Bullet train

Okay so nothing too exciting in the morning, we woke up packed our stuff then went to put our bags in lockers so we could go get beef bowls that we missed out on last night. A little background, this place does tender roast beef and stacks it up like a volcano, adds an egg yolk and some aioli all on top of rice with some onion sauce. Gwu and Christian would not stop talking about it before we got there and they kinda gave it so much hype that I don’t think anything could live up to. That kinda made it a little bit of a let down but was still very good. like 8.5/10, biggest draw back was that it was cold beef needed to be room temp at least.

Booking the train was easy from the ticket machines but we mistakenly thought we needed oversized baggage for our suitcases. So because of this the only “available” slot was in the afternoon. We took this opportunity to head to Shibuya and get some coffee and look around at some shops. Didn’t find anything but was fun to pass the time, plus Johanna has never seen the crossing.

After that we went to the bullet train station and got on the shinkansen from Tokyo to Osaka. It was a 2 and a half hour ride to Osaka, but the bullet train is so much better than flying. When we arrived in Shin-Osaka we took the subway to our BnB through Osaka Metro rail (not JR) which you can use your Suica card which is kinda like a go/opal card but can use it to buy things at the convenience stores so I put ¥10000 which is like $100.

I did get some time to start my Blog so I did the structure and got it ready for the new Japan section. I also got time to sleep as the train chairs recline enough to sleep. Wasn’t the longest of trips but once we got to Osaka we were pretty tired. We then met up with Sejiun, Nat, Henry and Vicky at a izakaya which is a bar with finger food basically go there to drink. Sejiun is Japanese and can speak fluently so was good as a kind of tour guide/translator. Food was great and had a few drinks so was a good vibe and was great to catch up with everyone.

After the food we took the girls back to the BnBs and then went out with just Gwu and Sejiun. Christian went back as he was kinda tired and needed to get off his feet and definitely didn’t want to walk back. We are right next to Dotonbori so we went out exploring late night there looking for more all you can drink. It didn’t take too long before we found one with darts. What a wild time darts was, drank a bunch of drinks played darts which is like virtual darts in Brisbane. Kept getting drinks and shots and made friend while we were there. He didn’t speak a lick of English but you could definitely feel the vibes were good. We played loser has to shot tequila and I almost lost twice but flooked both times and bullseye’d on the last round, unfortunately we all just did shots anyway haha.

After darts we went and grabbed some ramen cause why not. The guy we met recommended one around the corner and he did not disappoint. It was so creamy and tasty and gosh I was full after eating it. I also learnt about the red light district and how there is a fair amount of sex work in the area. They often follow foreigner and just say “pushy” while doing a hand gesture which means “you want sex?“. After ramen we were walking back and I did get followed so I tried saying one of the only expressions I know which is 日本語 が 話せません(“nihongo ga hanasemasen”), translated to “I can’t speak Japanese” but to no prevail she laughed and followed us saying a bunch of things assuming I could understand for a couple of blocks. Luckily we made it back safely and definitely fell on my face to go to sleep.