Can you take a deer through customs?
Today’s post might be a bit shorter than the past since it was mostly a travel day, but please enjoy our various rants on why Japan is awesome.
Today was the first day we allowed ourselves to sleep in and let me tell you it was underwhelming. Instead of waking up at 5:30, we managed to stay asleep till 6:30!!! Which was your average 8 hours of sleep, unfortunately. Nonetheless, we felt rested and were fortunate to have a slow morning. If only we knew how close that would be to our downfall. We got packed up and checked out of our hotel around 9:30. The poor concierge lady we had specialized in Japanese (of course) and Chinese so English was not her strongest and besides ordering things Japanese isn’t ours. Not to mention I keep trying to speak Spanish. Regardless we pushed through and were off to the 7/11 for a quick bite to eat. Our train was at 10:30 and after tackling the Tokyo subway and the infamously confusing Shibuya station with ease we might have been a little too confident. We got to Kyoto station and were totally lost. Ended up buying a ticket to the wrong train had to go to the help area and then rushed up the stairs and across the station to where we were supposed to be. All this around 10:15/10:20. I did a little research and booked us seats in the upper portion of our double-decker train which had huge windows along both sides for ideal sightseeing.
Eventually, we arrived in Nara and Mer was bursting with excitement. I was our navigator today because I forgot to turn my roaming data off. So we went on a little bit of a guessing adventure because like Nana says the best adventures happen when you are lost! Google Maps had us taking a bus to the center of Nara Park, but according to the map the start of the park (and less popular areas) was only a 5-minute walk away so we went there instead. We ended up walking over 15,000 steps inside Nara park alone exploring the various shrines and museums. Merrick was very jealous while we were hanging out with the deer because they seemed to ‘like me better’. After nearly sweating to death we wandered back to the station and this time seamlessly made it onto our train for Osaka.
Once we got off the train, immediately we could tell that Osaka had a totally different vibe from Tokyo and Kyoto. So far, given that we have been here for only a couple of hours, we feel like this is definitely a younger crowd and this is where the cool edgy people live. Mer said that Osaka has a similar edge to the Lower East Side and the sense of style has a unique, darker, streetwear vibe with a lot of American vintage and just a cool energy overall. There are cool concept stores everywhere, and the streets are very lively with people hanging out with their friends, shopping, eating etc. For dinner, I found a highly-rated restaurant via reddit and it did not disappoint. We had cold udon noodles with the yummiest dipping broth ever and some drinks. We stopped for a strawberry treat before heading back to the hotel to wind down. It was the perfect way to end the day.
✧˚ · .all blog posts are written by merrick bearson and conner couture.·˚ ✧