a number of day trips from Osaka and explored Kyoto, Kobe, and Nara. In this episode, we share why we chose Osaka, what the city is like, as well as what we did on each of our day trips, and much more. Enjoy! In this episode:
- An overhead view of how we planned out this part of our Japan trip
- Why we chose Osaka in particular
- How we split up our days working while traveling around Osaka
- Our day trips to Kyoto, Kobe, and Nara
- Travelling by train in Japan and planning out your routes in advance
- Spending 5 days in central Osaka, and our highlights from visiting restaurants and arcades in the city
- Visiting Universal Studios Japan, the Osaka Castle, Dotonburi, and more
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Hello and welcome to the World wandersPodcast, a proud part of the wander
Barn podcast network. I'm Ryan,I'm Amanda, and we're your host.
We're a traveling couple and digital nomads, taking you on our adventures as we
explore locations, destinations, and careers. Enjoy the show. Hello, and
welcome to another episode of the WorldWanderers Podcast. We're excited as always to
(00:26):
have you here with us and tobe diving into more travel adventures. Yeah.
Absolutely, And so where we leftyou in our last episode was in
Kanazawa, Japan, and so we'regoing to continue with our Japan series sharing
a little bit more about where wewent and what we did. So from
Kanazawa, we headed to Osaka,which I think is somewhere that a lot
(00:49):
of people have probably heard of.It's a pretty major city in Japan.
It's one of the biggest cities inJapan. And we were really excited about
this because when we were in Japanlast time in twenty seventeen, we spent
a week in Kyoto, which,as you'll here soon, is super super
close to Osaka, and then wedid one day trip into Osaka and then
(01:10):
went to Universal Studios which is alsoin Osaka, so we hadn't spent very
much time there, and we decidedfor this trip that we were going to
spend actually quite a bit of timesort of based there once you went back
to work and we were no longerkind of just vacationing and traveling. Yeah,
we talked about it on some ofthe other stuff we've done about the
Japan trip, but kind of earlyon, I think we were thinking like,
(01:33):
Okay, we're going to go outand do more and go more places
and try to get to smaller places. But as we got more realistic about
the trip, especially balancing work andthen having a kind of seemed to be
toddler, it just made a lotmore sense for us to kind of settle
down on one spot. And inOsaka you can actually find like really affordable,
(01:55):
nice airbnbs in a way that youcan't and basically anywhere else in Japan,
So it just made sense for us. And there was also a really
good hub because there's lots of stuffin and around the Osaka area, and
then lots of bullet trains that leavefrom Osaka to make it easier to see
a bunch of stuff from that.So we felt like it was a great
hub, and so we decided tospend two weeks there as I was getting
(02:17):
back into work and we were gettingover our first week of adventure. Yeah,
and so we had originally planned tospend a week there. So one
of the first things that we'd actuallyI guess booked was this airbnb that we
found in Osaka. It was alittle bit out of like the main city
center, kind of across the river, in a bit more of what looked
(02:38):
like a suburb area, but itwas still really close to a train station
and really close to a JR stationas well, which was a huge benefit.
And we were planning our original originalplan was after the first week in
Osaka we were going to head alittle further south to somewhere like okay Yama
or maybe Kiashiki. We'd heard reallygreat places, really great things about those
(02:58):
places, and then as we werelooking at just we weren't finding anything that
kind of made sense for us accommodationwise, and so our needs for accommodation
are a little bit different with workingversus vacationing. While we were doing the
vacation stuff, we were like,you've heard, if you've listened to the
other episodes, we were in hotels, so just one room for the three
(03:19):
of us, and that's not reallyfeasible when both of us need to do
a little bit of work while losesnapping. You need to be working even
when she's up. So we neededsomething a bit bigger. So we kind
of went back to the drawing board. We looked to see if we could
extend our original airbnb. That placewas too great. It had already been
snatched up for after we were bookedto leave, and so we found this
(03:40):
second airbnb, which was apartment style, kind of more downtown Osaka. And
so what we decided to do wasspend a little under two weeks there and
do the first week there. Wewere like, Okay, we'll use this
week to kind of explore the surroundingarea of Osaka, and then we'll use
the second week to kind of reallyget a feel for what's in like Osaka
(04:02):
proper, like in downtown Osaka.So do we want to talk a little
bit more about that. Yeah,and just a bit of contextual stuff.
So Osaka, Kobe Kyoto are allvery close, like it's one of those
metropolitan areas that like you're technically leavingthe city, but it kind of feels
like you're continuing in the city.And so when you add all that stuff
(04:23):
up, it's like the second biggestmetropolitan area in Japan outside of Tokyo.
And another thing, so you mentionedkind of staying by one train station.
In big Japanese cities, there's oftenlike the main train station and the main
Shinkansen train station, so you'll seelike shin whatever. And so we stayed
(04:43):
just within a twenty minute walk ofshin Osaka, which meant that we could
get on the bullet trains relatively quick, relatively quickie, relatively quickly without needing
to take a bunch of train transfers. And so that's kind of why it
made sense the first week get outof the city and the second week moved
more to downtown Osaka, which tonsof metro and train options, but you
(05:04):
would had to go back up tothe shin Osaka station to get the shinkin
cent trains. Yeah, so itwould have been kind of an extra minutes
of like maybe an extra twenty minutesof travel time to get to these other
places. And it was really coolbeing in just kind of a very local
area. I mean, we didnot see a lot of foreigners in that
area that we were staying. Wewere in a really beautiful, like Japanese
(05:29):
house. It was really awesome we'restaying, so I'm glad that we did
that. But basically we ended upsetting up our days where you did most
of your calls in the morning andthen Lou would take a nap and then
it was kind of early afternoon bythe time she woke up, which is
like the middle of the night herein North America where we're back now,
and we would use a couple ofhours kind of like we normally would in
like after work, and we wouldgo explore a little bit, and then
(05:51):
we'd come back kind of do dinnertogether, put Lou down to bed,
and then do a couple more hoursof work. And so I feel like
this sort of interesting different schedule workedreally well, especially for exploring. But
while we were in Osaka in thatfirst airbnb where we were closer to the
Shinkinsen station, we decided to explorea couple different places, so we did
(06:14):
day trips to Kyoto, to Kobe, and to Nara. So maybe we
can talk about each of those,what we thought, what it was like
getting there, the experience all thatgood stuff. Yeah, so let's talk
about Kyoto first. I think Kyotois probably the second most popular tourist destination
in Japan after Tokyo, but couldbe the most popular tourist destination in Japan.
(06:39):
It's super famous. Yeah. Solike when we went the first time
we went to Tokyo, we wentto Kyoto and then we ended up popping
into Osaka. I feel like Osakais like a little bit under the radar
in terms of very much a giganticcity. A lot of people know about
it. I feel like under theradar is not the right word, but
I feel like it's just like notas popular as Kyoto. Like I think
most people do what we did thefirst time based in Kyoto and do like
(07:01):
a day trip to Yeah. Likewhen you're so, we were staying in
kind of a suburban area, wouldn'tsee many foreigners go to like the main
Osaka stations and you'd see like ahandful of people, and then you pull
up in shin Kyoto station and it'slike, oh, like, you know,
sixty percent of people are folling.Maybe even more than that. Yeah,
But Kyoto is definitely kind of historicallyand culturally just a place that has
(07:26):
a tongue going on. So itused to be the capital of Japan kind
of early nineteen hundreds, capital wasmoved to Tokyo. And also I think
one of the things that contributes toit is it wasn't targeted for bombing or
fire raids by the Allied forces duringWorld War Two. So where a kind
of Tokyo and a number of othermajor Japanese cities were destroyed and fire bombings
(07:49):
or atomic bombings, Kyoto wasn't,and so a lot of the historical buildings
are retained. Although, like tobe fair, like if you go to
places in Tokyo, you don't reallythe sense that a lot of that stuff
was rebuilt. But yeah, Kyotojust beautiful. There's some incredible historical places.
I think during cherry blossoms as well. It's just the type of place
(08:09):
where it's like everywhere you turn,something beautiful is happening. And then yeah,
lots of history as well and somecool like outdoor natural stuff, yeah,
and so on. The Shinkinson fromOsaka, it's only about fifteen minutes,
which is kind of crazy, Soyou just hop on the bullet train.
It goes super super speedy, Kyotostations. The first one you get
(08:30):
off and then you know there's stuffkind of right there that you can walk
around, and then a couple ofdifferent areas that have some really beautiful things
to see and do. And weonly had a couple of a couple of
hours, so we just had tochoose kind of one area to go into,
and so we went and had somelunch, we walked around, we
explored a little bit, and thewhole time we were there, I was
like, Oh, I wish wehad more time here. I want to
(08:52):
come back here. Maybe we shouldcome back here later. And I feel
like that kind of became a themefor the places that we were doing day
trips too. So Kyoto is definitelysomething that I would I would highly highly
recommend for anyone who's going to Japan, and if it's your first time,
I think it's really worth staying therebecause, like Ryan said, there's a
lot of history there, there's alittle culture there, there's a lot of
(09:15):
really beautiful things to see. It'sreally famous for palaces and gardens, and
I feel like taking a couple ofdays to kind of explore that is definitely
something i'd recommend. I think insort of a half day a couple of
hours, you really can't see asmuch as I think that it has to
offer. But we were really happythat we were able to get out there,
even for a small revisit and justexplore a little bit and you know,
(09:37):
just be back there. It wasit's when you haven't been somewhere for
like six years, it's kind ofhard to because you know that you liked
a place, but it's nice togo revisit and see what it was like
again. And so we were kindof like, oh, yeah, I
know where Kyoto is popular. Definitelywould love to spend more time there,
but because we only had a coupleof days and we had other places we
wanted to explore, we just wejust did a couple of our slash half
(10:01):
day. Yeah, and then theother place we did in day trip too,
which is kind of the other directionfrom Osaka is Kobe, so famous
for Kobe beef. Honestly, don'tknow a ton more about Kobe, but
we took the train in explore fora little bit, really beautiful kind of
like historic center of town where there'slike this interesting area where there's old English
(10:26):
houses and other kind of cultural stuff. And then of course had to go
find somewhere to have a good beeflunch. Yeah, for sure. I
was really pleasantly surprised with Kobe.I didn't really have a lot of expectations
with it. I think kind ofthe day that we were going, while
we were sleeping, I did alittle bit of research and kind of mapped
(10:46):
out a route from the train stationand started looking at a couple of restaurants.
