Himeji Castle
Because we weren’t able to get to Himeji yesterday we set out early to go today and arrived at Himeji Castle by mid morning. Himeji castle is considered one of the biggest and best representations of Japanese Castle building. When you get off the train, its a short walk towards the castle, but you can see it right when you leave the station. As you get closer you start to realize the size of the complex as well as how beautiful it is. From the outside, its this lovely white structure, but even then you can see that there is function in its design.
Once you get into the castle complex you really start to appreciate just how intricately the castle is designed. Again its aesthetically pleasing, but also very fortified and I remember the five of us chatting about just how difficult it would have been to conquer this castle. We had a chance to tour the grounds as well as climb to the top of the main building.
It was quite a bit of walking and stairs so by the time we had toured most of it we were all, just a little pooped!
Joto Curry
Next on our list was lunch. We had all been craving a good Japanese curry meal and Osaka being Salmonella’s “hood” knew just the place to go. After riding the train back into Osaka, he took us to the Namba area where we arrived at Joto Curry. This was a small curry store that could maybe at most seat 15 or so people. Similar to most restaurants in Japan, you ordered from a vending machine near the front and gave the resulting ticket to the waitress to prepare your order. When the curry and small salad arrived we scarfed it down FAST. It was VERY good and also because we were VERY hungry.
Shopping in and exploring Osaka
We didn’t have much planned for the afternoon and wanted to do some shopping. We didn’t want to carry that much with us through Japan so we had made it a point to do most of it in Osaka. I’m not a huge shopper, but did end up picking up a few items here and there. For the most part it we spent the afternoon in different stores, but we did end up in some cool areas of Osaka including Shin Sai Bashi, Dotonburi and Kuromon Ichiba Market.
YakinuM Dotonbori
We shopped for the better part of the afternoon. We were all ready and extremely excited for dinner. Up until now we’d not had a chance for famous Japanese steak and tonight we had reservations at a steakhouse called YakinuM Dotonbori. We had been looking forward to this all day. We ordered a platter with different cuts of beef, along with kobe beef sushi and garlic rice.
Before we arrived, many of our friends had told us to prepare ourselves for amazing beef. I didn’t quite understand them until I started eating here. Coming from North America, we have good beef and it tastes great. So for something like this to kind of change the scale entirely was a bit of an experience in itself. Sufficed to say it was very very good and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience!
With our belly’s full and all of us extremely satisfied, we called it a night and headed home. We were all pooped from the morning visit to the castle, as well as shopping. I didn’t realize how tiring shopping can be!
Tomorrow would be my last full day in Japan before flying out the day after. We planned to visit a few places around Kyoto tomorrow, so we were excited!