Day 1 - USA to Osaka, Japan

     We departed on Saturday at 11am from San Francisco and landed in Osaka on Sunday at 2:30pm. It was an 11 hour flight and Japan is 16 hours ahead so we lost a day flying there but would make it back when we returned.

     Our first stop was to redeem our Japan Rail Pass vouchers for actual passes that would allow us unlimited use of JR trains for 2 weeks. You can only get it by purchasing it at home and can't be bought once inside Japan. I held onto all the passes and we presented them at the side entrance/exit every time. At times we had to wait for others but most of the time it was pretty quick. It also makes a great souvenir!

     This was our first time in Osaka so we weren't as familiar with the area or exactly how to get to our hotel as the directions/map weren't the best. I chose our hotel based on the proximity to the JR station since we would be lugging around our suitcases and reviews from several websites. I booked two rooms with twin beds since getting a room with 2 queen beds for 4 people was nearly impossible to find. Most hotels in Japan have either single/twin beds or double/full size beds. I learned the hard way last time that two adults in a double is not comfortable unless you just lie down and don't move at all during the night. I asked for the rooms to be next to each other and the girls loved having their own room to themselves and all the toiletries that came with it.

     Our hotel gave us two goody boxes from the Glico company. The Glico man sign is famous in Osaka and I had no idea what they made or sold. I originally thought it was healthy stuff since they use a runner as their model but no. I later found out the 300 meter running man was used since their first candy contained 15.4 calories and a average man could burn that number of calories from running 300 meters. The only product I was familiar with was Pocky- which are chocolate covered biscuit sticks.

     We checked in and I didn't have anything planned for the rest of the day since it had already been a long flight and it was more important to rest up for the next day. Many business buildings in Japan have underground shops like convenience stores, banks, cafes and in our case a grocery store. We went there to get a quick bite of sandwiches, fruit and drinks before settling in. They had self check outs like back home and wasn't hard to figure out.

We watched the sunset while we ate and relaxed the rest of the night.

Jacqueline brought along stowaways in her bag.