I don't think that this is theway to do things. I think
the way to do things would beto spend a couple of nights in Kobe,
to do some research on places youwant to eat, to make some
reservations in advance. I feel likethat would be like the way to do
Kobe. It's obviously just a littlebit challenging having a baby, because we
(11:07):
were just like letting her sleep foras long as she wanted getting up and
going. But once again, itwas just about fifteen minutes on the Shinkins
and like Ryan said, the otherway from Kyoto so really quick and easy
to get there, and then superwalkable right from the train station. And
I actually the same thing with Kobe. I was like, oh my god,
we need to come back here.And again unfortunately we didn't have time.
(11:28):
But right from the train station youcan go up to like a beautiful
botanical garden, which we didn't havetime to do, and I really would
have loved to see that. Butyou can walk around through the old center,
get some food, and then youcan actually head to the port.
So it's a port city and there'sa really nice area to check out there.
But Kobe is famous for Kobe Beef, and so that's what we were
(11:50):
there for. So after walking around, we kind of just pulled up some
restaurants, looked at what had goodreviews and looked like it was reasonably decent
races, and then found something thatwas open and available to take us.
And I feel like we really luckedout. We ended up having like an
amazing lunch experience. Yeah, yeah, really really fantastic. Get this kind
(12:11):
of like almost kind of a barstyle, so I think there was like
eight seats or something, and thenthe chef was right there as he could
just stakes up and had like differentstyles of meals with beef. I think
one thing I would say just aboutlike the timing for Kobe. I do
think it's possible to doing a daytrip. I think the thing just with
having lub that makes the challenging usYou have to time it in between your
(12:33):
naps. But if you were ableto take like the shinkens in there at
seven am and take the shinkens inback at like six pm, like you'd
be able to see a lot ofstuff. Yeah, that's true, and
you could also make a reservation becauseyou didn't have a child that has uncertain
nap times and stuff like that.But we were really happy with how it
went. So basically with this mealthat we had, I think it was
(12:54):
like a four course meal. Wegot a salad with kind of like a
beef tartar, we got a soupwith some beef in it. We got
like the main steak and veggies andrice, and then we got a dessert.
And so I think I went forone of the lower cost cuts of
steak and I think it was justunder sixty Canadian dollars, and then you
(13:18):
got a higher cut of steak andI think it was one hundred and fifteen
Canadian dollars something around that, andeach got a glass of wine. So
I think in total we paid liketwo hundred, just hundred, two hundred
and fifty Canadians, So maybe aroundtwo hundred USD for our meal. I
think that's not the lowest that youcould spend at this particular restaurant, and
it's definitely not the highest you couldspend. You could easily spend that on
(13:41):
just one cut of beef, likeone four course meal, but a service
was amazing and the beef was incredible. I feel like this was one of
the best meals I've eaten. Imean, for sure in twenty twenty three,
if not in the last couple ofyears. Definitely, definitely. And
there's also should be noted you canfind walking beef in other parts, like
(14:03):
there's lots of places in Osaka youcan get it, but it kind of
feels fun to go to Kobe andhave that experience, Yeah, for sure.
And as we were walking around Kobe, I was thinking, like,
hey, I feel like this wouldbe a really really great city to come
back and spend a couple of weeks, maybe even base ourselves in for like
a month or so. I justgot really good vibes from it. It
just seemed like really walkable and likea good size and family friendly. And
(14:26):
obviously the beef is a big sellingselling feature for us, So, yeah,
I definitely have Kobe on my radarto return to. I had a
really good impression and would love togo back soon. Yeah, it strikes
me. We're always thinking like kindof, oh, if we were to
come and spend a couple of monthssomewhere, where would be a good place
to do that? And so Ithink for both of us, Kobe like
(14:48):
would be kind of on the nearthe top of our less in terms of
places we're checking out central location Shinkansen. My assumption is that like the prices
are a little bit like more economicthan Tokyo or maybe even Osaka. So
could be wrong about that, butyeah, definitely up there on the list.
And I think one of the coolthings about just having like especially if
you were there on a with aJR Pass, is being able to like
(15:13):
take the Shinkinson back and forth,because one thing being you know, the
Shinkinson in Osaka meant that like itwas as easy for us to get to
Kobe and Kyoto and as quick asit was to get like places in the
center of Osaka, because we couldwalk fifteen minutes to the shinkinsin and then
be you know, five minutes thereand fifteen minutes to the next city.
(15:33):
It's so kind of like a thirtyminute trip, and that's what it took
to get to like Osaka Castle oryou know places in the center of Osaka.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Andso then the last kind of day
trip that we did while we werein this first area of Osaka was Nara.
And so Nara is really famous fordeer, oh dear. Yeah,
(15:56):
beautiful actually again this is probably wherewe get to have the historical notes up.
But beautiful like temples, beautiful parks. It's kind of like one thing
that surprised me was actually the sizeof Nara, Like the city is actually
kind of bigger than I would haveimagined in my mind. But you kind
of leave Osaka head towards the mountainsand a kind of a bit more like
(16:19):
rolling hill small mountain style. Andthen the kind of main feature of Osaka
of Nara, these beautiful open parkssurrounded by a couple very big, impressive
temples and then just covered in deer, kind of deer all over the place.
Yeah, so I believe they're whitetail deer, although I could be
(16:40):
wrong about that. But basically youget off the train and there's like everything
set up for tourists. So thisis another place that there is just a
ton of tourists everywhere that you gohere, and yeah, you can get
like a bus pass and whatnot,so you take the bus that takes you
to the parks. And basically wegot off the bus and I was like,
okay, like where did we goto find the deer? And it's
(17:02):
like, oh, the deer arejust right there, like there are thousands
of them. They're just everywhere,and there's a lot of people selling like
deer biscuits, like these homemade biscuitsthat are for the deer, and so
I bought a little package of those. We had some food to feed the
deer. And it's pretty interesting becauselike, the deer are very pretty gentle
(17:23):
overall. There was a couple thatwere like trying to sniff out my bag
and try to get my other snacksand stuff like that, but gentle overall
and very used to humans. Becauseobviously there's just like you know, hundreds
of thousands of tourists that are passingthrough there consistently. And yeah, we
kind of like walked around quite abit and try to get some photos with
(17:44):
the deer. And then there weresome like really busy areas. I feel
like it had been like the mostpeople we'd encountered pretty much anywhere we'd been.
So we walked a little further intothe park and encountered some deer that
were not as covered with tourists.I guess you could say gave them some
food. We had got some likeinteresting photos and stuff, And I feel
like it was like a pretty funthing to do with Lou. Like Lou
(18:06):
loves animals. She's super excited aboutanimals, and so just being able to
like put her down and have herlike crawl around and kind of like walk
with a bit of help to golike look at the deer. So she
was like pointing and yelling and seemedto be very excited about seeing them.
So I feel like it was likea fun activity to do with a baby,
and I think it'd be really funwith like older kids. Yeah,
(18:29):
yeah, definitely. I think thisone was challenging for us, and it'll
lead into one other thing I wantto talk about. But it took a
long time to get there from wherewe were staying, So we got on
the metro and had to take themetro for probably like twenty minutes and then
transfer off the Metro onto a JRLine train, which is probably like a
forty fifteen minute train, and thenit was kind of a bit of like
(18:51):
confusion figuring that all out. Soin total we were probably like an hour
and a half and then we gotto Nara, got on a bus,
so probably two hours by the timeI actually got to the park there,
and Lou was like not in thebest mood for a lot of that,
which is like very very taxing.And then coming back we realized others Anara
Express train that goes right to Osakastation or actually went to shin Osaka,
(19:14):
didn't it. It went right toshi Osaka, which would have been perfect,
and I think it took like fortyfive minutes or forty five minute's still
the longest train, but way moreeasy. You come, you sit.
It was a sit down train versuslike a stand up train. So one
of the things we noticed in Japankind of when we're using Google Maps,
like because lots of places have lotsof options, sometimes it's hard to see
(19:36):
like the full list, and sowhen you're in a spot of like,
oh, I'd rather wait an hourand take a direct train than take like
this combo of three trains that's gonnaget me there quicker if I actually know
where I'm going, But I don'tknow where I'm going, so I'm gonna
miss like one of those trains everytime, and it's gonna take me as
long as the other way. SoI think going back to Japan that would
be definitely something we'd be thinking about. Is like play with the times,
(19:59):
really try to like find out thatthere's express trains. And it also seems
like Nara might be a little bitmore easily accessed from Kyoto, And I
think it would depend just really onwhere you're staying in Osaka, if it's
like a forty five minute trip foryou, or if it could be like
an hour and a half trip,which is kind of weird to think about,
but yeah, I think that madeit. And I think it was
(20:21):
one of the first things we didon this trip where we're like on a
way there and I'm like, Ikind of just want to turn around and
go home because I don't want todo this in reverse. Yeah, and
I think that, you know,it's really interesting traveling with a baby who
is now a toddler who has hisbig opinions and emotions and she's starting to
express them more and more, andthat kind of started happening on our trip,
(20:44):
and I feel like right around thatpoint when we were doing that,
that particular day trip was when itwas coming out quite a bit. But
it's it's interesting like traveling with akid where you kind of have these like
great plans in mind and it's likethey just don't want to do it,
but she's not old enough to reallynegotiate with or to shore our photos of
how cool the deer are going tobe, you know, et cetera,
(21:06):
et cetera. So yeah, Ithink that was a pretty challenging afternoon.
