11 Aug What to do in Osaka in three days

A couple months back, I decided to surprise Joanne with a quick trip to Osaka, Japan.  Yes, some people thought we were a little nuts to travel all that way just for a three-day weekend, but sometimes you have to be spontaneous to keep the fun alive.  With only a few days in country, we wanted to make the most of our time, so we scoured the internet to figure out what to do and asked our friends for some tasty tips… and we were off.

Our hotel was a 10 minute walk from Doutonbori and right next to a train station entrance making it quick and easy to get anywhere we needed to go. Our first morning was spent at Osaka Castle capturing some time lapses and people-watching for a bit. We saw people with pet owls and falcons and maintenance guys dressed like ninjas. After some kakigori (Japanese shaved ice) and ice cream to cool off, we walked to Umeda and around Osaka Station and ended our day at Tempozan to ride the Giant Ferris Wheel. We stuffed our bellys at a kaiten sushi restaurant before heading to Dotonbori to check out the night life and devour some kobe beef. By then we were pooped and ready to call it a night.

The next day was spent walking around Dotonbori in search of the Glico man and to find Joanne some new glasses. Japanese make some of the best optics in the world! Canon, Nikon, Sony, and Carl Zeiss ring a bell? Because of that, so many people have suggested that we look for glasses when we vacation in Japan. We took this awesome opportunity to find some new specs for ourselves. With ramen, takoyaki and okonomiyaki calling my name at every corner, a lot of day two was spent walking, eating and looking for more deliciousness.

Day three wasn’t packed with things to do to maintain vacation vibes… Often when we travel, we fill our days with agenda lists so dense, we end up too tired or sore to do much the next day. This trip was all about relaxing, eating and enjoying being away from the daily grind in Hawaii so that’s all we really did.