We arrived in Osaka, and rode a Hello Kitty-themed train from the airport to the hotel. We were staying at the APA, which is a fairly nice hotel with comically small rooms. Like, the room is the size of the bed and almost not any bigger than that. They claim it’s for “eco-friendly” living, which okay, sure – and it’s definitely efficient, but for weary travelers looking to relax a bit, it was … cramped. We’d grabbed food in a department store basement. Which was one of my goals for the trip, so mission accomplished.

Ended up on an awesome looking nightlife street on the walk back from visiting with my uncle and aunt, which was delightful. On the way there went to the One Piece store, Nintendo Osaka and the Pokémon Center, which were all in the same place. After dinner stopped off at Yodobashi Camera, which is like an REI, Best Buy, Fry’s Electronics at its height, and Toys R Us all injected with powerful steroids and smashed together. Sensory overload.

This morning we went to Osaka Castle, which was beautiful on the outside. The grounds were impressive. But the interior is now essentially a modern museum and looks nothing like a feudal castle, which is quite disappointing.

Ei-Nyung made a point re: the difference between the castles here vs. in Korea. These are all fortifications for war, where Korea’s are much less… defensible. Way more open, walls, sure, but not like Osaka Castle with a huge moat built on a stone mountain.

Universal Studios Osaka + Super Nintendo World. Mario Kart ride was awesome, Yoshi’s Adventure was a total waste. The overall atmosphere was bananas, and waaaaaaaaay too crowded.

Bye, Osaka. Your bed-sized rooms at APA were strange but alright. Shinkansen to Kyoto (a ridiculous extravagance for a 15 minute trip but they’re such badass trains and JR Pass = whatever). Stopped off at Dotonbori just for kicks (and Takoyaki), and now at a ryokan in Kyoto with a lot more space. Gonna walk over to Hanamikoji (there’s a board game named after the street) and then meet up with a bunch of Oakland friends for dinner at the place they’re staying.

In Osaka we got some souvenirs at the One Piece shop, and then went to a rando capsule toy shop and spent $15 on nonsense. I got a very tiny Tony Tony Chopper and the kids ended up with some B-tier character wanted poster One apiece keychains.

Can’t go to Japan and not have some conveyor-belt sushi. Kura in Japan is better than in the US, and cheaper.

All of this is super up my alley. It’s very Japan to me, and reminds me a ton of when I was a kid. Totally delightful. So glad the kids get to experience it. And meet family. But they’re not into stuff like Gundam or Transformers, and the age of comically compact Japanese electronics isn’t relevant anymore. But the historical stuff, the food streets, the sort of overwhelmingness of things… 

On the way out of Osaka, we did a quick stop in Dotonbori for food & sightseeing.

So, got a bad case of plantar fasciitis starting yesterday evening. Getting up to walk to breakfast at the ryokan we’re at this morning was agony. Spent about half an hour jabbing the corner of a table into the bottom of my foot and stretching it out, and that made it walkable, sorta. Went to a massage place, and tried to ask them if they could do something specifically about my foot and calf, and they said, “sure, sure”. Ended up getting a nice general massage, but it did jack and squat for my foot, alas. Picked up some athletic tape to tape it up and it does feel a bit better with some support, but dammit. Not the best outcome.  Haven’t wandered around Kyoto too much as a result. 

esterday we met up with friends from CA who were in Kyoto at the same time. We walked over, had dinner, and walked back. Today, Ei-Nyung took the kids out while I was waiting to get foot stuff addressed. I picked up some treats that were basically cream-filled mochi-wrapped strawberries, with a bit of sweet white bean paste, which were nice – barring any comparisons, they were delicious. But I’d hoped they’d be a little more like a “yuki ichigo” (snow strawberry) I’d had in Hiroshima 23 years ago – which was a mochi-wrapped cream-filled strawberry with a small slice of maybe pound cake, which is to this day one of the best desserts I’ve ever had anywhere.

This was good, but it wasn’t that, so it was a little bit of a bummer. But Kyoto is weird. The shrines are impressive, but there’s a lot of super weird eighties architecture. And the area I was wandering around had like 10 nightclub/bars on every block and I’m like, I have no idea how most of these places could possibly sustain themselves – they’re like a bar on the fourth floor of a half-wide alleyway in a maze of alleyways.

Decided sort of ad-hoc to go to Nara today to check out the deer, despite the foot. Ended up on an absolutely baller train on the ride home. Last night the kids had the fanciest-schmanciest meals of their lives, and despite it being a lot of stuff they’ve either never had or actively dislike (like eggplant) they did an awesome job and ate it all. It was amazing. We met up with our friends Max & Hannah, and the dinner was at the ryokan they were staying at (which was sort of on the scale of that train we ended up on).

The kids ate it all. I was super impressed. There was a lot of stuff in there that was unfamiliar to them, or explicitly things they don’t normally like (eggplant, for instance), but they did a great job. They’re not picky eaters. Given their own desires they’ll tend toward fairly simple food, but if you put something in front of them, they’ll try just about anything. Despite the look on Kuno’s face. Note how fancily he’s drinking.

The deer are hilarious. You buy little packages of rice crackers that are for the deer (not the healthiest thing for them, I imagine, but better than the tourists feeding them random shit), and they walk up to you, and “bow” to try to encourage you to feed them. You give them crackers, and then they’re like, “SWEET YOU’VE GOT CRACKERS” and the bowing goes out the window. Fuck that, now they’ll pull on your shirt, or headbutt you in the rear. FEED ME. It’s awesome.

When it’s one or two, no problem. When it’s like, six, it starts to get a little intimidating.

I was thinking there HAVE to be tons of tourists who think they’re going to dress up and have a Disney Princess experience with these deer and be very surprised.

The train was a “limited express” from Kyoto to Nara. You had to pay a bit extra for the express vs. the standard train, but it cut about 1/3 of your travel time out, which for us was worth it (maybe 15 min each way?). But for your extra … $5.50 total for four people, the upgrade in trains was absolutely bonkers.

I was a bit bummed that the foot injury had killed some of the time we spent in Kyoto. Today turned that around. In addition to Nara, we also ended up going to a Kaiseki dinner with some CA friends (Eric & Christy, who some of you may know, as well as another couple we know that they’re traveling with). So two nights of nice dinners in a row with friends, a really hilariously memorable train ride, and being chased around by hungry deer. While we missed out on a LOT of what Kyoto has to offer, we were never gonna be able to see it all anyway, so whatever. We’ll hit up Fushimi Inari and the gold temple next time.

We did stay at a lovely ryokan in Kyoto. It’s surprising how much more comfortable this was that the haneok in Korea – a huge part of that was tatami is way softer than hardwood-over-concrete.

Tomorrow am, we pack up and head to Tokyo to visit my cousin in the evening.

We were talking about the most memorable bits of the trip for each of us over dinner, and for me, it was weird, because it wasn’t a thing. It was having the kids experience Korea and Japan, and specifically for me, that they got to experience some of the same things I experienced as a kid. Not literally, of course, but that culture shock of how different some things are, and what it’s like to be in a place like downtown Osaka or seeing the historical bits of Kyoto (and Seoul), which is super, super different than our experience back home – or anything they’ve actually experienced before.

It was such a formative part of my childhood experience. Even though my trips to Japan were a relatively small amount of actual time, I felt like the experience was a critical bit of my identity, and shaped how I perceived the world and my place in it. And knowing that the world was bigger than Oakland/Piedmont, or even California, and the difference in cultures – I believe that it helped me think differently. I hope the kids find some pieces of that in their mindset going forward.