Although once we got there and gotinto the park, it was really nice.
We had beautiful weather, it wassuper nice to walk around. There
was like good vibes there overall,and the deer were really cool and Lou
was really happy once we saw thedeer. It was just kind of like
getting there that was a bit oflike a thing. Yeah, I think
(21:27):
we were going like Lou's going throughthis transition where she did didn't want to
be in her stroller, and Ithink at that stage we were still trying
to like force it a little bit. The other thing was that she was
just like in love with the littlehoops that they have on Japanese metro trains.
I think there's some like North Americanand European trains like this, but
like the handles, the handles thathang from the roof so that if you
(21:48):
can't sit down on the train haveto stand up, you can hold on
to them. Lou I guess islike a born gymnast or something. But
she was like rings I must hold, which she's like a foot and a
half tall, so meant either herscreaming or else holding up holding her up,
or if she was in the Ergobaby carrier, like me getting on
my tippy toes so she could reachand hold onto their rings, which kind
(22:12):
of yeah, it was fun,but did make me not want to take
metros because I was like, ifwe get on a normal train that doesn't
have rings, at least just goingto be chill. But if we have
rings, I'm gonna have to likestand on my tiptoes for like half an
hour. Yeah, so I feellike the way there was like a little
bit challenging, and then the wayhome we were like, okay, this
is so much better. Like NonStoptrain between Nara and shin Osaka and then
(22:34):
just like that fifteen to twenty minutewalk after we were like, okay,
this is super chill and easy.So yeah, I definitely would agree with
what you said. And I thinkjust like looking at the routes is really
important. I think had we knownthat and it was like, oh,
we just need to wait an hour, I think we just would have done
that. I think that definitely wouldhave been like the best option for us,
rather than like finagling like a walkto a metro station and then one
(22:59):
metro changing trains taking forever. Ithink the thing too with that particular location
is that we were closer walking tolike a metro station than we were to
the JR station. So a lotof times when we looked up the routes,
it wanted us to walk to thattrain station and then take like a
longer train, and so we oftenhad to look at it from the shin
(23:19):
Osaka station. So just some thingsto keep in mind, because like,
the public transport is so good inJapan that it's like you you literally could
have like ten options for getting somewhere, just depending on when you want to
leave, where you want to leavefrom, etc. Etc. Yeah,
and It's one of those things whereif you were living there and knew your
route, there's like some connections youcan make, or it's like go this
(23:41):
place, take this transfer to thestation, and take this train, but
as like us, we get offthe train and we're like, where are
we going? And then it takesa long time. So one of the
other things that that we should mentionedas well is that having one of the
IC cards, so like the differentpasses, whether it's like a sweet Side
Card or a Pasmo card, reallyfacilitates that those train transfers as well,
(24:03):
so when you get there, makingsure you get one of those and you
don't have to buy tickets as youchange lines. So those were the main
trips we took out of Osaka,and then in a second week we moved
from if you were looking at Osakafrom a map, kind of down into
the center. Osaka has a reallybig kind of like nightlife district, which
(24:25):
isn't like kind of a seedy redlight district. It's more so just tons
of restaurants, interesting shops, arcades, lots of noise, and then there's
kind of a big main river areathat's kind of full of all that similar
stuff and so we're staying really closeto that, which was like a complete
change of scenery from like super calm, super chill to like right in the
(24:45):
middle of it. But we spentour second just under our second week there,
about five days there. M yeah, for sure. So in central
Osaka, I feel like some ofthe highlights for us were, I mean,
eating at a lot of great restaurants. There's really good food there.
Going to Dotonbury, which is likeright on the river, like Ryan mentioned,
you can just walk there and there'slike a million restaurants, all different
(25:07):
types of cuisine, street vendors,shops, you know, a million different
things, and pretty beautiful picturesque viewsof Osaka. And then there's a few
like markets and shopping districts and stufflike that, just depending on what you're
interested in that are kind of rightaround that Dotonbury area and like Namba area.
(25:30):
And then there's also the Osaka Castle, which I think is one of
the main highlights of Osaka. Sothat was one of the things that we
did. We hadn't done that beforebecause we didn't have time to see that
when we were in Osaka on ourlast trip, so I was really happy
we got to go there, it'slike super beautiful, really nice like park
area to walk around. We didn'thave time to go in the actual castle
(25:52):
itself. I'm sure that would havebeen amazing, but it just didn't work
with our schedule, but we wereable to walk around the park and see
the castle, and yeah, Ilove that. That was one of my
favorite afternoons in that kind of secondweek in Osaka. Yeah, just a
beautiful space, Like there's like themain tourist attraction of going to the castle,
and like only really on one sideof the castle, where like the
parking lot is you'd feel like,oh, there's a bunch of people here,
(26:15):
it's a tourist attraction. Everywhere elsewas just like beautiful space would be
spectacular drain cherry blossom season, sothat was awesome. And then yeah,
just going eating for us, thiswas like really the only time in our
trip, I guess a little bitour first hotel near the Skytree, but
this space, we're really in thethick of things, which one having a
(26:37):
toddler made it really helpful because wedidn't have to go, you know,
spend twenty minutes traveling to go todinner, to go to lunch, to
go check the minute we could justlike throw lough in the carrier and go,
which which really nice. And thinkif we were talking to someone planning
a similar trip, I'd say likethis, Having a week like this or
five days like this was really greatbecause we got to kind of like do
(27:00):
more stuff. And then when wewent back to Tokyo and we're kind of
in a suburban location afterwards, itwas like a little bit more chill.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, wespent a little bit of time in some
of the arcades. To you,I feel like that's kind of like a
must do thing when you're in Japan, and I feel like Osaka is a
really famous place for that. Feellike highlights of that were a photoshoot that
(27:22):
we did as a family. Gotsome really interesting photos from that where they
like docked your face in very strangeways. And then also I won an
amazing prize from one of those clawmachine things, which Lou absolutely adores.
So yeah, I feel like thatwas pretty fun. Ryan also want a
prize to you. So we bothwon, but my prize was better.
Yeah, that was better, althoughI want first, this is true.
(27:45):
Yeah, And then the other bigkind of thing we absolutely wanted to do
in Osaka was going to Universal Studios, which we'd been to before, and
so that's kind of kind of outtowards I guess, I think south side
of Osaka out towards like the PortUniversal Studio city, and so it's I
(28:07):
don't We've never been to the UniversalStudios in California. I know the Universal
Studio. The Harry Potter portion isjust like the Hogsmeeed portion, which is
the same as California but doesn't havelike the dagon Alley stuff that they do
in Florida. And they also justopened like Super Nintendo World. So I
think a couple of things contributed tobeing like actually kind of challenging for us
(28:29):
to get tickets, and we reallyshould have booked this like further in advance.
But the last time we were there, we were there similar season,
went on a weekday and it wasjust like super easy to get tickets.
I think this time because Chinese travel, Chinese tourism to Japan only opened up
in March, and Super Nintendo Worldis relatively new, and it had been
like, you know, two yearsof pandemic where people aren't going to three
(28:51):
years almost a pandemic where people aren'tgoing to these attractions, there's like a
ton of pent up demand, andso when we were able to get our
tickets, but when you're looking tobuy express passes is which you needed to
be able to go into into NintendoWorld, and it was kind of unclear
if you would need them or notto go into Harry Potter World or not.
It's just called the Wizarding World.I don't know why siting about it
(29:12):
sounds weird. That was hard.It was like, oh, what day
can we get it? Like youwant to just like book a normal home
on it was like three months inthe future. So but yeah, we
were able to go down there exploreit. It's kind of like a weird
weather day. And we were kindof like, I think because of the
Nara stuff we were going hack,we were both feeling like a little bit
(29:32):
nervous about Lou and how Lou isgoing to hold up with that. Yeah,
for sure, we were I thinkboth a bit anxious, especially because
it's not cheap to go to Universalstudios, like it costs quite a bit
of money, especially with the expresspasses, which we did end up getting.
Yeah, and that reminds me ofthe thing. One of the things
that contributed to. It was theonly express pass we could get with through
a third party site, and thenwe didn't know what time. All the
(29:55):
time to entry stuff is, soit's not like you can show up and
do whatever rides. It's like youcan do that Forbidden Forest ride at X
time, you can do Escape fromGreenkots at X time, you can go
to Nintendo World at X time.And so it ended up we were originally
thinking we'll go first thing in themorning, Lou will be super refreshed,
it'll be great. Ended up gettingall those times for like four or five
(30:15):
pm. I think our first onewas like one thirty or something like that.
Yeah, Harry Potter one, itwas like four something into Nintendo Worlds.
