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We had a full day in Osaka today and it was most enjoyable!
It started out with a stop at Vie De France, a bakery, for some breakfast bakery treats and coffee followed by a short train trip to Osaka Castle.
There were a fair few people hanging out about the castle and on the grounds but unfortunately the castle was closed for the New Years period which was something we had forgotten happens from last trip. We walked about the gardens for a bit and got some jumping photos before deciding to move onto the Osaka History Museum which was only a short walk from the castle.
Once we made it over to the history museum we figured out that that was also closed for the New Years period! So we wandered about the building for a bit before deciding to head to Osaka Station and just wander around there for a while.
When we got to Osaka Station we browsed through a few shops and bought a few items and Shannon also won a prize at the arcade and also had some ramen for lunch which I thought was okay but Shannon enjoyed more because he had a slightly different type to me.
Following lunch we made our way slowly to the Umeda Sky Building which I stupidly just realised I didn't get a photo of from the outside but it's a cool office building with a big observation deck on top. The very top of the building is open air but it was rainy today so we were only up there for a bit. Instead we hung out mostly on the second highest floor and had a drink at the cafe and enjoyed the view. We stayed right until the sun went down and got some pretty good photos of the progression of the sun going down. There wasn't much of sunset due to the aforementioned rain but it was still good.
Once the sun had gone down we attempted to go to the Umeda Sky Lounge which is a bar on the third highest floor but it was also closed for the New Years period as were most of the restaurants in the basement area of the building.
We tried to find a place to eat back out on the main streets but mostly everything was in Japanese which made it very hard to commit to anything. After an hour or so of disheartening walking around we decided to head back to our hostel.
Once we got back to our hostel we used the restaurant map they had provided to us to find a nearby okonomiyaki restaurant and we quickly walked down to it.
It was a fairly small place with one chef who cooked right in front of us at the bar seats we had. We had an okonomiyaki each which were probably the best ones we've ever had because they had very little floury batter and instead lots of finely shredded cabbage so it was very light. We shared a serve of yakisoba, or basically sauté noodles, that was described as "leek with fatty pork of the saltiness" sauté noodles which was thought was funny. We had dessert as well where I had tomato pudding and Shannon had matcha ice cream with this strange mochi like jelly. We also had a few wines and beers so by the time we got home we were very satisfied.
It was a perfect day in Osaka even though we couldn't get into a lot of places. Tomorrow we are going to Universal Studios which should be fun.
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