Day 11 - Goodbye Shinjuku, Hello Osaka!
It was now time to depart my beloved Park Hyatt Tokyo. Staying here for 2 nights was a dream come true... but also kind of a tease! I doubt I'll ever get to stay here again, and now I know what I'll be missing.
Today we would be making our way to Tokyo Station to catch a shinkansen to Osaka. At this point we had lots of luggage. Between the two of us we had 2 large suitcases, 1 ridiculously large duffel bag (purchased at Don Quijote lol), a small suitcase, and a backpack. We didn't want to haul all of that onto the Shinkansen. So we packed enough for the 3 days we'd be in Osaka into the small suitcase and backpack, and were going to have the three large bags sent to our next hotel, the Hilton Tokyo Odaiba. The bags wouldn't arrive until the next day at the earliest, but that was plenty early for our arrival in three days time.
We had called Yamato Transport Co. ahead of our trip, and they said all we had to do was let the hotel know on the morning of our departure that we'd need bags delivered to another hotel. So when we were almost ready to check out, we called the concierge and told them we had three large bags we wanted to transfer to another hotel. Within minutes two ladies had come up to our room to take the bags downstairs. When we got downstairs, we just had to answer a couple of questions, provide the confirmation number for our next hotel, and agree to payment. I couldn't believe how cheap it was. To transfer three very large bags, it only cost $45.55! I was expecting it to cost that much per bag!
With the bags situated, we asked for a taxi. This was one of the rare occasions where the language barrier had an impact on our trip. We were planning on taking the taxi to Shinjuku Station, and then taking a train to Tokyo Station. We explained it a few different ways, and eventually I thought they understood. They asked which entrance, and I wasn't prepared for that (my mistake). I explained that we would be taking a train to Tokyo Station, and that I would look on Google Maps to try to find out which entrance. The cab driver nodded his head enthusiastically, and waived his hands indicating I didn't need to look it up, he knew where we were going.
Aaaaaand then he took us to Tokyo Station, lol. I figured it out pretty quickly by following along on Google Maps. I checked the estimate of what the fare would be to Tokyo Station, and it was something like $35, versus like $10 to get to Shinjuku Station. We decided it wasn't worth the hassle, and just enjoyed the ride to Tokyo Station. Had it been a $100 ride, I would have said something.
We got to Tokyo Station much earlier than we'd planned. We thought about walking around, but decided we'd make our way to our platform, as we really had no idea what we were doing. In retrospect, I wish we'd explored. We now know there is really no point arriving at your platform more than a few minutes early. And we were like 90 minutes early, lol.
Anyway, we picked up a couple of bento boxes and headed to the platform. Getting there early did have one benefit, though. There are hardly any seats, and we were able to snag some.
Finally, our train arrived.
We boarded our assigned Green car.
And we found our seats.
When I booked our JR passes, I spent a lot of time deciding whether to get the Green pass or not. Ultimately, I erred on the side of caution, and went with the more expensive passes. Man, I'm so glad I did! These seats are bigger than the seats in the regular cars... and I just barely fit in these. I'm pretty sure I would not have fit in the regular seats. That would have been so awkward and embarrassing!
Not only were the seats a bit too small for me, but I didn't have enough legroom. I had plenty of knee room, but not nearly enough foot room. The footrests were totally in my way. So for the next two hours or whatever, I was squished on all sides. I guess I should be happy my head wasn't hitting the top of the car!
Eventually, we dug into our bentos. I had fried chicken cutlets.
And Pocky had, well, a little bit of everything.
We both made very poor choices. Mine was soooo dry and dense, and none of her items really tasted like anything.
A woman pushing a cart with snacks and drinks came by a few times during the trip. The first time she came by, I was about to tell her we didn't need anything. But down on the bottom of her cart, I saw something I couldn't believe. Mini bottles of my favorite whiskey in the world, Yamazaki 12! This whiskey is very, very difficult to find in the states these days. I had no idea they made mini bottles of it! And they weren't insanely expensive. $11 each, and that came with a bottle of sparkling water. So I bought 4! I took these pictures at home after we returned.
These go nicely with my one remaining big bottle of the stuff.
I thought about giving them as gifts, but who am I kidding? They're for me!!!
When we booked our shinkansen seats, we made sure to get them on the Mount Fuji side of the train. The view wasn't too bad, though there were some clouds in the way.
Eventually, we got to Shin Osaka Station. For some reason, the time on the shinkansen went by much faster than a flight of similar length. The first thing we did after getting to the station was book our seats for the return trip in 3 days. Then, we went outside and got a taxi.
I booked 3 nights at the Hotel Keihan Universal Tower. It is right next to Universal Studios Japan. I love being able to walk from my hotel to the theme park. And it wasn't crazy expensive, either. We paid $160 a night. And when we first entered the hotel, we had very high hopes. It was quite beautiful inside.