That's like Lou's prime not happy tobe in a stroller time. But
she was great. We went,you know, we had kind of a
chill morning, and then put herdown for a nap. She had a
really great nap, and then assoon as she was up, we headed
to Universal Studios, which took usabout thirty minutes on the train from We're
(30:40):
staying in downtown Osaka, and wegot into Universal Studios. I mean,
with any theme parkers, that wasa thing. Right, there's like a
long walk from the train and thenyou got to get in, and then
it's like there's you know, checkingyour bags for snacks and water, which
of course we had because we havea little one, and they're like,
okay, you can take them,just don't eat them. I'm like,
okay, just count because she definitelyneeds snacks. That was a good example
(31:02):
of like the way things work inJapan versus like anywhere else in the world
where they're like, hey, thererules no food. We're gonna let you
in with food, and we're gonnalike trust you to not eat the food.
Yeah, like, do not eatit in the park. And I
was like, okay, I willnot eat anything in the park my toddler.
I cannot guarantee though, but shewill be clean with it. So
then we get in and we startwalking and we're like okay, let's go
(31:23):
straight to Wizarding World and like checkthat out. We want to maximize time
while lose like good energy, feelinggood. And this roller coaster rushes by
us and she just lets out themost delighted yell I've ever heard in my
life. She was so happy andjust or maybe like alarmed, or whatever.
But it was like on the goodspectrum of yells and pointing and just
(31:45):
like seemed really enthralled by it.And I feel like that was kind of
her vibe for most of the day. Was just like a lot of people
to look at, a lot ofinteresting things to look at, like a
lot of things to grab her attention, and so she did pretty grate with
everything. Yeah, yeah, definitelythe good side of her like emotion sectrum,
but just like, ah, itwas like overwhelmed by seeing like a
(32:07):
rollercoaster for the first time. Soyeah, that was really fun and really
cool, really busy. It's kindof funny the way like your memory works
because at the time I think we'reboth they're like, oh wow, this
feels like way busier than it didthe last time. And then we went
and looked back through photos and we'relike, oh no, definitely, Like
(32:28):
was it just as busy looking everywherewe went? Maybe not. The Nintendo
World was like next level, likein terms of feeling like you're at like
a house party or something. Butlike the photos we have from the Wizarding
World, there was more people inthe background of the old photos than the
new photos. Yeah, I thinkbecause it was a lot newer, so
it was pretty popular. But oneother thing I wanted to talk about was
(32:50):
what Universal Studios does, which iscalled the child Switch program, and they
do this in the US as well. We actually found out about it through
our friends Jacie Michelle Sham who youguys know from the podcast. They just
traveled recently to Universal Studios in Orlandowith their friends and or sorry with their
family and they have a new littlebabe who's pretty close to lose age.
And basically how it works to giveyou, guys, like the short story
(33:15):
of it is that you go youtell them, hey, we want to
do child Switch. They give youlike a little piece of paper that has
like two like one and one onit. They check your express pass or
whatever. If you're waiting in theregular line, you can still do it.
So basically we went into the castlefor example for the ride in Harry
Potter World, and walked all theway through. You get to the front
(33:37):
of the line. One parent goeswith the little piece of paper, rides
the ride while the other parent waitswith the child in this little waiting room.
And then once the other parent comesback, you switch the paper off.
Other parent waits with the child andthen you go ride the ride.
So you ride the ride solo,which obviously is not the most ideal,
but it's not like you have towait outside while somebody goes through the whole
(34:00):
line process, then comes out thenyou switch off. That would take forever.
So it's like you get to goto the front of the line and
then switch off. So that wasreally great. We did that in the
Wizarding World. We got some food, we got some butter beer, We
took some awesome photos with lou.We headed over to an in Tender World,
which was pretty pretty cool. LikeRyan said, pretty busy. We
did the Mario Kart ride, whichwas pretty awesome. Honestly, took like
(34:24):
a really long time, even thoughwe had express passes and whatnot, but
I think it was worth it,pretty fun. And then basically we just
like walked through the park after that, because those are pretty far back into
the park. We just walked throughthe park, checked some things out.
I think we got like a littlesnat, got some popcorn, and then
called it a day. But overall, I would say it was pretty successful.
(34:45):
I love Universal Studios, even thoughwe'd been there before, I feel
like it was for sure worth itfor us. Yeah, really cool space,
and it's one of those things that'sjust kind of cool to do in
Japan. I think that's like awhole category of things to do you while
you're there. It's just like,yeah, you gotta do Japanese stuff,
but doing like non Japanese stuff inJapan is like its own thing. But
(35:07):
going to you know, people sayKFC is really great in Japan. We
didn't actually go. We did goto McDonald's and it was like just the
standards in quality was significantly better thanlike McDonald's breakfast you'd get here. I
mean, Starbucks is amazing, LikeStarbucks coffee is actually like so good in
Japan. Like almost never get lattastefrom Starbucks because I just like don't like
(35:27):
their lattes. I don't like thetaste of their milk. And I was
like, maybe I should just tryone here and I was like, oh,
this latte is like actually delicious.Yeah, So there's a whole category
of like stuff you've done before,but you haven't done it in Japan and
so universal. I think it's totallylike that. We've never been to Disney
World. We thought about going,but maybe at a future date that's outside
of Tokyo, and then Universals Disneyland. There's no disney World in sorry Disneyland.
(35:52):
It's like Disneyland Sea Adventure or somethinglike that. Yes. I did
meet a woman in the Child Switchprogram though, who had a baby or
any fit really similar to lose age, and she said they don't have that.
So for any parents who are listening, who are planning that, who
maybe have small kids, I thinkUniversals a little bit better if you have
kids that are too small to ridesome of the rides you might want to
go on. Yeah, we needto get a Universal sponsorship. Yeah,
(36:15):
this episode is not sponsored by UniversalStudios, but if anyone has a connection,
let us know. So. Ithink that that kind of wraps up
our time in Osaka. Like wesaid at the beginning, we really enjoyed
ourselves there. I feel like itwas really nice to slow down a little
bit. I think one of ourbiggest takeaways from this trip in general was
that it's hard to move quickly witha kid who needs to be napping,
(36:38):
with a toddler who has big opinionsand feelings. You know, we kind
of, as the trip went on, just had to let go of being
able to do everything, Like therewere lots of other things that I wanted
to see and do in Kyoto andKobe. You know, I would have
loved to go back to them orspend more time in them. There were
other places in Japan that we wantedto go to, like we shared,
(37:00):
you know, even like probably otherrestaurants and stuff that we would have really
loved to try in Osaka, andit just wasn't possible because of having a
small infant and just letting go ofthat and thinking of it more of like
experiencing the place that we're in ratherthan like getting really caught up and doing
all the things that there are todo. So I feel like that was
(37:21):
one of my major takeaways from thatportion of the trip in general. But
for anyone listening, I really lovedOsaka area and would definitely recommend a visit
there if you're going to Japan.Yeah, it's one of the things we
talked about with a couple of peoplewho were fellow travelers of like, right
now, stuff's like crazy expensive inTokyo, but we actually found like reasonably
(37:42):
affordable accommodation in Osaka. I thinkthat's like right at the top of the
list, especially if you were kindof traveling as a nomad. You're like,
hey, I'm going to do somewhere. I'm going to be in a
place that I'm trying to be herefor like a month. Really great city
for it. A couple of thingswe didn't talk about Osaka. It's got
like the second most popular kind ofnational airport in Japan, so you can
actually find pretty decent flight. Iguess there's two airports in Tokyo and two
(38:05):
airports in Osaka, so maybe thetwo in Tokyo are more popular, but
Osaka is definitely the city a secondcity to fly into, so worth checking
out. Like if you look atflights to Japan, look at flights to
Osaka, so you might if youmight find a deal. We ended up
going to a baseball game in Tokyo, but the Hanshin Tigers, who are
based in Osaka, are one ofthe most kind of fervently followed baseball teams
(38:27):
and one of the best ones togo check out as well. There's also
a second baseball team in Osaka,but Osaka would be a great definitely worth
kind of checking out while you're traveling, but could be a good place to
settle down if you're planning a littlebit of a longer trip to Japan.
It's so much cool stuff to do. It's a big city, so you
have like all the stuff you'd expectof like a first class, you know,
(38:49):
world class city, Like there's Universalstudios there, there's like a cool
Pokemon center, there's you know,big restaurants and all that type of stuff.
My recommend if you were going andlooking for a place to stay in
Osaka would probably be to try tostay near the Shinkensen station. I think
if we were going back, we'dbe looking to stay pretty close to the
(39:09):
Shinkensen But lots of cool places tostay, lots of fun stuff to see.
So a cool city, yeah,yeah, definitely. And so just
to give listeners a little kind ofupdated as to where everything is at.
So from Osaka, we headed backto Tokyo, where we spent a week,
and we're going to do a dedicatedTokyo episode. Maybe we'll talk a
(39:31):
little bit about what we did duringthat week. But I feel like it
was just kind of exploring some coolareas and I think maybe we'll do more
of best things to see and doin Tokyo since We've now been there on
two trips and four times, soI feel like we've experienced quite a few
things in the city. And yeah, from there, we flew back home
(39:52):
and are now back in Mexico settlingback into life, and we've been really
happy to be back here and thenalso missing missing Japan in many ways.
Yeah, and then talking about itmakes it worse. It's like, I
think need to go plan the tripagain. Yeah, for sure. So
if you guys have any questions oranything like that, feel free to reach
out to us. We always loveto hear from you. Info at the
(40:14):
World wanders dot com. Otherwise,thank you so much for being here,
Thanks for listening, and I hopeyou enjoyed this episode. Until next time,
Bye. Thanks for listening to thisepisode. If you want more to
make sure to check out the WorldWanders Insider available on Patreon at patreon dot
com, slash the World Wanders forshow notes, head over to the World
Wanders dot com. Find us onsocial media at the World Wanders podcast,
(40:37):
and enjoin the private Facebook community atWorld Wanders, a community for travelers.
