20140120

Osaka, Hiroshima & Kobe 2013: Part 3


Part 1  |  Part 2  |  Part 3

Third and final part of my family trip to Osaka, Hiroshima and Kobe in summer 2013 consists of days six, seven and eight (leaving day). On day six we went to Osaka city and just shopped around, we didn't do any site-seeing except for a failed journey to Tadao Ando's Church of the Light (erm, scroll down to read more about this failure I guess). On day seven we made a short day trip to Wakayama to go to this famous fish market which I'd been to once before, on my first visit to Osaka when I was in Year 8!

Day 6:
Arrival at Osaka, Church of the Light, shopping!



Morning from Arima Onsen! Tied up my third-day hair, post breakfast selfcam, ready to travel all morning to a new hotel in Osaka!











Pictures with trains and inside the trains... featuring me and my NDS, forever addicted to Pokemon White 2.





After dropping off our luggages at the Ramada Osaka (where we were going to stay for the final two nights in Japan), we wandered to a nearby fast food restaurant for lunch... service there was HORRIBLE!!! Never experienced such shit service in Japan in my life! Maybe the store owner hates Chinese people...?



Here is a picture of the front entrance and name of the restaurant, in case you ever so unfortunately stumble across it. Don't eat there!



Travelled all the way to Church of the Light in Ibaraki, Osaka, but it was closed. Actually I'd looked at their website beforehand and it was stated that if we wanted to visit, we had to call in advance and make an appointment. Lol I didn't bother cos I was lazy and I was scared I wouldn't be able to communicate with the Japanese people... and when we got to the church it was closed. =.= My Dad was so pissed at me for wasting our time. Sighhh sorry! At least I got a few pictures of and with the outer concrete facade... (lame)



My OOTD... tomboy tennis skirt bought on the second day in Japan!















Returned to the malls around and inside Osaka station! Shopping time!





TONS of yummy snacks for sale... had one of these! Can't remember which one but it was sickly sweet :X a bit too sweet for my liking haha.



And of course the store front had a huge grumpy bear toy which I had to selfcam with... SO cute!



Random shot taken by my Dad while I was choosing my candy with my Uncle. LOOK AT THAT BEAR. It's so adorable omg. Just slouching there.



The expensive malls were full of nice food! Felt so happy just walking around in such a city-like environment after days out in the hot spring and countryside areas.

















Random shots of the beautiful Osaka train station.

We shopped all late afternoon and evening but I don't think I got anything...? Oh wait I did, I bought a grey beanie on discount for only 500YEN! I actually don't really like shopping in Japan much cos I'm a cheap ass and the things there are too expensive for stingy me. Summer 2013 was also before Topshop opened in Hong Kong and I visited it for the first time while I was in Osaka that night... my first experience of Topshop to see what all the rave was about! Haha!

For some reason I don't have pictures of dinner but we ate at a random Thai restaurant in the malls called Tree Thai Café. It was nothing special, I didn't really want to eat Thai food in Japan actually, when I could just eat it anytime in Hong Kong. But all the other places were full up! It was the only place where we didn't have to line up long.

Day 7:
Day trip to Wakayama's famous fish market



Arrival at the Wakayama station! Getting ready to take the bus to the fish market.









Obligatory tourist pictures in front of the fish market.





Beautiful, clean interior. At this point my memory jogged and I actually remembered taking the exact same picture at the exact same location eight years or so ago. I mean, that giant floating fish is unmistakable...



Japan has cute stands and mannequins everywhere for your convenient photo taking. Perfect for the camwhore.



Sorry, no other pictures of the market but when it got to lunch time... lunch time is time for snap pics for the greedy girl! Haha we ended up at a random buffet inside the fish market. YES, buffet again! No wonder I gained so much weight wtf...











Cutely decorated interior of the buffet place. The selection of food wasn't wide but it was all very good quality (as with everything else in Japan) and it was super cheap! Lots of seafood and sushi and sashimi too! Omg the seared tuna was to DIE for.



Excited me with the "buffet" sign before I settled down with my food. Must record this happy moment (because moments after a binge-buffet are always sad, suicidal moments, sigh).



The always clean, always minimal and always healthy round one. On a cute kid's plate because that's how I roll. Oh, and see that chicken in the right hand corner...? It was SO good. I went back for tons more of those. It's not seafood (the speciality in the buffet), but I love chicken and although it wasn't dry dry chicken breast meat, it was marinated soooo damn perfectly. Everyone agreed that it was the tastiest dish!

PS: the BEST part of the buffet though would be the chocolate fountain! YES there was a chocolate fountain with ice cream puffs and fruits and biscuits and pretzels in a random cheap seafood buffet! Japan y u so perfect?



Me in a food coma after lunch. I was smiling but inside I was really depressed cos I ate entirely too much haha. I think after this photo I went back for more desserts though... hello self-control!



A picture with a sign of food. Can't read Japanese and it's been too long since the trip so I can't remember if it was the sign for the buffet? Either way I look decent so UPLOAD!



Watching the woman demonstrate chopping a fresh tuna! They sold the tuna fresh right after the chopping. Yummm sashimi :D (except none of us could fit more food in at that point)





Photos with the architecture around the fish market.



More markets, but fruits and vegetable markets!



Waiting for the bus back to the JR station so here's a picture with a random rock cos we were bored.



And another touristy picture with the harbour.



Happy with our buys back to the city!



We didn't eat dinner until really late cos we were all really full after lunch, but for dinner we bought tons of different foods at the supermarket! I wanted to skip dinner cos I felt so sickeningly fat after the buffet but I couldn't stop myself as soon as I saw the spread of food. =.= Fml I gained so much weight during the trip? (thank god I lost it all when I got back to Hong Kong)

Day 8:
Bye bye Japan!



Started the day off with a supermarket breakfast (the leftovers) from the night before. Pumpkin and Japanese style salad, light and healthyyyy after the huge food intake the previous day haha.



But of course I had to buy bread afterwards. OMG this melon turtle bread was sooo damn cute. And yummy!



Arrival at Uemeda station.







Last chance to admire the beautiful station. Then Dad went with me to buy souvenirs back to Hong Kong. I bought like two boxes of mochi (the safest souvenirs from Japan because everyone likes mochi) but I was so dumb cos I forgot about the expiry date. =.= I ended up eating one whole box by myself back in Hong Kong LOL. I also search high and low for the Tokyo Banana everyone was raving about because the N's Girls requested it but I couldn't find it? I bought them the Osaka version instead...



Risotto at the airport. I actually finished the whole thing even after my breakfast and a few pieces of bread wtf. =.= It wasn't even good, it was too oily and it was Japanese-style risotto, which I didn't really like, but I was sooo damn hungry I just swallowed everything up. And I still had room for my airplane meal afterwards...

Well that's it!

Hope you enjoyed my Japan series! I think I have more than a thousand or even two thousand pictures, if I add up everything from my Dad and Uncle's cameras in total, and it was sooo hard to whittle everything down to around a hundred or so photos. But I guess the photos of this blog is me MUAHAHA, so endure my useless selfcams! The next time I'll probably be going to Japan would be summer 2014 if I decide to join my parents again (they love Japan as you can tell, they can visit the same country up to four times a year, EVERY year)!


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