Osaka!

I didn't do any travelling over the christmas break so when Kaisu my Finnish friend said she would like to go to Osaka to vote for the Finnish election i thought i would tag along for a two day trip!

We stayed one night at a hostel and the other night was spend on the night bus.

We got the JR bus which is actually very comfy and there is lots of space for you

 We got the 9am bus which meant us getting up early to get the 8am bus to the centre of town, I'm glad that i'm one of those people who can nap :P the time went quick on the bus because of that!

 One of the bus stops to pick up people was near the sea 

We arrived a bit dazed and I seriously felt like a country bumpkin who has arrived at the city for the first time because i was used to Kanazawa low buildings compared to Osaka's skyscapers. We managed to find our way to the Consulate for Kaisu to vote even though we totally missed the entrance and managed to find ourselves at the car park around the side of the building. :P we were both to busy looking around to notice the little Finland flag on the door.

Then we made our way to the hostel which was nice and basically was an apartment coverted into a hostel.  We dropped our stuff and explored! 

Our hostel was near America town so having not able to find the Statue of Liberty that was somewhere we decided to eat at Burger King! My first time ever in Japan and the chicken burger i had was good! Especially with my melon soda! But the onion rings were a big disappointment :(

 Then we walked to Namba and did some shopping.  Below is the famous lights of Namba

 After some walking around and uncertainty from two other finnish people in Osaka as well we decided to eat and of course eat what Osaka is famous for: okonomiyaki! We found this information booth which basically you tell them what you want and they take you there.... we got 10% off as well!

 After spending some time in the restaurant and then probably half an hour trying to find where to meet and find each other we joined together and got the night started!!! Nomihoudai!!!! (All you can drink!) Afterwards doing some Purikura (picture taking in booth) we did some karaoke

We didn't get back to the hostel until 3am :P Surprising the guy who owns the hostel was still up at this time too...

When we woke up we both were really tired... Kaisu wasn't able to sleep and i was just tired :P, after slowly getting ready and leaving the hostel with our stuff we decided to eat and then head to the Osaka castle area

 I had to eat the second thing i find Osaka famous for: Takoyaki! Even though you can go anywhere in Japan and buy this i thought i had to eat some here in Osaka. We walked around the area and then decided to head for the Osaka Museum of History. Where in four floors it explained how Osaka developed in different eras.  It was interesting but at this point we were really really tired.

We stayed until the museum was going to close at 6pm and had about 4/5 hours to kill before our bus.  We headed to Umeda where the bus stop was and hanged around, drank coffee/tea to keep alive and walked until we got on the bus.  It took me a while to get to sleep, i think it made it easier for me to sleep when they finally switched off the lights.  We arrived in Kanazawa at 6am.... sooo early! We had to wait for like a hour for a bus to get to the bottom of the hill but luckily that day was still the examination weekend that was happening nationwide and extra buses were put on so we could get a bus to get back to Kanazawa Univerisity!!! The enabled to have a quick shower and then get out again for 8:30am to go to Toyama for my group project....