We made it

I took 1 car ride, 2 plane journeys, 2 trains and 1 walk and then, 30 hours later we arrived :D

We showered and headed out to wander around Osaka. It's way nicer than I expected, having read a lot of bad things about it. We are in some little back streets, which are full of little restaurants. We found a katsu place and had a yummy dinner. Thankfully they provided us with an English menu...the little bit of Japanese we've learnt was not working after 30 hours on the go. The lovely waitress even showed us how to mix our sauce and what to do. I love the Japanese already!


After a rather jet lagged sleep, we walked to 大阪城, or Osaka castle. It was really pretty and peaceful. We loved all the cute Japanese primary school kids wandering around with matching hats on! So excited that we'll be teaching super cute kids soon! A lot of them looked as us like we were aliens though, and since we only saw 2 other foreigners all day, that perhaps isn't surprising!

Even better, a random Japanese man biked past us, was very excited and after a lot of 'Good morning' 'Hello', 'Australia? English, ohh, English!' and a lot of manic handshakes, he collared some random passing teenager and made us be in a photo with him. He was very VERY excited to see us, but Osaka is a fairly large place with a large gaijin (foreigner) community and quite a lot of tourists, so he must of seen plenty of Westeners before. Strange, but it did make us both smile!


In the evening, we met up with Eric, one of the people we will be training with next week. He was really friendly, and, having lived in Japan for a year already, was able to take us to a very yummy 29th floor okinomiyaki restaurant and order for us stress free. Lovely.


On Wedneday, we had fun walking around a reconstruction of an Edo village at the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living, dressed in kimonos. 

We then had a good long fight with our bags and the train (too many bags) and finally got to our hotel in Kyoto where we had a good long relax before wandering around and eating ramen for dinner. Yum.