Today, we are leaving Akihabara in Tokyo and heading to Namba in Osakak via the Nozomi Shinkansen, the fastest bullet train available. Despite my weakened state, we were able to get to the station and buy a few ekiben and check in via the shinkansen official app at the gate, although not without some problems.
Normally people just buy a ticket for a shinkansen on the day of, but we decided before to reserve tickets to have the seats that allow for “oversized luggage” just in case. Because of this we had some QR code system linked with the app that can be associated with your Suica IC card to be used to pass the gate. That system was a mess. I passed the gate fine by scanning the QR code and then tapping my IC card, but for my sister it didn’t work. What the hell? She had to go over to the side and have it done manually. Weird.
Ah yes, we made in onto our train but that in and of itself was a very confusing and stressful process in which we could have died and be ruined once again. On the ticket it says Nozomi 17 Car 12, so we assumed that it meant platform 17. This was a grave mistake as when we went onto the train sitting there in Car 12, there was already a women sitting in our spots. What the hell? After asking her and showed us the ticket, she said that we were on the wrong train. Fuck. We had no idea what platform we were supposed to go to. Feeling a bit panicked, I started just going to any of the Japanese train attendants standing about, showing them my ticket as saying “Suimensen, doko?” After two confirmations, I learned that our train was right beside our platform, platform 18. There was literally like less than 5-8 minutes left before the train was scheduled to leave and we ran with our luggage, both UP and DOWN several stairs, dying a little bit more physically and mentally every step of the way. We finally made it with only a few minutes left to spare. Fuck. My sister couldn’t understand how we could have learned the correct platform since it has no relation to the printed ticket, but we learned with some research that you have to look at the digital screens to learn what platform your train is going to be at, similar to airports and gates. Shit, we messed up here. We survived but it was pure luck, what if the platform had been platform 1? We would have missed our train for sure. Damn.
Once we got on the shinkansen, thing were pretty smooth once we got out and into the city area, things were ok. We found our hotel and just waited for our check-in time. There was a nearby park where people were just chilling, which was cool.
To also kill time we also went to a local supermarket to buy some drinks/bread/buns. The amount of cooked prepared food that looks good is insane, it puts our grocery stores to shame. Look at these prices, looks tasty too.
Once we checked in, we literally put an alarm for like 2-3 hours and slept in our room. We were exhausted mentally and physically after our shinkansen trauma. We we woke up, it was almost 7pm, so decided to head on over and walk to dontonburi to see it at night. Nice famous giant crab here.
Yea boi, get that nice sign. Just like the Yazuka games.
Lining up for some street food, my sister got this popular 10 yen cheese coin that apparently is very popular on Japanese social media posts. Pretty cheap too filled with cheese only 500 yen.
Yep, proof of existence. Nice glico man in the backdrop. I took alot of drugs but all throughout our little evening walk I was holding in explosive diarrhea. Shit man. I hope it gets better, gotta start drinking Pocari sweat and some energy drink stuff soon.
We went to two Takoyaki places this night, Kukuru, popular and famous and this one by the river on the other side of the bridge, which I remember years ago as “Kevin’s choice” as best takoyaki that he took us to. I am sure we can learn the real name again but yea, this one was better than Kukuru, nice and gooey.
“Kevin’s choice” takoyaki in all of it’s glory, nice boat too. We managed to get seats right beside the shop which is cool. Super busy with tourists everywhere.
Dontonburi was super busy and packed with tourists of all kinds, Korean, Chinese, Vietnense, American, European, Eastern European even a few blacks. Wow. We decided to call it a relatively early night and went back to our hotel. This post itself is being written in the morning as we wake up because I was too tired to do it when we got back. Damn, ah-well.
Gonna head out today and check out the other parts of Osaka and probably go around Den Den Town. Just gotta drink more liquids and Pocari sweat so I can survive. Hopefully.