You can always get in touch withus at info at the world wanders dot
com and if you enjoyed the show, don't forget to subscribe and leave a
review. It really helps us findnew listeners. See you next time.
Hello and welcome to the World wandersPodcast, a proud part of the wander
Barn podcast network. I'm Ryan,I'm Amanda, and we're your host.
We're a traveling couple and digital nomads, taking you on our adventures as we
explore locations, destinations, and careers. Enjoy the show. Hello, and
welcome to another episode of the WorldWanderers Podcast. We're excited as always to
(00:26):
have you here with us and tobe diving into more travel adventures. Yeah.
Absolutely, And so where we leftyou in our last episode was in
Kanazawa, Japan, and so we'regoing to continue with our Japan series sharing
a little bit more about where wewent and what we did. So from
Kanazawa, we headed to Osaka,which I think is somewhere that a lot
(00:49):
of people have probably heard of.It's a pretty major city in Japan.
It's one of the biggest cities inJapan. And we were really excited about
this because when we were in Japanlast time in twenty seventeen, we spent
a week in Kyoto, which,as you'll here soon, is super super
close to Osaka, and then wedid one day trip into Osaka and then
(01:10):
went to Universal Studios which is alsoin Osaka, so we hadn't spent very
much time there, and we decidedfor this trip that we were going to
spend actually quite a bit of timesort of based there once you went back
to work and we were no longerkind of just vacationing and traveling. Yeah,
we talked about it on some ofthe other stuff we've done about the
Japan trip, but kind of earlyon, I think we were thinking like,
(01:33):
Okay, we're going to go outand do more and go more places
and try to get to smaller places. But as we got more realistic about
the trip, especially balancing work andthen having a kind of seemed to be
toddler, it just made a lotmore sense for us to kind of settle
down on one spot. And inOsaka you can actually find like really affordable,
(01:55):
nice airbnbs in a way that youcan't and basically anywhere else in Japan,
So it just made sense for us. And there was also a really
good hub because there's lots of stuffin and around the Osaka area, and
then lots of bullet trains that leavefrom Osaka to make it easier to see
a bunch of stuff from that.So we felt like it was a great
hub, and so we decided tospend two weeks there as I was getting
(02:17):
back into work and we were gettingover our first week of adventure. Yeah,
and so we had originally planned tospend a week there. So one
of the first things that we'd actuallyI guess booked was this airbnb that we
found in Osaka. It was alittle bit out of like the main city
center, kind of across the river, in a bit more of what looked
(02:38):
like a suburb area, but itwas still really close to a train station
and really close to a JR stationas well, which was a huge benefit.
And we were planning our original originalplan was after the first week in
Osaka we were going to head alittle further south to somewhere like okay Yama
or maybe Kiashiki. We'd heard reallygreat places, really great things about those
(02:58):
places, and then as we werelooking at just we weren't finding anything that
kind of made sense for us accommodationwise, and so our needs for accommodation
are a little bit different with workingversus vacationing. While we were doing the
vacation stuff, we were like,you've heard, if you've listened to the
other episodes, we were in hotels, so just one room for the three
(03:19):
of us, and that's not reallyfeasible when both of us need to do
a little bit of work while losesnapping. You need to be working even
when she's up. So we neededsomething a bit bigger. So we kind
of went back to the drawing board. We looked to see if we could
extend our original airbnb. That placewas too great. It had already been
snatched up for after we were bookedto leave, and so we found this
(03:40):
second airbnb, which was apartment style, kind of more downtown Osaka. And
so what we decided to do wasspend a little under two weeks there and
do the first week there. Wewere like, Okay, we'll use this
week to kind of explore the surroundingarea of Osaka, and then we'll use
the second week to kind of reallyget a feel for what's in like Osaka
(04:02):
proper, like in downtown Osaka.So do we want to talk a little
bit more about that. Yeah,and just a bit of contextual stuff.
So Osaka, Kobe Kyoto are allvery close, like it's one of those
metropolitan areas that like you're technically leavingthe city, but it kind of feels
like you're continuing in the city.And so when you add all that stuff
(04:23):
up, it's like the second biggestmetropolitan area in Japan outside of Tokyo.
And another thing, so you mentionedkind of staying by one train station.
In big Japanese cities, there's oftenlike the main train station and the main
Shinkansen train station, so you'll seelike shin whatever. And so we stayed
(04:43):
just within a twenty minute walk ofshin Osaka, which meant that we could
get on the bullet trains relatively quick, relatively quickie, relatively quickly without needing
to take a bunch of train transfers. And so that's kind of why it
made sense the first week get outof the city and the second week moved
more to downtown Osaka, which tonsof metro and train options, but you
(05:04):
would had to go back up tothe shin Osaka station to get the shinkin
cent trains. Yeah, so itwould have been kind of an extra minutes
of like maybe an extra twenty minutesof travel time to get to these other
places. And it was really coolbeing in just kind of a very local
area. I mean, we didnot see a lot of foreigners in that
area that we were staying. Wewere in a really beautiful, like Japanese
(05:29):
house. It was really awesome we'restaying, so I'm glad that we did
that. But basically we ended upsetting up our days where you did most
of your calls in the morning andthen Lou would take a nap and then
it was kind of early afternoon bythe time she woke up, which is
like the middle of the night herein North America where we're back now,
and we would use a couple ofhours kind of like we normally would in
like after work, and we wouldgo explore a little bit, and then
(05:51):
we'd come back kind of do dinnertogether, put Lou down to bed,
and then do a couple more hoursof work. And so I feel like
this sort of interesting different schedule workedreally well, especially for exploring. But
while we were in Osaka in thatfirst airbnb where we were closer to the
Shinkinsen station, we decided to explorea couple different places, so we did
(06:14):
day trips to Kyoto, to Kobe, and to Nara. So maybe we
can talk about each of those,what we thought, what it was like
getting there, the experience all thatgood stuff. Yeah, so let's talk
about Kyoto first. I think Kyotois probably the second most popular tourist destination
in Japan after Tokyo, but couldbe the most popular tourist destination in Japan.
(06:39):
It's super famous. Yeah. Solike when we went the first time
we went to Tokyo, we wentto Kyoto and then we ended up popping
into Osaka. I feel like Osakais like a little bit under the radar
in terms of very much a giganticcity. A lot of people know about
it. I feel like under theradar is not the right word, but
I feel like it's just like notas popular as Kyoto. Like I think
most people do what we did thefirst time based in Kyoto and do like
(07:01):
a day trip to Yeah. Likewhen you're so, we were staying in
kind of a suburban area, wouldn'tsee many foreigners go to like the main
Osaka stations and you'd see like ahandful of people, and then you pull
up in shin Kyoto station and it'slike, oh, like, you know,
sixty percent of people are folling.Maybe even more than that. Yeah,
But Kyoto is definitely kind of historicallyand culturally just a place that has
(07:26):
a tongue going on. So itused to be the capital of Japan kind
of early nineteen hundreds, capital wasmoved to Tokyo. And also I think
one of the things that contributes toit is it wasn't targeted for bombing or
fire raids by the Allied forces duringWorld War Two. So where a kind
of Tokyo and a number of othermajor Japanese cities were destroyed and fire bombings
(07:49):
or atomic bombings, Kyoto wasn't,and so a lot of the historical buildings
are retained. Although, like tobe fair, like if you go to
places in Tokyo, you don't reallythe sense that a lot of that stuff
was rebuilt. But yeah, Kyotojust beautiful. There's some incredible historical places.
I think during cherry blossoms as well. It's just the type of place
(08:09):
where it's like everywhere you turn,something beautiful is happening. And then yeah,
lots of history as well and somecool like outdoor natural stuff, yeah,
and so on. The Shinkinson fromOsaka, it's only about fifteen minutes,
which is kind of crazy, Soyou just hop on the bullet train.
It goes super super speedy, Kyotostations. The first one you get
(08:30):
off and then you know there's stuffkind of right there that you can walk
around, and then a couple ofdifferent areas that have some really beautiful things
to see and do. And weonly had a couple of a couple of
hours, so we just had tochoose kind of one area to go into,
and so we went and had somelunch, we walked around, we
explored a little bit, and thewhole time we were there, I was
like, Oh, I wish wehad more time here. I want to
(08:52):
come back here. Maybe we shouldcome back here later. And I feel
like that kind of became a themefor the places that we were doing day
trips too. So Kyoto is definitelysomething that I would I would highly highly
recommend for anyone who's going to Japan, and if it's your first time,
I think it's really worth staying therebecause, like Ryan said, there's a
lot of history there, there's alittle culture there, there's a lot of
(09:15):
really beautiful things to see. It'sreally famous for palaces and gardens, and
I feel like taking a couple ofdays to kind of explore that is definitely
something i'd recommend. I think insort of a half day a couple of
hours, you really can't see asmuch as I think that it has to
offer. But we were really happythat we were able to get out there,
even for a small revisit and justexplore a little bit and you know,
(09:37):
just be back there. It wasit's when you haven't been somewhere for
like six years, it's kind ofhard to because you know that you liked
a place, but it's nice togo revisit and see what it was like
again. And so we were kindof like, oh, yeah, I
know where Kyoto is popular. Definitelywould love to spend more time there,
but because we only had a coupleof days and we had other places we
wanted to explore, we just wejust did a couple of our slash half
(10:01):
day. Yeah, and then theother place we did in day trip too,
which is kind of the other directionfrom Osaka is Kobe, so famous
for Kobe beef. Honestly, don'tknow a ton more about Kobe, but
we took the train in explore fora little bit, really beautiful kind of
like historic center of town where there'slike this interesting area where there's old English
(10:26):
houses and other kind of cultural stuff. And then of course had to go
find somewhere to have a good beeflunch. Yeah, for sure. I
was really pleasantly surprised with Kobe.I didn't really have a lot of expectations
with it. I think kind ofthe day that we were going, while
we were sleeping, I did alittle bit of research and kind of mapped
(10:46):
out a route from the train stationand started looking at a couple of restaurants.
