Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to join a work trip out in Taiwan. Afterwards, Betty and I decided to travel to Japan for our first time! We decided to visit the more “traditional” Japan and went to Oaska, Nara and Kyoto.

We landed late at night and went straight to our hotel. The Mitsui Garden hotel is about a 10 minute walk from the downtown-ish area, but the view of this little waterway was spectacular. One thing about even Osaka was the lights of the city at night were seriously cool.

What is Japan without a castle? Apparently this one was a famous for it’s role in the 16th century helping unify Japan.

Throughout the tourist areas, they served green tea ice cream and a bunch of snacks. I opted for this HUGE sweet potato that they slowly bake in a wood-fire oven. This this was amazing and helped with the cold winter!

Then we went on to Dotonbori to see this famous Glico man advertisement, meet with our old friend from school Jon and eat some conveyor belt sushi. Surprisingly, the sushi was relatively cheap and great quality for being in the middle of the most touristy spot of Osaka.

Next stop was the Osaka Aquarium. Not as impressive as Monterey, but why not because… aquarium.

Obligatory shark cage shot. Clearly we were fearful for our lives.

After that, we hopped on the ferris wheel outside of the Osaka Aquarium to enjoy the beautiful afternoon view towering over the bay and bridges. Next, we went to the Umeda Sky Building. What an amazing piece of architecture.

Betty and I timed this pretty much perfectly for sunset. The view of Osaka was beautiful, especially with some rain clouds int he distance. Osaka is quite a large city (2x SF size and 3x SF population), but it’s cool having a little bit of a different geography (mainly, being on an island with lots of bridges).

On our way back down, the spectacle of the Sky Building is just as amazing from below.