Osaka - 30th November 2013

Finally, or sadly I should say, this is our last day in Osaka. Our flight is at night, so we had almost the whole day to shop, eat...

And we set off to Minoo Park. A train ride away from Osaka. Near to the northern part. Away from the city. It is famous for its waterfall and maple leaves. And boy, the crowd was horrendous! Everyone was going to the park perhaps and along the way, there are crackers in form of maple leaves. Apparently, they fried the maple leaves and is a very yummy tidbit!

The lovely leaves adorning the sky

Waterfall spotted at Minoo Park. I was trying out the ND8 I purchased from Yodobashi earlier on. And it works great in such images :)

The minoo waterfall...I dont feel it very magnificient though haha

Along the route to the waterfall, it has many temples and red bridges and maple leaves. The weather was excellent for a pleasant walk, hence explaining the crowd. This is our last day at Osaka. We wanna get more time spending with this beautiful scenery!

After visiting Minoo park, we moved off to the Instant Ramen Museum at Ikeda. In Singapore, we only had the luxury to taste some version of the Nissin Cup noodles, but actually there are many many varieties. In different parts of Japan, there is also different version of cup noodles with different soup base.

Look at the huge displays on the wall!

This is how cup noodles are made in the past.

If you fancy some time making your own cup noodles, you may do so but this requires reservation and a fee. Most people come with their kids for the fun of making noodles :)

We didnt taste any noodles. And Dear...suddenly has the urge to eat Kobe beef again before leaving Japan. So you can imagine the crazy us took a train to Kobe and visit Moriya again for the beef!! hahaha..and we didnt regret it.

All for the sake of this that melts in your mouth!

Before leaving Japan, we also had this collection of our favourite Ted collectibles!

We collected a whole series of these Ted figurines!

unfortunately, we didnt catch any of these from the UFO catchers! :(

This has been the most fruitful and relaxing trip to Japan, with great onsen experience at Kinosaki Onsen, great time spent eating beef at Kobe, great maple viewing at Nara and Kyoto, great food from everywhere, great and wonderful shopping at Osaka and most importantly, great hospitality from the Japanese everywhere that we visited. Till then, we will visit Japan in the near future again..hoping for a trip to Hokkaido next time.. I guess it will also be pretty pleasant to visit Kyoto during cherry blossoms period. Will be looking forward to that. Thank you everyone for reading my blog :)

Kyoto - 25th November 2013

Our last day in Kyoto.. before we left this beautiful paradise that is well-known for its autumn foliage..indeed it didnt disappoint us and in fact amazed us above our expectations despite the crowds haha..

We decided to do something..and that is to challenge myself into dressing up as a maiko while my husband was transformed into a samurai! Mine is more elaborate makeup, with a huge variety of colors to choose for my attire, my headset and my accessories. His is a very simplified version and we could take couple shots together.

The studio we went to is Yumekoubou at Kyoto station. We took some time to find the studio and we kind of lost our way. Fortunately, we managed to find it with the help of nice locals. The whole procedure of drrssing took about an hour and it was definitely notnan easy task. I felt really suffocated after putting on the heavy hairset and bundled by many layers of clothes. I can imagine how uneasy the maikos and geishas experienced during their training...

After 2 hours of photoshoot at the studio, we waited shortly for our photos. I got 20 shots of me and 2 shots with my hubby.. all printed in those neoprint sheet and I also have the softcopy of all the photos taken. As a maiko, you are not supposed to smile showing your teeth. There are times me and my hubby burst out laughing at each other after we were dressed up. It was such a hilarious time and we really enjoyed this activity. Hahaha..Im embarrased to show all the pics here except the one above :x

After Yumekoubou, we had lunch at Gion for some desserts and ramen..as well as visiting some of the souvenirs shops and buying enough macha-flavored Kitkat for my sister before bading farewell to Kyoto and en route towards Osaka..


Ramen!

Mont Blanc cake!

The trip to Osaka is kinda quick..I think within half an hour, we reached Osaka and were greeted by...so far..the most impressive hotel to us..and that was Hotel Hankyu International Osaka. It was a deal gotten from booking.com and Dear booked it simply because of the huge room size and impressive features in the room. We were very amazed upon entry into the room and service was excellent as well by the hotel staff in explaining each feature in the room! Always appreciate the hospitality by the Japanese.

It was already evening by the time we freshened up and decided to hop by Umeda streets for our dinner. We chanced upon this gyoza store..its pretty cramped inside wth people smoking and drinking asahi beer. We didnt mind as the strong scent of the gyoza kept us enthralled..and we were glad to have our dinner there.



Truly an authentic experience..eating gyoza and drinking asahi beer at a temperature of 6C during the night :)

We called it a day and went off to the nearby Isetan to purchase Kyoho grapes!


I  didnt know about this species of grapes until Dear recommended me its a must-try during his biz trip 2yrs back. And true enough, we can only find this grapes in Kansai region, not in Tokyo. Very very nice grapes and what we saw here in Singapore are usually imported from Taiwan which taste slightly sour. But from Japan, the kyoho grapes all taste sweet and its juice burst right into your throat once u consume it! Im not kidding, you just gotta try it when you are in Kansai region. And its definitely much cheaper than in Singapore. In Singapore, from Pokka Juice, we have the Kyoho grape flavored drink now.. a way to satiate our desire for Kyoho grapes at times when we miss Japan hahaha

I forgot to mention...the room that we stayed in has a full length window view where you can see the skyline of Osaka..what more can we ask for indeed! Rest early!