Osaka

Our days in Osaka were remarkably busy. We explored not only Osaka itself but also the nearby cities of Kyoto, Nara, and Kobe—every one of them.

On the first day, we began in Kyoto.

Our first stop was Kiyomizu-dera.

The temple stands on a hillside, offering views across the city of Kyoto.

We then walked through nearby Ninenzaka and Sannenzaka, where we saw Hokan-ji’s famous five-story pagoda.

Nearby, we also found this distinctly Japanese Starbucks, where customers could sit on tatami while drinking coffee.

Then we reached the place I had most wanted to visit in Kyoto: Fushimi Inari Taisha. People online sometimes claim that it inspired the Grand Narukami Shrine in Genshin Impact, in which case there ought to have been Electroculi everywhere.

The resemblance to the game was difficult to ignore. I would not say the two looked exactly identical—only that there was practically no difference.

From there we continued to Nara and met its most famous creatures: the deer. After generations of exposure to tourists, Nara’s deer had lost all fear of people. If anything, they were the frightening ones. Hold food in your hand and a deer would reach over and eat it. Put the food in your bag and it would put its head into the bag and take it. More than once, we saw deer chasing people down the path. They were formidable.

Fortunately, we had no food in our hands.

We reached Todai-ji and finally shook off the herd behind us.

After walking around the temple, we wandered through a nearby park. There we found what may have been the finest cherry tree of the entire trip. What drifted through the air was not snow, but cherry blossoms.

And with that, our visit to Nara ended at remarkable speed.

On the second day, we went to Kobe. We began at Kobe Port Tower and took the elevator to the observation deck. Visitors could borrow various signs for photographs. One read “神戸ビーフ最高”—“Kobe beef is the best.” With my A0-level Japanese at the time, I somehow interpreted it as “Kobe’s tallest building.” I had thoroughly confused ビーフ, “beef,” with ビール, “beer.” Worse still, ビール does not mean building at all; that would be ビル. I had managed to be wrong twice in a single reading.

From the top, we photographed the panorama of Kobe Harbor.

Back at ground level, we stopped for a photograph at one of Kobe Harbor’s familiar landmarks. The area was crowded, so I used my usual method: wait for one group to leave, take the picture in the gap, and move on immediately.

At noon, we ate whatever we could find nearby. That had not been the plan: we entered a restaurant in Kobe specializing in Kobe beef, only to discover that this Kobe beef restaurant in Kobe had no Kobe beef. We were short on time, so a random lunch it was.

We then visited the Kitano Ijinkan district, a historic neighborhood on the slopes of Kitanocho in Kobe’s Chuo Ward, Hyogo Prefecture. After the Port of Kobe opened in 1868, many foreign residents settled in the area, leaving behind numerous Western-style houses from the Meiji and Taisho periods.

While waiting for our ride nearby, we found a small stall selling wagyu sushi. With my A0-level Japanese, conversation was out of the question; all I could do was point. It was spectacularly expensive. As I remember it, each piece worked out to more than ten US dollars, while the price in yen seemed to contain an alarming procession of zeros. The chef placed raw wagyu on sushi rice, then seared it with a blowtorch. As for the flavor, perhaps I simply lacked the palate to tell whether it was exceptional.

Next came Arima Onsen at the foot of Mount Rokko, home to the well-known Taiko footbath. I certainly was not getting in—the inconvenience was enough to deter me—but some of my companions were far more committed.

Nearby was also the Gososhi-an at Onsenji Temple, so we climbed up for a look.

That concluded our day in Kobe.

On the third day, we finally toured Osaka. We had been staying there for three days, and at last we were going to see the city itself. As one of Japan’s great food cities, Osaka demanded that eating be treated as a central part of sightseeing.

Over those days, we went through sukiyaki, sushi, gyudon, eel rice, and more.

At one meal, I encountered a remarkable hot pot. The pot was a sheet of paper.

It was an impressively sturdy sheet of thick paper. It sat over the induction cooker for more than an hour and survived repeated prodding with chopsticks without tearing. Had it failed, the result would presumably have been a major incident.

Beyond eating, we visited several of Osaka’s best-known landmarks, including Osaka Castle. Its main keep was visible from a considerable distance. We crossed the moat, wound our way through the grounds, and eventually arrived beneath the castle tower.

Admission required a ticket, and the line was enormous. While we waited, a staff member held up a QR code and explained that anyone buying online could skip the ticket line. We bought our tickets online and immediately bailed out of the queue.

From the tower, we could look down over Osaka Castle and out across the city.

We then walked through Osaka Castle Park. When all the cherry trees are in bloom, I imagine it must be an excellent place for hanami. Unfortunately, they had not fully opened yet.

We also checked off a few assorted sights around central Osaka. The subway helped, but the distances still involved plenty of walking, and by then we were tired. Eventually, we reached Namba Yasaka Shrine.

Getting there had been unexpectedly complicated. Osaka has several shrines with “Namba” somewhere in their names, and we walked straight to the wrong one. When the extravagant structure in the photograph was nowhere to be seen, I briefly assumed it had been demolished. Only later did I realize that we were simply at the wrong shrine.

With that, the final day came to an end.