Food, Coffee, Alcohol, Shooting, WiFi, Charging

 Friday morning was our flight to Osaka! Our room reservation included breakfast, but since it was way before the breakfast room opened, the hotel put together a sack breakfast for us! Awesome. Waking up early was no problem since we were both excited to fly to Japan.

The departure form Changi was just as easy as the arrival, it seemed at first. Two glass turnstiles where one’s picture is taken, and we were in the airport. It turns out the actual scanner was at the gate for the individual flight rather than at the entrance to the terminal, which seems much more efficient. 

We flew on Scoot to Osaka, which is Singapore Air’s low-cost airline. They offered premium economy seating for a really good price when we made our reservation, so we went for it. The legroom was huge. It also came with a meal which could be selected form a menu - mine was chicken satay with rice, and was really good.

After about a 7 hour flight, we landed in Osaka and went through immigration and customs. We determined that Osaka was the IAH of Japan. The process wasn’t as futuristic as Singapore - despite registering online and getting a QR code, there were still several steps with an actual immigration officer. They were working on modernizing, but at this point most of the modernizations had temporary signage and ad hoc lane markings. Despite its technological innovations, many processes in Japan are still curiously paper-based.

We took a taxi to our hotel in the Dotonbori neighborhood of Osaka. Ours is the one with four mysterious faces on the columns in front:

We enjoyed it right away. They offer free beverages in the lobby, as well as cup ramen in the evenings and ice cream as well.

After dropping off our stuff, we went into town. We learned that a neighborhood nearby, Nippombashi, was known as the Akihabara of Osaka. Jane has been looking for a specific figure from one of her favorite animes, which has been extremely hard to find (it was nowhere in Singapore) - we figured if it was anywhere in Osaka, we’d find it here.

We checked in several stores and hit several dead ends. We found ones from the same figure series, even ones with adjacent item numbers both higher and lower, but couldn’t find this particular one. It was extremely rare and in demand, apparently.

We were close to giving up, but Jane asked ChatGPT where the figure could be found. It replied that a particular store nearby seemed like a good place to search. So we went there, found the shelf with the figures from this series, and it wasn’t there. But then we noticed a display case with a few more boxes. We looked closely and hallelujah, one of the boxes was the exact figure we were searching for! Jane was so excited. The price was actually reasonable compared to what some people were asking  online too. Score!

High off of that victory, we walked back through the Nippombashi and Dotonbori areas to the hotel. The scene was picking up on Friday evening, and we decided to get something  to eat. We found a small yakitori restaurant and stopped in for some chicken tender skewers with cheese. They were delightful.

Our hotel was close to the Dotonbori hotel, so we took a walk along it to see the lights. Both sides are lit up in an impressive display of advertisements making a lively scene.

We decided that the next day we’d take a trip to Nara. We got our Kansai One Passes at the train station two blocks from the hotel and headed back for the night!