hello tokyo bye bye osaka

Day 10: Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan - CosmoTower - Umeda Sky Building - Kani Doraku - Dotonbori

We checked out early and bullet it to Osaka. No matter how many times we saw the bullet and got to ride on one we were always in awe of it. It was fast, punctual, cheaper and more comfortable in terms of space than flying. Plus there was no need to check in your luggage.

We were both excited to be back in the big city!! On top of that, we were even more delighted to discover our hotel had an excellent location. That is, less than a minute walk to the famous crab restaurant (Kani Doraku) and the takoyaki stand where we often saw queues for.

Our first stop for the day was Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan - one of the biggest aquariums in the world. My friend really enjoyed it here as it was her first time visiting an aquarium. The aquarium felt a bit like a spiral maze, it had sections dedicated to animals or fish found in that particular region like penguins for Antarctica and colourful reef fishes for the Great Barrier Reef. It was funny seeing all these reef fishes because I couldn't help thinking, "It wasn't this colourful when I was snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef!"

The CosmoTower was nearby, so we decided to check that out too. It was really quiet on this side of town. The views from the observation deck just reinforced Osaka as a port city because we could see PLENTY of container ships here.

Next was the Umeda Sky Building. By this time the sun had already set and finding it was a bit of an adventure. It was a 15 minute walk from the Umeda station and at this point any type of walking was a real big effort for us. The building itself was a formidable sight, you didn't have to be an architecture buff to gloss over the coolness of it. What was really memorable was the awesome looking escalators and the panoramic views of Osaka City.

We had already made dinner reservations for the crab restaurant for 8 that night. This was probably one of the best meals I had on the entire japan trip and a highlight of osaka!! It was an 8 course meal. The first crap dish to come out was cold crab, this was followed by sashimi crab, and then it was time to grill our own crab. In my opinion, and my friend would agree, this was by far the best way to enjoy these crabs. OISHII!! 

We really could have stopped there, but then more dishes kept rolling out like crab soup and crab sushi. All this was finished by a simple dessert of vanilla ice-cream with green tea matcha, which would be the Japanese version of affogato. 

After dinner, we decided to explore our neighbourhood. And what a neighbourhood Dotonbori made!! The place just came to life at night and was really buzzing. Being the red light district part of the town, there was really nothing unsafe about it. Instead, we found it really entertaining just people-watching and seeing all these interesting characters go about their nightly business.