I don't think that this is theway to do things. I think
the way to do things would beto spend a couple of nights in Kobe,
to do some research on places youwant to eat, to make some
reservations in advance. I feel likethat would be like the way to do
Kobe. It's obviously just a littlebit challenging having a baby, because we
(11:07):
were just like letting her sleep foras long as she wanted getting up and
going. But once again, itwas just about fifteen minutes on the Shinkins
and like Ryan said, the otherway from Kyoto so really quick and easy
to get there, and then superwalkable right from the train station. And
I actually the same thing with Kobe. I was like, oh my god,
we need to come back here.And again unfortunately we didn't have time.
(11:28):
But right from the train station youcan go up to like a beautiful
botanical garden, which we didn't havetime to do, and I really would
have loved to see that. Butyou can walk around through the old center,
get some food, and then youcan actually head to the port.
So it's a port city and there'sa really nice area to check out there.
But Kobe is famous for Kobe Beef, and so that's what we were
(11:50):
there for. So after walking around, we kind of just pulled up some
restaurants, looked at what had goodreviews and looked like it was reasonably decent
races, and then found something thatwas open and available to take us.
And I feel like we really luckedout. We ended up having like an
amazing lunch experience. Yeah, yeah, really really fantastic. Get this kind
(12:11):
of like almost kind of a barstyle, so I think there was like
eight seats or something, and thenthe chef was right there as he could
just stakes up and had like differentstyles of meals with beef. I think
one thing I would say just aboutlike the timing for Kobe. I do
think it's possible to doing a daytrip. I think the thing just with
having lub that makes the challenging usYou have to time it in between your
(12:33):
naps. But if you were ableto take like the shinkens in there at
seven am and take the shinkens inback at like six pm, like you'd
be able to see a lot ofstuff. Yeah, that's true, and
you could also make a reservation becauseyou didn't have a child that has uncertain
nap times and stuff like that.But we were really happy with how it
went. So basically with this mealthat we had, I think it was
(12:54):
like a four course meal. Wegot a salad with kind of like a
beef tartar, we got a soupwith some beef in it. We got
like the main steak and veggies andrice, and then we got a dessert.
And so I think I went forone of the lower cost cuts of
steak and I think it was justunder sixty Canadian dollars, and then you
(13:18):
got a higher cut of steak andI think it was one hundred and fifteen
Canadian dollars something around that, andeach got a glass of wine. So
I think in total we paid liketwo hundred, just hundred, two hundred
and fifty Canadians, So maybe aroundtwo hundred USD for our meal. I
think that's not the lowest that youcould spend at this particular restaurant, and
it's definitely not the highest you couldspend. You could easily spend that on
(13:41):
just one cut of beef, likeone four course meal, but a service
was amazing and the beef was incredible. I feel like this was one of
the best meals I've eaten. Imean, for sure in twenty twenty three,
if not in the last couple ofyears. Definitely, definitely. And
there's also should be noted you canfind walking beef in other parts, like
(14:03):
there's lots of places in Osaka youcan get it, but it kind of
feels fun to go to Kobe andhave that experience, Yeah, for sure.
And as we were walking around Kobe, I was thinking, like,
hey, I feel like this wouldbe a really really great city to come
back and spend a couple of weeks, maybe even base ourselves in for like
a month or so. I justgot really good vibes from it. It
just seemed like really walkable and likea good size and family friendly. And
(14:26):
obviously the beef is a big sellingselling feature for us, So, yeah,
I definitely have Kobe on my radarto return to. I had a
really good impression and would love togo back soon. Yeah, it strikes
me. We're always thinking like kindof, oh, if we were to
come and spend a couple of monthssomewhere, where would be a good place
to do that? And so Ithink for both of us, Kobe like
(14:48):
would be kind of on the nearthe top of our less in terms of
places we're checking out central location Shinkansen. My assumption is that like the prices
are a little bit like more economicthan Tokyo or maybe even Osaka. So
could be wrong about that, butyeah, definitely up there on the list.
And I think one of the coolthings about just having like especially if
you were there on a with aJR Pass, is being able to like
(15:13):
take the Shinkinson back and forth,because one thing being you know, the
Shinkinson in Osaka meant that like itwas as easy for us to get to
Kobe and Kyoto and as quick asit was to get like places in the
center of Osaka, because we couldwalk fifteen minutes to the shinkinsin and then
be you know, five minutes thereand fifteen minutes to the next city.
(15:33):
It's so kind of like a thirtyminute trip, and that's what it took
to get to like Osaka Castle oryou know places in the center of Osaka.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Andso then the last kind of day
trip that we did while we werein this first area of Osaka was Nara.
And so Nara is really famous fordeer, oh dear. Yeah,
(15:56):
beautiful actually again this is probably wherewe get to have the historical notes up.
But beautiful like temples, beautiful parks. It's kind of like one thing
that surprised me was actually the sizeof Nara, Like the city is actually
kind of bigger than I would haveimagined in my mind. But you kind
of leave Osaka head towards the mountainsand a kind of a bit more like
(16:19):
rolling hill small mountain style. Andthen the kind of main feature of Osaka
of Nara, these beautiful open parkssurrounded by a couple very big, impressive
temples and then just covered in deer, kind of deer all over the place.
Yeah, so I believe they're whitetail deer, although I could be
(16:40):
wrong about that. But basically youget off the train and there's like everything
set up for tourists. So thisis another place that there is just a
ton of tourists everywhere that you gohere, and yeah, you can get
like a bus pass and whatnot,so you take the bus that takes you
to the parks. And basically wegot off the bus and I was like,
okay, like where did we goto find the deer? And it's
(17:02):
like, oh, the deer arejust right there, like there are thousands
of them. They're just everywhere,and there's a lot of people selling like
deer biscuits, like these homemade biscuitsthat are for the deer, and so
I bought a little package of those. We had some food to feed the
deer. And it's pretty interesting becauselike, the deer are very pretty gentle
(17:23):
overall. There was a couple thatwere like trying to sniff out my bag
and try to get my other snacksand stuff like that, but gentle overall
and very used to humans. Becauseobviously there's just like you know, hundreds
of thousands of tourists that are passingthrough there consistently. And yeah, we
kind of like walked around quite abit and try to get some photos with
(17:44):
the deer. And then there weresome like really busy areas. I feel
like it had been like the mostpeople we'd encountered pretty much anywhere we'd been.
So we walked a little further intothe park and encountered some deer that
were not as covered with tourists.I guess you could say gave them some
food. We had got some likeinteresting photos and stuff, And I feel
like it was like a pretty funthing to do with Lou. Like Lou
(18:06):
loves animals. She's super excited aboutanimals, and so just being able to
like put her down and have herlike crawl around and kind of like walk
with a bit of help to golike look at the deer. So she
was like pointing and yelling and seemedto be very excited about seeing them.
So I feel like it was likea fun activity to do with a baby,
and I think it'd be really funwith like older kids. Yeah,
(18:29):
yeah, definitely. I think thisone was challenging for us, and it'll
lead into one other thing I wantto talk about. But it took a
long time to get there from wherewe were staying, So we got on
the metro and had to take themetro for probably like twenty minutes and then
transfer off the Metro onto a JRLine train, which is probably like a
forty fifteen minute train, and thenit was kind of a bit of like
(18:51):
confusion figuring that all out. Soin total we were probably like an hour
and a half and then we gotto Nara, got on a bus,
so probably two hours by the timeI actually got to the park there,
and Lou was like not in thebest mood for a lot of that,
which is like very very taxing.And then coming back we realized others Anara
Express train that goes right to Osakastation or actually went to shin Osaka,
(19:14):
didn't it. It went right toshi Osaka, which would have been perfect,
and I think it took like fortyfive minutes or forty five minute's still
the longest train, but way moreeasy. You come, you sit.
It was a sit down train versuslike a stand up train. So one
of the things we noticed in Japankind of when we're using Google Maps,
like because lots of places have lotsof options, sometimes it's hard to see
(19:36):
like the full list, and sowhen you're in a spot of like,
oh, I'd rather wait an hourand take a direct train than take like
this combo of three trains that's gonnaget me there quicker if I actually know
where I'm going, But I don'tknow where I'm going, so I'm gonna
miss like one of those trains everytime, and it's gonna take me as
long as the other way. SoI think going back to Japan that would
be definitely something we'd be thinking about. Is like play with the times,
(19:59):
really try to like find out thatthere's express trains. And it also seems
like Nara might be a little bitmore easily accessed from Kyoto, And I
think it would depend just really onwhere you're staying in Osaka, if it's
like a forty five minute trip foryou, or if it could be like
an hour and a half trip,which is kind of weird to think about,
but yeah, I think that madeit. And I think it was
(20:21):
one of the first things we didon this trip where we're like on a
way there and I'm like, Ikind of just want to turn around and
go home because I don't want todo this in reverse. Yeah, and
I think that, you know,it's really interesting traveling with a baby who
is now a toddler who has hisbig opinions and emotions and she's starting to
express them more and more, andthat kind of started happening on our trip,
(20:44):
and I feel like right around thatpoint when we were doing that,
that particular day trip was when itwas coming out quite a bit. But
it's it's interesting like traveling with akid where you kind of have these like
great plans in mind and it's likethey just don't want to do it,
but she's not old enough to reallynegotiate with or to shore our photos of
how cool the deer are going tobe, you know, et cetera,
(21:06):
et cetera. So yeah, Ithink that was a pretty challenging afternoon.
