Japan Part Ichi (Osaka)

It's been close to two months since I came back from the Japan trip with the family.

I've been procrastinating about lots of things for the longest time, and posting an entry about the trip has been on the list as well!

It's a mish mash of pictures consolidated from various cameras within the family, but hey! its good memories that's most important!

We flew to Japan from Hongkong, because I was in China for work prior to the vacation, and therefore the brother and mom flew over to join the Dad and I.

I was exhausted from the start, and generally felt alittle better at the end of it all.
I ate ALOT during the trip and I came back to Singapore a Fatty Bom bom!
I put on about 2-3 kg during the 15 days I was away.
How is that even possible?
It used to be impossible, but reaching a certain milestone in age, everything is possible now.
Hello FATTY DAPHNE!
Okay,

We landed at Osaka, and rested for the night.

Snapped the hotel while waiting to be checked in.

The fam raided the convenience store the minute we chucked out luggages into our respective rooms. In a hurry, I totally forgot to take a picture of my room, and after that I was just too busy being a glutton to bother.

The Convenience stores in Japan stocks up on Muji products. How awesome is that?

Brother and I were greedy, we were eyeing at EVERYTHING in the store literally.

This would be our choice of icecreams for the night after surveying all available flavours.

Look at that tank behind me.. The dad selected everything possibly available in there.
Tsktsk!
and going back to the icecream,

The center of my icecream is filled with a layer of oozy mochi, and the layer of caramel crust on the outside, makes it an awesome pairing.

That is some serious love.

The brother's choice of cheesecake is awesome as well.

Raving about flavour, is nothing like raving about a layer of oozy mochi in the core of the icecream.

Yums! Mochi icecream wins!

We took a tub of instant noodles each, along with shrimp roe onigiri, some braised quails egg, onsen eggs, instant soups, fried stuff like chicken, fishballs etc, and in the round of the instant noodle selection, the brother's one turned out to be yummier!

Look at how milky the soup base is!

His pork based milky soup noodles won this round.

We shared some braised quails egg, and it's mad yummy.
I cant even..

The dad was crazier, he bought those on-sen styled eggs EVERYDAY

Looks something like this, after you take a bite.

After supper, the Bro changed into the kimono.
Look at how pleased he is.
dude is crazy about anything Japanese.

I insisted that he google on the right way to don on the traditional garbs.

Hahaha. I remembered the way the kimono overlaps represented something but it was way too long ago for me to remember.

I told him it's something to do with Female and male or something like that.

Turns out that it was the difference between how it's worn for the dead or the alive.

Hahahaha.
He guffawed and gamely posed and posted this on his FB as display picture.

Look! He's alive!

Subsequently, every toilet in the hotels all look the same.

One picture shall represent all Japanese hotel toilets for this trip.

Oh, how I miss their warm toilet seats!

Breakfast time!

I'm a glutton. I ate the traditional and western ones provided.

These went with plain congee really well,

While the westernised ones were on their own.

I also made it a point to taste a bowl of miso soup every day.
Every hotel served pretty much the same stuff, and had a different type of miso flavour.

The miso soup paired with mushroom ones were the best, but I gave up snapping pictures of my breakfast subsequently.

Nuggets tasted like they were made with lots of love.
Naturally, I went for seconds.
*grins*

Mommy and I on the bus!

Father sat with the bro, and Mommy sat with me, because everyone on the bus spoke in Cantonese (we flew off from Hongkong remember?)   but the 2 of us. 

Rwar! 

So to prevent the brother and I from being completely alienated, the parents decided to be our translator.

So much for translating, because the bro and I spent every bus moment sleeping.

The minute the coach moves, we pretty much faint into deep sleep.

Hahahaha

The first grounds we visited, was the Osaka Castle.

In sleepy stupor, when I climbed down the bus, I spotted some cute birds perched on a railing. 

I declared that I wanted a picture of them, and the mommy wanted one too. 

:D

Architecturally, it was nothing significant to me, because I was still sleepy, but I love reading up on historical places, and so, I found some joys in the place anyway.

The mother's mandatory picture with everything she sees...

Gotta love how stumpy I look in winter gear.

I look like a blob.

Wehhh....

WE SPOTTED something really cute!

