Japan Day 6 - Kobe + Osaka

 23/03/2023

Kobe - Osaka

Woke up early cos we were leaving for Osaka.  Untimely heavy down pour even after 1 hour's wait.

We didn't have any umbrella or rain coat, we ran through the rain with random shelters and finally reached Okayama Station without being drenched.  Kinda brought us closer together lolxx...

Happily bought tix to Himeji... 

Bento stall on the platform, we gotten some thing simple to eat from the convenient store behind it.

After boarding the train, Darren realized that we might be on the wrong train lolxx...  INDEED!!!  We opened google map and watched the train drove pass Himeji waahaahaaa...

We landed in Kobe pre-matured but decided to go ahead instead of travelling back to Himeji.

Took a sight seeing bus....

Landed in Kobe Motomachi with Chinatown beside.

Darren lost his mind in this thrift shop, bought a t-shirt and a very cute cap.

Luis was very careful on spending, enjoyed looking, left empty handed.

Walking around, we found many Spidermen around.  It didn't take us too long to realize that Spiderman would be wherever a Kobe Beef restaurant was.

Later I found out that Spiderman had became an icon for Kobe Beef, legally.  In other words, if you are looking for Kobe Beef, you will have to look for Spiderman.  So far we had seen Spidy in Kobe, Osaka and Tokyo.

We decided to splurge a bit at Red One Kobe Beef Restaurant.

Spidy lolxx....

They had plenty of empty seats but we were asked to wait for 30mins.  Quite a few restaurants did that we had no idea why.  They turned down many walked in customers after us.  Throughout our 30mins wait and 1.5hrs dinning, the empty tables were left empty.

This was how empty the restaurant was.

Set meals came with salad and soup.  Not sure what's the transparent "noodles" were.

We didn't like the clear soup.

Luis had curry omi rice, with 3 slices of beef only, damn sad lolxx... but the taste not bad.

Darren and I had a steak and hamburger combi (cos whole steak plate would cost a fortune).

Kobe Chinatown, weeeee......

Found my long lost relative.

See look around, lots of food but no stomach space.

Spiderman!

Another Spiderman!  Waahaaahaaa.... somehow amused me a lot lolxx...

Walked to Merikan Park, didn't expect to see Dance Fish Sculpture.

Merikan Park.

It's nice but feet a bit tired.

Kobe Maritime Museum, which we were not interested to go in.

Not sure how to get onto the boat, but took a photo with it was good enough.

We went into a Daiso selling mainly gardening and pets items.  Within there's a pet shop, took a few cute photos of fur balls.

Making our way back to Chinatown by another route, passed by a cafe made out of 2 containers.

First time seeing a frozen meal vending machine.

Seeing Magnolia flowers was the most beautiful surprise ever!  Each flower was huge palm size and sooooooooo freaking pretty in pink!

These giant beauties were no less prettier than sakura.

We also saw Minato-Motomachi Station build in 1909, wow!  It used to be a bank before 1995.

Finally back to Kobe Motomachi.

Luis went to game arcade, Darren and I went to Dr. Stretch.

It was a good stretch, so good that I farted, almost died of embarrassment.

Pic of Kobe Chinatown map.

Eeeeeeeeeewwww.....

Nice vibe at night but many shops were closed.

Tried XLB, actually not bad, but the chinese stall helper wasn't friendly and refused to give us a spoon, so it was a bit difficult to eat.

Last few pics of Kobe.

Killer stairs.

This only applied in morning peak hours, so didn't get to try how it felt.

From Kobe we finally made it to Osaka.  Thank god we only had one little trolley luggage.  We saw many people struggling with their luggage, they 保重 liao.

ibis Budget Osaka Umeda, we stayed 5 nights.  It was about S$450 for 3 of us to squeezed in a tiny room.  It was clean and really couldn't find fault with it for the price.  The only thing was it's more than 10mins walk from Osaka Station.  There was a small train station 1min from the hotel but it was almost useless for us.

We ordered their breakfast on our last day.

Our luggage had arrived safely from Hiroshima.

Bought dinner from Lawson.

There was only one chair, I took it, Darren sat on the bed to eat... I was wondering where's Luis...

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Found this monkey in toilet, watching Youtube some more.

Our luggage took up most of the space, the kids had to crab walk and jump onto bed.  I took some photos of the room but I forgotten which day the photos were.  Hope they will pop up as I draft along.

The next day, we travelled to Nara, we had so much fun!  Thank you for reading and be back for the next post.