Although once we got there and gotinto the park, it was really nice.
We had beautiful weather, it wassuper nice to walk around. There
was like good vibes there overall,and the deer were really cool and Lou
was really happy once we saw thedeer. It was just kind of like
getting there that was a bit oflike a thing. Yeah, I think
(21:27):
we were going like Lou's going throughthis transition where she did didn't want to
be in her stroller, and Ithink at that stage we were still trying
to like force it a little bit. The other thing was that she was
just like in love with the littlehoops that they have on Japanese metro trains.
I think there's some like North Americanand European trains like this, but
like the handles, the handles thathang from the roof so that if you
(21:48):
can't sit down on the train haveto stand up, you can hold on
to them. Lou I guess islike a born gymnast or something. But
she was like rings I must hold, which she's like a foot and a
half tall, so meant either herscreaming or else holding up holding her up,
or if she was in the Ergobaby carrier, like me getting on
my tippy toes so she could reachand hold onto their rings, which kind
(22:12):
of yeah, it was fun,but did make me not want to take
metros because I was like, ifwe get on a normal train that doesn't
have rings, at least just goingto be chill. But if we have
rings, I'm gonna have to likestand on my tiptoes for like half an
hour. Yeah, so I feellike the way there was like a little
bit challenging, and then the wayhome we were like, okay, this
is so much better. Like NonStoptrain between Nara and shin Osaka and then
(22:34):
just like that fifteen to twenty minutewalk after we were like, okay,
this is super chill and easy.So yeah, I definitely would agree with
what you said. And I thinkjust like looking at the routes is really
important. I think had we knownthat and it was like, oh,
we just need to wait an hour, I think we just would have done
that. I think that definitely wouldhave been like the best option for us,
rather than like finagling like a walkto a metro station and then one
(22:59):
metro changing trains taking forever. Ithink the thing too with that particular location
is that we were closer walking tolike a metro station than we were to
the JR station. So a lotof times when we looked up the routes,
it wanted us to walk to thattrain station and then take like a
longer train, and so we oftenhad to look at it from the shin
(23:19):
Osaka station. So just some thingsto keep in mind, because like,
the public transport is so good inJapan that it's like you you literally could
have like ten options for getting somewhere, just depending on when you want to
leave, where you want to leavefrom, etc. Etc. Yeah,
and It's one of those things whereif you were living there and knew your
route, there's like some connections youcan make, or it's like go this
(23:41):
place, take this transfer to thestation, and take this train, but
as like us, we get offthe train and we're like, where are
we going? And then it takesa long time. So one of the
other things that that we should mentionedas well is that having one of the
IC cards, so like the differentpasses, whether it's like a sweet Side
Card or a Pasmo card, reallyfacilitates that those train transfers as well,
(24:03):
so when you get there, makingsure you get one of those and you
don't have to buy tickets as youchange lines. So those were the main
trips we took out of Osaka,and then in a second week we moved
from if you were looking at Osakafrom a map, kind of down into
the center. Osaka has a reallybig kind of like nightlife district, which
(24:25):
isn't like kind of a seedy redlight district. It's more so just tons
of restaurants, interesting shops, arcades, lots of noise, and then there's
kind of a big main river areathat's kind of full of all that similar
stuff and so we're staying really closeto that, which was like a complete
change of scenery from like super calm, super chill to like right in the
(24:45):
middle of it. But we spentour second just under our second week there,
about five days there. M yeah, for sure. So in central
Osaka, I feel like some ofthe highlights for us were, I mean,
eating at a lot of great restaurants. There's really good food there.
Going to Dotonbury, which is likeright on the river, like Ryan mentioned,
you can just walk there and there'slike a million restaurants, all different
(25:07):
types of cuisine, street vendors,shops, you know, a million different
things, and pretty beautiful picturesque viewsof Osaka. And then there's a few
like markets and shopping districts and stufflike that, just depending on what you're
interested in that are kind of rightaround that Dotonbury area and like Namba area.
(25:30):
And then there's also the Osaka Castle, which I think is one of
the main highlights of Osaka. Sothat was one of the things that we
did. We hadn't done that beforebecause we didn't have time to see that
when we were in Osaka on ourlast trip, so I was really happy
we got to go there, it'slike super beautiful, really nice like park
area to walk around. We didn'thave time to go in the actual castle
(25:52):
itself. I'm sure that would havebeen amazing, but it just didn't work
with our schedule, but we wereable to walk around the park and see
the castle, and yeah, Ilove that. That was one of my
favorite afternoons in that kind of secondweek in Osaka. Yeah, just a
beautiful space, Like there's like themain tourist attraction of going to the castle,
and like only really on one sideof the castle, where like the
parking lot is you'd feel like,oh, there's a bunch of people here,
(26:15):
it's a tourist attraction. Everywhere elsewas just like beautiful space would be
spectacular drain cherry blossom season, sothat was awesome. And then yeah,
just going eating for us, thiswas like really the only time in our
trip, I guess a little bitour first hotel near the Skytree, but
this space, we're really in thethick of things, which one having a
(26:37):
toddler made it really helpful because wedidn't have to go, you know,
spend twenty minutes traveling to go todinner, to go to lunch, to
go check the minute we could justlike throw lough in the carrier and go,
which which really nice. And thinkif we were talking to someone planning
a similar trip, I'd say likethis, Having a week like this or
five days like this was really greatbecause we got to kind of like do
(27:00):
more stuff. And then when wewent back to Tokyo and we're kind of
in a suburban location afterwards, itwas like a little bit more chill.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, wespent a little bit of time in some
of the arcades. To you,I feel like that's kind of like a
must do thing when you're in Japan, and I feel like Osaka is a
really famous place for that. Feellike highlights of that were a photoshoot that
(27:22):
we did as a family. Gotsome really interesting photos from that where they
like docked your face in very strangeways. And then also I won an
amazing prize from one of those clawmachine things, which Lou absolutely adores.
So yeah, I feel like thatwas pretty fun. Ryan also want a
prize to you. So we bothwon, but my prize was better.
Yeah, that was better, althoughI want first, this is true.
(27:45):
Yeah, And then the other bigkind of thing we absolutely wanted to do
in Osaka was going to Universal Studios, which we'd been to before, and
so that's kind of kind of outtowards I guess, I think south side
of Osaka out towards like the PortUniversal Studio city, and so it's I
(28:07):
don't We've never been to the UniversalStudios in California. I know the Universal
Studio. The Harry Potter portion isjust like the Hogsmeeed portion, which is
the same as California but doesn't havelike the dagon Alley stuff that they do
in Florida. And they also justopened like Super Nintendo World. So I
think a couple of things contributed tobeing like actually kind of challenging for us
(28:29):
to get tickets, and we reallyshould have booked this like further in advance.
But the last time we were there, we were there similar season,
went on a weekday and it wasjust like super easy to get tickets.
I think this time because Chinese travel, Chinese tourism to Japan only opened up
in March, and Super Nintendo Worldis relatively new, and it had been
like, you know, two yearsof pandemic where people aren't going to three
(28:51):
years almost a pandemic where people aren'tgoing to these attractions, there's like a
ton of pent up demand, andso when we were able to get our
tickets, but when you're looking tobuy express passes is which you needed to
be able to go into into NintendoWorld, and it was kind of unclear
if you would need them or notto go into Harry Potter World or not.
It's just called the Wizarding World.I don't know why siting about it
(29:12):
sounds weird. That was hard.It was like, oh, what day
can we get it? Like youwant to just like book a normal home
on it was like three months inthe future. So but yeah, we
were able to go down there exploreit. It's kind of like a weird
weather day. And we were kindof like, I think because of the
Nara stuff we were going hack,we were both feeling like a little bit
(29:32):
nervous about Lou and how Lou isgoing to hold up with that. Yeah,
for sure, we were I thinkboth a bit anxious, especially because
it's not cheap to go to Universalstudios, like it costs quite a bit
of money, especially with the expresspasses, which we did end up getting.
Yeah, and that reminds me ofthe thing. One of the things
that contributed to. It was theonly express pass we could get with through
a third party site, and thenwe didn't know what time. All the
(29:55):
time to entry stuff is, soit's not like you can show up and
do whatever rides. It's like youcan do that Forbidden Forest ride at X
time, you can do Escape fromGreenkots at X time, you can go
to Nintendo World at X time.And so it ended up we were originally
thinking we'll go first thing in themorning, Lou will be super refreshed,
it'll be great. Ended up gettingall those times for like four or five
(30:15):
pm. I think our first onewas like one thirty or something like that.
Yeah, Harry Potter one, itwas like four something into Nintendo Worlds.
That's like Lou's prime not happy tobe in a stroller time. But
she was great. We went,you know, we had kind of a
chill morning, and then put herdown for a nap. She had a
really great nap, and then assoon as she was up, we headed
to Universal Studios, which took usabout thirty minutes on the train from We're
(30:40):
staying in downtown Osaka, and wegot into Universal Studios. I mean,
with any theme parkers, that wasa thing. Right, there's like a
long walk from the train and thenyou got to get in, and then
it's like there's you know, checkingyour bags for snacks and water, which
of course we had because we havea little one, and they're like,
okay, you can take them,just don't eat them. I'm like,
okay, just count because she definitelyneeds snacks. That was a good example
(31:02):
of like the way things work inJapan versus like anywhere else in the world
where they're like, hey, thererules no food. We're gonna let you
in with food, and we're gonnalike trust you to not eat the food.
