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Super Potato! Japan day 17

Osaka to Kyoto

Got up in the morning and took the bus to Osaka Castle. On the way, we passed some really neat looking buildings.

Once we rounded the corner and the guys saw the castle, you could see the wonder in their eyes at the massive wall and they ran up to the edge of the moat and started snapping photos.

Castle Wonder


Moat

The castle grounds turned out to be huge and there was an inner wall and moat as well. The castle was quite big and redone to look like a museum inside. It was pretty updated with hologramy videos and elevators. I think the Matsumoto castle felt a bit more authentic, but Osaka castle was big and very cool. It did a good job of telling the story of the major lord who took over the castle. There was depiction of one of the battles where you could actually make out the faces of a dozen of the major ranking officers. The view from the top of the castle was spectacular.


Inside the castle walls there were snack stations like this VW

On the way out, Chris sees all these old guys with expensive cameras and has to follow them. We follow them to the very edge of a park and it turns out they are birdwatchers!


Oh wells, Chris took a picture of them anyway.


Then we took a picture of him taking a picture of them


The park had some cute trees!

We grabbed some lunch at a yummy ramen place near the subway.

Chris had really been wanting to go to Den Den town in Osaka to a retro gaming shop called Super Potato, so we decided to all go. The shop was amazing! It was 2 floors and the upper floor had every game console as well as walls of games for old consoles. Chris was beside himself with excitement.


Wall of retro consoles


Walls and walls of old games

There was another shop across the street which was smaller and cheaper and Chris bought a Famicom system with the disk drive add-on and some games! He was quite excite. Brendan got a sweet Mario chess set.


Chris looking pleased with his loot!

Then we headed to Kyoto and took the subway to our hotel. By the time we arrived, it was pretty late. After freshening up, we met in the hotel bar Moonlight where there was some ok live jazz. We were pretty tired, but Rob had just got to Japan and it was nice out so we headed into town to the Gion district to find some eats (without DaveB). It was pretty late for a Tuesday night so it wasn't easy to find restaurants with people in them, which is our restaurant rule while traveling. We passed many a questionable alley.

We finally found a tiny restaurant with a couple people in it that served a Japanese hot pot soupy type dish. The guy who served us was quite a character and his English was pretty good. We ordered their main/only meal which was a bunch of miscellaneous meats and vegetables in soup which cooked in a hot pot on our table. We also got some pork bits appetizers and meat on sticks. When the soup was done, it was delish! I don't know what was in it though and I don't think I want to! Rob even ordered a side of pig stomach to be even more adventurous. The guy at the restaurant told us it was "Japanese soul food" and kept asking Rob, "Can you eat?"' hahaha! Then he even brought us some surprise dessert! I love surprise dessert.


"Japanese soul food"

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