We went up one floor (via elevator) to the front desk, and checked into our room. I had heard that people in Osaka didn't speak nearly as much English as people in Tokyo, and that immediately proved to be true. While checking in, I tried to inquire about the possibility of shortening our stay to 2 nights. I think I didn't realize just how far out of the way this area is in relation to the rest of Osaka. On the train ride I did some research, and realized we would have quite a trek to get to Dotonbori and the like. So I wanted to see if we could get a hotel in the thick of things for our last night in Osaka.
This request proved to be a huge ordeal. It took like 6 people before we got one that spoke more than a handful of words of English. She had "English" listed on her name tag. After a few minutes of phrasing our request in every way imaginable, she finally understood what we were asking. She said that yes, we could leave a day early. I looked at Pocky with a bit of relief on my face, and then the hotel employee continued "but no refunds". So she was saying we were more than welcome to leave whenever we liked, as long as we paid for all 3 nights. I guess it was good to know they weren't going to trap us in the hotel for 3 days!
We headed to our room. Every room we stayed in so far had been wonderful, and we were hopeful that the streak would continue. Yeah, not so much.
The room was old, tiny, and just felt dirty. I didn't take any other pictures, but the bathroom was very small and dingy as well. It did have one thing going for it, though. A pretty decent view. Universal was right outside our window!
There was absolutely nowhere to set anything in the room. There was a tiny little round table, and that was about it. I've probably stayed in a thousand different hotel rooms, and this was probably in the bottom 3 of all of them. And I haven't gotten to the worst part.
We decided to relax for a bit before heading to Citywalk for dinner. My wife laid down on the bed, and immediately got up and told me I wasn't going to be happy. I have a hard time sleeping in good beds. It's almost impossible for me to sleep in a really bad bed. And this was by far, without a doubt, the worst bed I've ever had the misfortune of "sleeping" in. People often refer to overly firm mattresses as feeling like sleeping on wood. Well, as soon as I laid down, I could feel literal wood digging into my back. This was like no mattress I've ever heard of. There was no cushion whatsover. It was literally wood wrapped in cotton or whatever. Spoiler alert: I literally didn't sleep a wink that night.
We decided to put off dealing with the bed and started out towards Citywalk. Even though our hotel is next to Citywalk, we somehow couldn't find it. We walked around for a good 15 minutes before we finally found an elevator next to a parking lot that had a Citywalk button in it. It had started to lightly rain, so it wasn't the best time to get lost. But we eventually found it.
We walked around for a bit, and found the entrance to the hotel I originally wanted to book. The Park Front hotel. The entrance to this hotel is literally just steps from the entrance to USJ. There are actually 2 different entrances connected to Universal and Citywalk. It looks quite nice from the outside. But then again, our hotel looked nice at first too! We didn't stay here because it was quite expensive. Almost double the price of our hotel, which is only slightly further away.
We were starving, and couldn't decide what to do for dinner. We decided to get a snack to hold us over until we decided. Citywalk has an area called Takopa Takoyaki Park. It's basically a food court with nothing but Takoyaki places. We couldn't decide which one to go to, but finally found something to help us make our decision. Only one of them had this giant Tanuki in front of their shop.
We got a combo that included two varieties of takoyaki. One traditional, and one with ponzu sauce. These were by far the worst takoyaki we had the whole trip.
We finally settled on a Shabu Shabu restaurant called Shabu Sai. The display in the window that advertised all you can eat Wagyu sold me.
We were seated and given an English menu. They had a few different options available. We went with the most expensive All You Can Eat option, which included their higher end meats like Japanese Black Wagyu, Kirishima Pork Shoulder Loin, Kirishima Pork Rib, and Japanese Beef.
In addition to the meats, they had self serve vegetables, soft drinks, and waffles (???). For an added charge, they also had all you can drink self serve alcohol.
We were told that they start with a selection of a few different meats. After those, you can order whatever you like. There is a limit of 4 orders of each type of meat. I don't know if that was per person, or per table. After we ordered, we went to get our drinks. I was delighted to see they had melon soda, but it was a different brand and it wasn't as good. When we got back to the table, the English menu was gone and had been replaced with a Japanese menu. It ended up taking forever to get another English menu.
This place was really good. Like best theme park meal ever good. After the initial meats, we basically just ordered the 4 higher end options over and over. Pocky enjoyed dipping the beef in raw egg. I tried it, but didn't care for it much.
I was absolutely stuffed when we left. I highly recommend Shabu Sai for any meat lovers visiting Universal. After eating, we walked the entirety of Citywalk, which includes 4 floors of shops and whatnot. Our last stop was the two story Universal Store.
Pocky bought a Minions headband to wear to the park the next day. After that we set out to find our hotel. And then we had a major DUH moment. The hotel connects directly to Citywalk!!!
The entrance is towards the back of the hotel, where you can't really see it from the front. I'm so glad we saw this, so we could use this to get to the park tomorrow!
We went back to our room and crashed. I should say that Pocky crashed. I was up all night because of the stupid bed.