Osaka, Japan: Colourful Dotonbori and a day at Universal Studios

Before arriving here in Osaka, we decided to spend a night in the city of Kobe. I'd never heard of Kobe before a few days ago, but the Japanese family who hosted Ben and I in Hiroshima had told us that it was worth seeing (and that the food there was amazing!) so we thought it would be fun to stop there for a night.

The first thing we did in Kobe was take a walk down to its famous port, which looked beautiful all lit up at night but was also surprisingly quiet. Even more towards the centre, the city felt really uncrowded, but on the way to our hostel we had one of the best ramen dinners I've tried since arriving in Japan!

At Kobe Port

Kobe was really nice but didn't feel like somewhere you could stay for a long time as a tourist. Osaka was only about a half an hour train ride away from Kobe, so we headed straight there the following day to soak up some more of the liveliness, vibrance and character of metropolitan Japan.

When we arrived, Osaka's famous bay area was super clean but busy and filled with countless food courts, shopping malls and an enormous aquarium. We wandered around this part of town for a while before travelling to my favourite place in Osaka; Dotonbori.

Dotonbori reminded me a lot of Tokyo with all of its neon advertisements, colours and general buzz, but was also very different in that through the centre, there was a long canal reflecting the glow of all the bright lights around it.

In front of the Ebisu Bridge in Dotonbori

Another unique thing about Dotonbori was all the huge, extravagant mascots which hung above lots of its shops and restaurants. They made the city feel even more fun, eccentric and different to home!

We had a lot of fun wandering around Dotonbori's streets, eating some of Osaka's famously amazing street food and trying Starbucks’ limited edition Japanese sesame latte (which was actually way better than it sounds!)

We also had to stop and get a touristy picture by the most famous street sign in Osaka - the Glico man - which has apparently been up there now for nearly a hundred years!

For the whole time we've been in Osaka, we've stayed in the Umeda Dormitory hostel, which is run by a really lovely, helpful Japanese man. It's only costing us £7.50 each night (!) and of course it's pretty basic but still comfortable and totally fine for just a few nights. At this point, we’ve definitely become experts at enjoying Japan on a budget!

That said, we’ve also splashed out on a few treats while here, and the biggest in Osaka was probably our day trip to Universal Studios Japan, which was super fun.

We'd bought fast passes for USJ in advance but we didn’t end up needing them because it was the first day back from school holidays in Japan so the queues were tiny anyway.

The only slightly strange thing about the theme park was not being able to understand what the characters of all my favourite childhood movies were saying. Japanese-speaking Dumbledore definitely sounded pretty different!

We finished up our trip with a visit to Osaka’s famous castle the next day. The castle itself was beautiful (bright white, multi-layered and very traditionally Japanese) and we spent quite a while there watching a funny Spanish street performer entertaining (and embarrassing) some other tourists and Japanese people in front of it.

Osaka Castle

Our time in Japan seems to have gone so quickly it’s become one big, amazing blur (like most of our travels so far, to be honest!)

I’ve always wanted to visit this country but never thought I actually would until we happened to have the idea just a couple of weeks before heading here. Everyone says it but it’s definitely true - spontaneous adventures are definitely the best thing about going travelling without all your flights pre-booked.

I’ve completely fallen in love with Japan while here. The people were kinder than I could have expected, the food tastier and the culture shock bigger! Hopefully, I’ll be able to come back one year in Spring when the cherry blossoms are out (and it’s a little warmer outside!)