It waz a doggles!

A cute shivery fella.

Couldn't resist taking a picture with her because she's soooooooooo cute.

She must have liked me, because she turned and gave me a warm but dry lick on my cheek before the picture. 

Awwww 

That fuzzy girl stole a corner of my heart.

That's her owner seated on the bench. I asked for permission to take pictures with her.

Dont you think his dog resembles him?!

The brother took his turn with the doggles, and she snuggled right up to him and shivered.

Weather is cold in January, and her purple sweater is doing little justice in keeping her warm.

Ahhh, back to sight seeing..

It's amazing how those large rocks can be piled on and create a curve for the structure..

tsk. Impressive architecture, and mission impossible for lazy creatures like me.

This would be the moat around the castle. 

During spring, it'll be filled with Sakura blossoms. 

Meh..i'm too early for the flowers! :(

My attention was stolen away by the icecreams that I spotted!

This one's more exciting for the glutton in me.

Icecream!!!

I tried their specialty flavour. Millet, and its yummy.
What the heck is a millet? I dont know. Some sort of rice that hasn't made sense to me yet.

Look at how pleased the brother is with his Hokkaido vanilla.

Made him pose and he did this. -_-"

That's us with the spectacular vending machine. 

Glorious stuff they have in their machines!

After this picture, we bought some "beauty" tea as instigated by the daddy, and it tasted like icky. Tasteless and bland.

I didnt feel very beautiful after tasting it.

Euck!

On our way out, I told the brother about the cute birdie railing, and he was extremely unimpressed until he saw it and said to me, I want a picture with the birds too. 

Ahhahahaha. 

#Tourist!

We headed over to Doutonboris Street for some shopping, and had lunch!

CRABS.

CRABS again.

That's me being idiotic.

On the streets...

Osaka Banner on the streets, and more crabs peeking out.

Shopping land!

Then it was Lunch. 

Chicken Kaminabe I think. With my favourite Golden mushroom swimming about in my soup.

Side dish of Tamago, and potato croquet and not forgetting my staple rice.

Then we did some temple visit.

There's alot of hand and mouth washing whenever a temple exist.

Kinda cold to be dipping your hands and mouth wet, but I did it out of respect anyway.

Self taken "emo" shot

Taking pictures of the fam taking their pictures.

Hahaha.

Caught sight of my favourite kitty at a sourvenir shop nearby.

Kitty purse galore!

X bought one for me when he stopped over at Narita airport on his trip to the States last year.

Now I haz many in the peektures! 

:D

Dinner time!

Too lazy to rotate the picture, but It's ramen and gyoza and fried rice.

Yummy!!!!

The insane amount of Carbs that I load up every meal to fight the cold, it's really little wonders about the weight gain after the trip. 

Sigh..

Intricate snacks display that I LOVE to stare and stare and stare at.

I swear I'd still be a Visual Merchandiser, if I reside in Japan.

Sponge cake family is so cute, but looks so dry to eat. 

Our room for the second night.

Managed to catch pictures of the room before we ran out again to raid convenience stores again.

That's the brother helping me with my purple luggages in his purple shoes.
The both of us are quite the purple creatures, especially so for meeeeeee!

Courtyard of the hotel..is such a pretty sight!

We went to a nearby Arcade building+supermarket and I bought myself a choco banana crepe. barely an hour after that gyoza,fried rice, ramen dinner.

Gosh!

I must add that this has got to be the softest and yummiest crepe I've tasted for a really long while!

We headed over to the arcade building, and the fam spent like an hour gazing at a complicating looking Pachingo inspired machine at the arcade, before we finally went back to rest.

That machine is super mesmerising. 

We were all racking our brains, figuring out how it works and plays, while watching the whirring balls and coins drop all over with some dancing stuff going on in the gaming screen. 

The player was practically multitasking in my opinion. 

In summary, The arcades in Japan puts the ones we have in Singapore to shame. It's like first world country VS third world country arcade.

The thing I love about Japan, is how much pride they take in everything.

Even free toiletries is made up of good stuff. 

For the first time, I chucked my own toiletries aside to try the ones provided by the hotel.

I finally tried the highly raved about DHC, and they're okay.

This marks the end of my Osaka adventures in Japan.