Travel

4 Day Osaka Trip: Where We Ate, Stayed and What We Did

With summertime just around the corner my husband and I have been tossing around the idea of heading back to Japan for a few days and it got me reminiscing on our 4 day Osaka trip last summer. The heat and humidity was like nothing I’d ever experienced before but it was still one of the best trips I’d ever been on.

If you’re South African and need info on how to apply for a Japanese visa you can check out my post about that process here. For now, let me show you what our four-day itinerary in Osaka looked like.

Apps To Download Before Visiting Osaka

Before anything else you need to have two apps for a trip to Japan: Google Maps and GO Taxi app. Tackling public transport wasn’t something we wanted to try on our first visit so setting up the taxi app before leaving Korea was a priority.

As for walking around, our research showed that Google Maps was all we needed—and it was perfectly accurate.

Day 1: Arrival, Dotonbori and Amazing Sushi

How To Get From Kansai Airport To Osaka

Once we’d landed at Kansai we purchased an eSIM to make sure we could get around with ease. Our next step was booking bus tickets to Osaka City Air Terminal (OCAT) Building. We looked into taking a taxi straight to our hotel but that was way too expensive for us. The buses were pretty frequent so we didn’t have to wait too long and the ride itself was about 40 minutes.

Since it was our first day we decided to walk the 30 minutes from Osaka Bus Terminal to our hotel in Dotonbori—this was a big mistake. The early afternoon heat was wild! We avoided direct sunlight as best we could but that walk absolutely humbled us. We thought walking would be a good way to really see Japan and feel what Osaka is like. Instead we were counting down the meters until we finally reached our hotel.

Our Hotel Recommendation In Osaka

Using bookings.com we found R Hotel Honmachi—well priced, friendly staff, excellent location, very comfortable and clean. I really appreciated the pamphlet in our room with recommended places. You scan the QR code and it’ll take you to a website with a bunch of different hot spots to check out. This was how we found nearby restaurants to go to.

Jinen Restaurant For Sushi

By the time we’d reached the hotel, checked in, cooled down and refreshed ourselves a little we realised we were ravenous. So we chose sushi at Jinen from the hotel pamphlet and made our way there for a late lunch.

*Tip: carry a parasol if you go in the summer time, they made a big difference whenever we were walking around.

Once seated we were shown an English menu and a QR code. This took us to the ordering site for the restaurant, essentially you order as you go. We did run a few screenshots through a translator to understand how to place the actual orders but once we’d figured that out, we couldn’t be stopped.

I don’t know if it was the fish itself, the skills of the chefs or maybe simple mind-over-matter, but I still dream about all those pieces of sushi. There’s nothing like it. We tried as many different pieces as we could and each one was a crescendo of flavour that I’d never known could exist in such minimal ingredients. All I can say is, sushi in Japan is unmatched.

Exploring Dotonbori At Sunset

After that unbelievably good meal we thought, since the sun was setting, a walk around Dotonbori would be nice. It was still very hot and humid but we soldiered on nonetheless. Dotonbori is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Osaka, so as expected, it was busy. Given that we’d already eaten we just wanted to get a feel for the place and snap some pictures. This was probably when we first truly felt like we were in Osaka.

Steamed Chicken And Rice Bowl

We’d spent the remainder of our afternoon and early evening exploring Dotonbori at a very leisurely pace. When dinner time came around we once again consulted the trusty pamphlet QR code. Dinner was to be steamed chicken and rice bowls at Nakau Osaka Honcho; simple, cheap and delicious. This was clearly one of the quick-meal kind of places. You order at a kiosk, take a seat and wait for you meal—very much introvert friendly.

Osaka 7-Eleven For Dessert

To end off our first night we decided to have a look at some of the sweet treats in 7-Eleven. Honestly, we just picked up whatever looked good. We ended up trying some sort of mango jelly-pudding thing and a banana milk. Both pretty nice, nothing super special but enjoyable.

Day 2: Osaka Castle and Omeda Sky Building

Osaka 7-Eleven For Breakfast

These 7-Eleven breakfasts were one of my favourite parts of the day. I was in love with the smoothie machine! You choose your cup from the freezer; green smoothie, berries, mango…so many choices🥹. Pay for your cup then head over to the smoothie machine, scan the cup’s barcode and place it in the machine. In a matter of seconds you have a freshly made, delicious and healthy morning smoothie!

As for the onigiri, the filling choices all looked really good. The shrimp and mayonnaise ended up being my favourite but the red salmon and salt was good, too.