Yeah, like, do not eatit in the park. And I
was like, okay, I willnot eat anything in the park my toddler.
I cannot guarantee though, but shewill be clean with it. So
then we get in and we startwalking and we're like okay, let's go
(31:23):
straight to Wizarding World and like checkthat out. We want to maximize time
while lose like good energy, feelinggood. And this roller coaster rushes by
us and she just lets out themost delighted yell I've ever heard in my
life. She was so happy andjust or maybe like alarmed, or whatever.
But it was like on the goodspectrum of yells and pointing and just
(31:45):
like seemed really enthralled by it.And I feel like that was kind of
her vibe for most of the day. Was just like a lot of people
to look at, a lot ofinteresting things to look at, like a
lot of things to grab her attention, and so she did pretty grate with
everything. Yeah, yeah, definitelythe good side of her like emotion sectrum,
but just like, ah, itwas like overwhelmed by seeing like a
(32:07):
rollercoaster for the first time. Soyeah, that was really fun and really
cool, really busy. It's kindof funny the way like your memory works
because at the time I think we'reboth they're like, oh wow, this
feels like way busier than it didthe last time. And then we went
and looked back through photos and we'relike, oh no, definitely, Like
(32:28):
was it just as busy looking everywherewe went? Maybe not. The Nintendo
World was like next level, likein terms of feeling like you're at like
a house party or something. Butlike the photos we have from the Wizarding
World, there was more people inthe background of the old photos than the
new photos. Yeah, I thinkbecause it was a lot newer, so
it was pretty popular. But oneother thing I wanted to talk about was
(32:50):
what Universal Studios does, which iscalled the child Switch program, and they
do this in the US as well. We actually found out about it through
our friends Jacie Michelle Sham who youguys know from the podcast. They just
traveled recently to Universal Studios in Orlandowith their friends and or sorry with their
family and they have a new littlebabe who's pretty close to lose age.
And basically how it works to giveyou, guys, like the short story
(33:15):
of it is that you go youtell them, hey, we want to
do child Switch. They give youlike a little piece of paper that has
like two like one and one onit. They check your express pass or
whatever. If you're waiting in theregular line, you can still do it.
So basically we went into the castlefor example for the ride in Harry
Potter World, and walked all theway through. You get to the front
(33:37):
of the line. One parent goeswith the little piece of paper, rides
the ride while the other parent waitswith the child in this little waiting room.
And then once the other parent comesback, you switch the paper off.
Other parent waits with the child andthen you go ride the ride.
So you ride the ride solo,which obviously is not the most ideal,
but it's not like you have towait outside while somebody goes through the whole
(34:00):
line process, then comes out thenyou switch off. That would take forever.
So it's like you get to goto the front of the line and
then switch off. So that wasreally great. We did that in the
Wizarding World. We got some food, we got some butter beer, We
took some awesome photos with lou.We headed over to an in Tender World,
which was pretty pretty cool. LikeRyan said, pretty busy. We
did the Mario Kart ride, whichwas pretty awesome. Honestly, took like
(34:24):
a really long time, even thoughwe had express passes and whatnot, but
I think it was worth it,pretty fun. And then basically we just
like walked through the park after that, because those are pretty far back into
the park. We just walked throughthe park, checked some things out.
I think we got like a littlesnat, got some popcorn, and then
called it a day. But overall, I would say it was pretty successful.
(34:45):
I love Universal Studios, even thoughwe'd been there before, I feel
like it was for sure worth itfor us. Yeah, really cool space,
and it's one of those things that'sjust kind of cool to do in
Japan. I think that's like awhole category of things to do you while
you're there. It's just like,yeah, you gotta do Japanese stuff,
but doing like non Japanese stuff inJapan is like its own thing. But
(35:07):
going to you know, people sayKFC is really great in Japan. We
didn't actually go. We did goto McDonald's and it was like just the
standards in quality was significantly better thanlike McDonald's breakfast you'd get here. I
mean, Starbucks is amazing, LikeStarbucks coffee is actually like so good in
Japan. Like almost never get lattastefrom Starbucks because I just like don't like
(35:27):
their lattes. I don't like thetaste of their milk. And I was
like, maybe I should just tryone here and I was like, oh,
this latte is like actually delicious.Yeah, So there's a whole category
of like stuff you've done before,but you haven't done it in Japan and
so universal. I think it's totallylike that. We've never been to Disney
World. We thought about going,but maybe at a future date that's outside
of Tokyo, and then Universals Disneyland. There's no disney World in sorry Disneyland.
(35:52):
It's like Disneyland Sea Adventure or somethinglike that. Yes. I did
meet a woman in the Child Switchprogram though, who had a baby or
any fit really similar to lose age, and she said they don't have that.
So for any parents who are listening, who are planning that, who
maybe have small kids, I thinkUniversals a little bit better if you have
kids that are too small to ridesome of the rides you might want to
go on. Yeah, we needto get a Universal sponsorship. Yeah,
(36:15):
this episode is not sponsored by UniversalStudios, but if anyone has a connection,
let us know. So. Ithink that that kind of wraps up
our time in Osaka. Like wesaid at the beginning, we really enjoyed
ourselves there. I feel like itwas really nice to slow down a little
bit. I think one of ourbiggest takeaways from this trip in general was
that it's hard to move quickly witha kid who needs to be napping,
(36:38):
with a toddler who has big opinionsand feelings. You know, we kind
of, as the trip went on, just had to let go of being
able to do everything, Like therewere lots of other things that I wanted
to see and do in Kyoto andKobe. You know, I would have
loved to go back to them orspend more time in them. There were
other places in Japan that we wantedto go to, like we shared,
(37:00):
you know, even like probably otherrestaurants and stuff that we would have really
loved to try in Osaka, andit just wasn't possible because of having a
small infant and just letting go ofthat and thinking of it more of like
experiencing the place that we're in ratherthan like getting really caught up and doing
all the things that there are todo. So I feel like that was
(37:21):
one of my major takeaways from thatportion of the trip in general. But
for anyone listening, I really lovedOsaka area and would definitely recommend a visit
there if you're going to Japan.Yeah, it's one of the things we
talked about with a couple of peoplewho were fellow travelers of like, right
now, stuff's like crazy expensive inTokyo, but we actually found like reasonably
(37:42):
affordable accommodation in Osaka. I thinkthat's like right at the top of the
list, especially if you were kindof traveling as a nomad. You're like,
hey, I'm going to do somewhere. I'm going to be in a
place that I'm trying to be herefor like a month. Really great city
for it. A couple of thingswe didn't talk about Osaka. It's got
like the second most popular kind ofnational airport in Japan, so you can
actually find pretty decent flight. Iguess there's two airports in Tokyo and two
(38:05):
airports in Osaka, so maybe thetwo in Tokyo are more popular, but
Osaka is definitely the city a secondcity to fly into, so worth checking
out. Like if you look atflights to Japan, look at flights to
Osaka, so you might if youmight find a deal. We ended up
going to a baseball game in Tokyo, but the Hanshin Tigers, who are
based in Osaka, are one ofthe most kind of fervently followed baseball teams
(38:27):
and one of the best ones togo check out as well. There's also
a second baseball team in Osaka,but Osaka would be a great definitely worth
kind of checking out while you're traveling, but could be a good place to
settle down if you're planning a littlebit of a longer trip to Japan.
It's so much cool stuff to do. It's a big city, so you
have like all the stuff you'd expectof like a first class, you know,
(38:49):
world class city, Like there's Universalstudios there, there's like a cool
Pokemon center, there's you know,big restaurants and all that type of stuff.
My recommend if you were going andlooking for a place to stay in
Osaka would probably be to try tostay near the Shinkensen station. I think
if we were going back, we'dbe looking to stay pretty close to the
(39:09):
Shinkensen But lots of cool places tostay, lots of fun stuff to see.
So a cool city, yeah,yeah, definitely. And so just
to give listeners a little kind ofupdated as to where everything is at.
So from Osaka, we headed backto Tokyo, where we spent a week,
and we're going to do a dedicatedTokyo episode. Maybe we'll talk a
(39:31):
little bit about what we did duringthat week. But I feel like it
was just kind of exploring some coolareas and I think maybe we'll do more
of best things to see and doin Tokyo since We've now been there on
two trips and four times, soI feel like we've experienced quite a few
things in the city. And yeah, from there, we flew back home
(39:52):
and are now back in Mexico settlingback into life, and we've been really
happy to be back here and thenalso missing missing Japan in many ways.
Yeah, and then talking about itmakes it worse. It's like, I
think need to go plan the tripagain. Yeah, for sure. So
if you guys have any questions oranything like that, feel free to reach
out to us. We always loveto hear from you. Info at the
(40:14):
World wanders dot com. Otherwise,thank you so much for being here,
Thanks for listening, and I hopeyou enjoyed this episode. Until next time,
Bye. Thanks for listening to thisepisode. If you want more to
make sure to check out the WorldWanders Insider available on Patreon at patreon dot
com, slash the World Wanders forshow notes, head over to the World
Wanders dot com. Find us onsocial media at the World Wanders podcast,
(40:37):
and enjoin the private Facebook community atWorld Wanders, a community for travelers.
You can always get in touch withus at info at the world wanders dot
com and if you enjoyed the show, don't forget to subscribe and leave a
review. It really helps us findnew listeners. See you next time.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.