Post by Ella Kagoshima is a small town of 600,000 people. Compare that to Osaka city with nearly 3 million and Tokyo city with 14 million. Our hotel in Kagoshima is not in an area with many restaurants so we relied on google maps to locate a few choices. We walked into a tiny place…
Day: April 5, 2025
…Yaki
Okonomiyaki is a savory Japanese pancake, usually made with a batter of flour, eggs, and dashi (Japanese broth or water), and then filled with shredded cabbage. Usually meat or seafood is folded in. Very thick. More than an inch I’d say. The topping is a Japanese mayo. Bonito flakes are available if you’d like to…
Takkyubin
Post by Ella What a deal. Luggage forwarding service (known as Takkyubin) is common all over Japan. I’ve used it three times now. From Osaka, we forwarded one suitcase to Fujiya Mae, our ryokan on our 4th night of our hike. We exchanged dirty underwear and socks for clean and stuffed little trinkets we’d picked…
Art and the inner hush
There’s always a minor sense of relief when we make it through the fleet of taxis (not to mention armada of buses) bunched around an historic site. So there was a little spring to our step leaving the Osaka Castle and trekking to the subway where we caught a metro that took us to within a…
Fron city to volcano by Shinkhansen
Post by Ella Osaka to Kagoshima, home of Mt. Sakurajima. 4 hrs 15 min. Not non stop but stops were brief. Be ready to get off (or on) the second the train stopped. One thing about going so fast (up to 200mph), it’s hard to appreciate the scenery. Quite a bit of the time we…
View from the castle keep
Yesterday morning was devoted to seeing the Osaka Castle and the National Art Museum. The castle, known for its eight story pagoda-style toshu, or castle keep, covers 15-acres with a river-size moat circling an enormous outer wall, and a smaller moat outside the inner wall. Built in the 16th century by the Toyotami clan, it was…