Visiting Osaka Castle

Our first stop for the day was Osaka Castle. Since we had a fairly early start to our day and the morning heat wasn’t all that bad we chose to walk 40 minutes to Osaka Castle from the hotel. It was a fairly decent walk although by the time we got to the park entrance the heat had got significantly more intense. We stopped for a few bottles of ice cold water before taking a very slow walk to the castle itself. The walk is only about 15 minutes but we stopped a lot along the way for some pictures and water breaks.

We didn’t feel compelled to enter the castle itself, the view from the outside was satisfying enough for us. We had a look at the souvenir stores and made our way to the taxi rank at the entrance of the park—our next stop was Umeda Sky Building.

Takimi Koji Restaurant Alley

The taxi to Umeda Sky Building from Osaka Castle took about 20 minutes. Once we’d arrived we began our search for Takimi Koji Restaurant Alley. It was around 14:20 when we got to the alley and it was totally empty—perhaps going post lunchtime was the trick. We got to walk around and take our pictures quite peacefully.

There were obviously a lot of restaurants to choose from which had us rather spoilt for choice until we saw a ramen spot—immediate yes. My husband chose noodles with a dark clear broth while I opted for a creamier one and we shared some fried dumplings. Both bowls of ramen were deliciously savoury, comforting and flavour packed. And I’m pretty sure you can’t go wrong with fried dumplings, an easy winner.

For our after lunch coffee (or in my case, matcha) we headed a few floors up to a cafe. We spent about an hour here people-watching and sipping on some warm beverages. After the morning of walking we’d had this moment was so relaxing. There was something so satisfying about watching people slowly gather and cross the road every time the lights changed.

We headed to Kuchu Teien Observatory after the cafe but only to purchase our tickets. We wanted to wait for sunset since once you enter the observatory deck you cannot exit and return. Plus, we weren’t sure if they had a limit on the number of tickets sold.

Umekita Park

With our observatory tickets secured we explored the outside of Umeda Sky Building a bit more. We hung out by a pond for a while, took pictures of the building and made our way to Umekita Park. This was a great place to laze around on the grass under some trees and just kill time. Which is exactly what we did until just before sunset when headed back to the observatory.

Kuchu Teien Observatory At Sunset

If you’re planning to catch the sunset from the deck I’d recommended making your way to the Kuchu Teien Observatory at least 40 minutes before sunset. There will very likely be a line of people waiting to take the elevator up, there are also a few picture spots along the way and there’ll also be a line going up the stairs to the deck entrance.

The 360 degree view of Osaka’s skyline itself was beautiful. But once that night sky begins to awaken with the slow shifting of the sun and the city lights start to sparkle all around you—it’s an absolute sight to behold. It felt like stepping into a photograph, entirely unreal. I cannot recommend seeing it for yourself enough. We stayed on the deck until the sky had lost all its colour and it was magical.

Osaka 7-Eleven For Dinner

Our taxi ride home unexpectedly continued in the theme of magical sights by heading down a street covered in lights, it felt very much like Christmas in August. For our dinner this night we wanted to try all the things we’d had our eyes on at 7-Eleven. We definitely bought way too much but it was such fun to be back in our hotel room watching TV and eating a ton of yummy convenience store food. The perfect end to our day.

DAY 3: Universal Studios Japan

Our day at Universal Studios was like nothing I could have foreseen. Getting to share my first ever Universal experience with my now husband was a phenomenal blessing. The undeniable joy and nostalgia that I felt did in fact bring tears to my eyes. Which is why Universal will have to get it’s very own post in the future. I promise it’ll be worth the wait.

Day 4: Exploring Dotonbori Before Heading Home

And just like that we were waking up on our 4th and final day in Osaka. By this point we still hadn’t fully explored Dotonbori so we’d saved our last few hours to do exactly that. We had our 7-Eleven smoothies and just walked wherever looked picturesque. Once on the main street we had to try takoyaki. I already knew I wasn’t a fan of these fried creamy octopus balls but my husband needed to try the popular Japanese snack—turns out he’s not a fan either. I think it’s the intense fishy flavour and the mushy texture of it that doesn’t really speak to us, still glad we tried it though.

If you’re into getting cool pictures do some research on YouTube for the secret alleyways along Dotonbori. They’re certainly worth checking out if you can find them.

We thought we’d find somewhere to eat in Dotonbori but we soon realised we both wanted our final meal in Japan to be at our favourite sushi restaurant—yes, the one we’d been to only once before. It was the perfect start to our trip three days prior and now it was a bittersweet end.

Finally we took a taxi to the bus terminal and just over an hour later we were back at Kansai International Airport ready to head back to Korea and start brainstorming our next trip to Japan👀.

Hi, I'm Jessie

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