I love Osaka at night. We were staying at Dotonbori and it is just awesome at night. Lots of people, bright lights, loud noises. Great food, and not so great food… Warning, lots of photos in this post!

Here’s a video of us coming back to our hotel room after riding the Hep 5 Ferris Wheel, and some of Osaka at night.

After a little rest from all the excitement of the day, the sun set and it was time to go out for some food and excitement. The above photo was our view from our hotel, the Hearton Hotel as the sun went down.

There are these long covered streets that go on forever filled with shops! It is a shopper’s dream. Too bad I was with non-shoppers and didn’t have as much money as I would have liked thanks to a bad exchange rate!

Uniqlo was recommended to us as a good cheap shop to go to to buy clothes. It actually reminded me of Cotton On, for those of us who live in a place where Cotton On is. Sort of generic plain clothing, but a huge store. Prices were so so as well. I mean, cheap in the way that Cotton On is cheap, not Supre cheap. Sorry I don’t have better examples but I can only explain things from my own world view!

At the circular bridge area after the shopping street and before the big food/lights area.

Well, I guess you could say this is the beginning of the big lights area.

The famous running man, the first photo in this post, was also here. This is where the first section of my video above was filmed.

One thing that I really noticed about Osaka was all the bikes! They were everywhere. Makes me :D because I am a bike person too. No, not motorbikes, push bikes.

I don’t have a photo of one, but the bikes here have stands that come down from both sides of the wheel, which is way better than them coming down from one side of the wheel like they do here. Bikes are always falling over here in Australia.

This was a line to one of the Takoyaki stands. Maybe the mistake I made when I ate takoyaki was that I didn’t line up here.

Big crab (note: lucky I proof read this) that moves. Aparently powered by bicycles. Wouldn’t surprise me.

In case you are unsure, we are now in the part with loud noises and lots of lights.

The way to advertise in Japan is to have bright flashing lights and loud music. Louder music, so you don’t get drowned out by the advertisement next to you.

Ramen. Mmmmm. I miss cheap, awesome, delicious ramen.

One great thing about obviously being a tourist/foreigner is that many people handing out flyers ignored us.

I most definitely recommend Osaka for a shopping enthusiast.

Hot food vending machine. Is actually a microwave that cooks frozen food. I wish we had more vending machines here in Australia, they are the best idea ever. I need an everything vending machine down the end of my street.

For dinner we had some yakisoba. Mmmmm.

Yes, I’m left handed.

And thus was our night adventures in Osaka! I was too exhausted to do much more – I had waaaaay too much excitement. If you want to see more awesome photos (huh) check out my Osaka gallery.

Hep Five Ferris Wheel Info!

• Cost: 500円
• 106m high
• Number of Gondolas: 52, max four people per gondola
• Time of Round Trip: 15 mins
• Opening Hours: 11:00 – 22:45

After our visit to Osaka Jo, we went to Umeda to visit Hep Five and it’s ferris wheel on the roof. As soon as we got off the subway we had an older man come up to us to show us to the correct exit. I mean, sure that is nice and Umeda station is easy to get lost in, I’m sure. But if I want help I’ll ask for it! We were perhaps looking lost because we had just got out of one line and were just trying to orientate ourselves. So yeah, I can’t fault the guy, although I felt a bit like English practise, he was nice and helpful, but it was unnecessary.

So we had the right exit but it still took us some time to orientate ourselves to where we had actually been lead to in order to find the building!

Let me say it now… I’m afraid of heights! However, I am one of those people who would rather face my fears, challenge them. I’m no wimp! And usually at some point things aren’t so bad any more.

Before you go on they take a cheesy photo which you can decide at the end if you want to buy or not. We decided to buy it because buying cheesy things is part of being on holidays.

Yes, I was nervous as we went up but it was easier going down. It was an awesome view of Osaka. On the windows of the carriage there are little map outlines of buildings to tell you what is what.

After riding on the Hep Five Ferris Wheel, even though it was only mid afternoon I was buggered! I would have liked to have explored Umeda but I found I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Too much excitement for one day. We made our way back to our hotel and had an little nap before our night time adventures…

On our first day in Japan we ate some sukiya for breakfast and headed down (up? across? over?) to Osaka Jo.

It’s a great walk to Osaka Jo. We came in from the west entry. The moat was beatiful, some was water, some grass.

Osaka Castle is really stunning from the outside. Inside is a museum and on the top floor you get a 360 degree view of Osaka. There is an elevator to get to the top, however I walked up the stairs (exercise is good!). The view up the top is worth the climb.

After our climb to the top we sat on a bench in the garden and ate some ice cream. A Japanese man came up to us to have a chat in English. I have to say, his English was pretty good. He had been to Australia and Canada, and showed us some maps of the places he’d been. Nice man, we told him we were going to Nara and he talked about the deer. He also showed us his phrase book and opened it up to a page on swear words (unintentionally!) I want a copy of that phrase book.

I think it is interesting to see the different between the English and Japanese handout. The English one is nice and professional, where as the Japanese one is fun and cute. Also, to enter the castle we bought our ticket at a vending machine. Gotta love vending machines!

Walking around the grounds of the castle was very peaceful. I think, perhaps, we were lucky to go there on a day when there wasn’t a huge crowd.

After we exited we went to the Brava Theatre to stand next to the building where my future husband Ikuta Toma was at that very moment performing as Danny in Grease. *sigh* I wish I had tickets…

Brava Theatre in Google Maps

And thus was my first visit to Osaka Jo and the end of my first morning in Japan!

Hearton Hotel

Room:
Service:
Location:
Price:
Overall Rating:

Rate This Hotel: Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

• Website

Directions

View Larger Map
We took the north exit from the Nankai Line Namba Station. We got on to the main road and walked along it on the left side. If you hit the Hotel Nikko, you’ve gone one street too far. Note that there are two Hearton Hotels on this street, we went to the wrong one first! In the google map street view above, our one was on the left. Coming off the main street it’ll be the one on your right. If you go to the wrong one, don’t worry – I was tired and couldn’t understand a word they were saying, and so they walked us across the road

Room:

The room was pretty good. It was small, but I wouldn’t need any more space when all I am doing is sleeping and showering. My main complaint is the bed and pillow… It was pretty uncomfortable and hard, however, after experiencing the rest of our hotels, this was the best bed of the whole trip.

The bathroom had a toilet with all the little buttons on it. The mirror had a spot on it that didn’t fog up when you had a shower.

either this bathroom is small or I’m HUGE!

Service:

No complaints here about service really. The staff were friendly if not that talkative to us. The room got cleaned. One day when we decided not to have our room cleaned, they politely asked us if everything was OK, just checking up on us. All was good.

Location:

Location was awesome. Right near everything, close to the train station, closer to the subway. Food, shopping… Everything.

Price:

We paid 10000円 a night for two people, it was on sale from 11000円. Which is alright, and in retrospect this was perhaps our best hotel. How ever, I think if I had shopped around a bit more I could have found a better deal. That said, I would pay that price again for the hotel because it was worth it…

Overall Rating:

Really great hotel, highly recommended!

Location was awesome. Room was good, had everything needed.
Bed and pillows were hard. Maybe a bit pricey, but not too much so…

Me getting sexy in the provided yukata. They obviously make these ugly so no one steals them.

Get the most up-to-date prices and book into this hotel through their website. – which is in English and easy as pie to use. (Is pie easy to use?)