April 12, 2025: Alright, so our first real day in Osaka! The 5 of us left our humble abode with one mission in mind: A breakfast or brunch spot! One of the guys had already researched where we could go and how to get there (Thank you Nate!), so the rest of us followed along. Our destination was a place called ‘Eggs N Things’ and we were going to get there by train. Train as in transit, not bullet train. The walk to the train was around 15-20 minutes, and the weather was beautiful. Some random pictures of the streets we walked from our Airbnb to the train station (see below)… Bicycles are apparently super popular in Japan, there were so many people riding them everywhere we went. And they were all on the sidewalks too, so we had to be very careful not to get hit!
We saw these yellow bumps (dots and lines) on seemingly every sidewalk, and we did A TON of walking during our stay in Japan. Word on the street was they are there to assist visually impaired persons. I had to Google it and apparently they are called Tenji Blocks, with the dots signifying hazards and the lines meaning a safe path to travel. This I think is a great idea, haven’t seen them in any of my other travels that I can recall. Learned something, woooo!
BUT!!!! We spent a good amount of time wheeling our luggage on the sidewalks (including in the airport) and holy moly these bumps wreaked complete havoc on the suitcases. It was difficult to wheel our bags over them and you couldn’t really go around easily. My one buddy’s big suitcase actually had a wheel break right off and he could no longer wheel it properly so he had to buy a new suitcase. Rotten luck!
So we found our way to the train station and got to try for the first time, the greatest invention to ever exist…. The Suica card!! I want to say it’s the transit card for Japan, but it does even more than that! It’s a digital card that I installed directly into my Apple Wallet on my phone, and loaded it with funds using my Apple Pay. For transit services, there are gates and you just run your phone over the gate and it lets you enter and starts your trip. Then at your destination, you scan out at an exit gate and are then charged accordingly from the card balance! When scanning, I didn’t have to open my phone or Apple Wallet or anything. Just run the phone over the gate and Suica automatically knew what to do. It was like magic!
I was able to use the Suica card at other places too, like 7-Eleven and some retailers. It was AWESOME! I have looked in Apple Wallet for similar cards for other countries including Canada all to no avail so far. There were ones available for other southeast Asian countries. Why not anywhere else??? Are we that far behind in the times? This thing was so convenient!
After taking the train to what I believe was the Umeda shopping district in Osaka, we reached our destination… EGGS N THINGS!! How very non-Japanese of us. Apparently Hawaiian according to the sign! We sat outside on the patio since it was so nice out. No jacket required!
The menu in both English and Japanese displayed some very familiar items like omelets, eggs benedict, and even burgers. The Sakura Lemonade looked so enticing that I tried it rather than a coffee. How did that happen?! YOLO I guess! Or FOMO maybe! It was Cherry Blossom ‘flavoured’, and it’s cherry blossom season in April so why the heck not? And it was pretty good, as was my omelet:
I did NOT order this waffle, someone at my table did though!
After breakfast we wandered around the area hitting up some of the record stores and entering a few of the buildings, most of which seem to be malls. Some were 15 levels high or more! And just store after store after store on every level. So much shopping… And soooo many people. These places were packed!
Maybe we just picked the right buildings I don’t know, but there were pop-culture related pop-up stores everywhere. Sounds like pop-up stores are a big thing in Japan… Here one week, gone the next! And Gundams… They were everywhere too. After wandering around for hours and seeing them just about every place you look, it kind of makes you want to get one. It doesn’t help that they remind me of our old beloved Transformers toys. I managed to resist though!
The Nintendo and Capcom STORES. I could have easily filled up my big suitcase from these. Why did I get no pictures inside the Nintendo store?!! It was so colourful and like strolling through Super Mario World. Except for the crowds! It was so busy in there you could barely walk around. Sardine city! It was Saturday I suppose, but can’t these people come here any time they want?!! Lots of tourists though, I suspect. Like us! Lots of other game shops around as well, and many statues and life-size figures on display.
The Pokémon store… Or should I say, ‘Pokémon Center Osaka.’ I have never tried any of the Pokémon games out there but have always liked the style and cuteness of its characters! I wanted to go in but IT WAS SO BUSY. As bad or worse than the Nintendo shop for crowds. Is it always like this?!! SO. MANY. PEOPLE!!
I caved. I wanted to look, so I went in and very slowly (not by choice!) navigated around the Pokémon aisles. I grabbed a giant Snorlax plushie and some other small items before noticing that probably half the crowd in the store was the lineup to pay. GAAAAH! It took just shy of an hour to get through that line. Seriously, is it always like this??!
And yes, the Snorlax I acquired is huge. It took up about a third or more of the space in my large suitcase, and I bought it at the beginning of my trip, and I hauled it for 3 weeks all over Japan and later New Zealand, and I probably could have got one back home in Calgary if I really wanted!! NO REGRETS WHATSOEVER. As it turns out, every hotel I stayed in from Tokyo to Wellington to Auckland had a very insufficient pillow situation, in my opinion. Our Osaka Airbnb was well stocked though! Tokyo was the worst, with only one flat pillow per bed, and no extras even though I asked every freakin’ day! But more on that later. The Snorlax filled the void and helped me sleep much more comfortably on this adventure!
One last stop of the day… DAISO, Japan’s dollar store chain… We have these in Canada!!! They are awesome, there is one in Richmond, BC!
The general vicinity of where we were, from the bullet train to our Airbnb to the shopping district we visited:
