Japan Day 8: Imperial Palace, Nijo Castle, Osaka Castle

We left the hotel at 9am to check out the imperial palace. We arrived shortly before 10am and were fortunate because a free English tour was being held at 10am. We had to register our passports before we were allowed in the grounds.

The palace tour lasted an hour and gave us a neat look into the imperial age of Japanese history. Imperial palace suggests that we went inside somewhere but actually we walked around the palace grounds because no one is allowed inside unless you are super special.  Here are some pics!

After the palace tour we stopped at a small local Japanese restaurant for Brunch. Wow! One of the best meals of the trip. We sat on the floor cross legged and each ordered something different shown below. The prices were extremely reasonable and the portions were big.  My mom's chicken karage was one of the best we've ever had!

After lunch we headed to Nijo caslte which was a 20 min walk away. The castle was of the shogun era and you could see it was much more embellished with detail compared with the imperial style arcitecture.

The main castle floors have some sort of metalic spring system on the floor that make it sound like nightengail birds chirping as you walk. The sound was quite neat!

We walked around the rest of the grounds before heading to the train station and catching our train to Osaka.

It was a pretty short ride but by the time we checked into our small guesthouse it was starting to get dark.

The guesthouse u-en was a really neat little place. It used to be an old print shop but was converted into this little community hostel type place. It had a really friendly hip vibe to it which I quite liked. After we were given the tour we dropped off our stuff and headed to Osaka castle which was a 10min walk away. By the time we reached the castle it was pretty much dark. However the castle and the surrounding walls and moat were lit with lights and it looked very romantic.

We walked around the large castle grounds and made our way through the castle walls up to the castle. It was really neat how everything was still open to the public to just walk around in. We snapped some photos and headed back to the local train to get some dinner. It was nice that the main transit system in Osaka was JR meaning our pass got us on for free.

I had seen on the map at the hostel an area close by that had cheap food so we headed there.

When we got off the train we found ourselves in a really long indoor/outdoor mall. There were lots of shops but not really that many restaurants that interested us. Mostly standup sushi bars which may have been cool at a different time but we were tired and wanted to sit down.

We eventually found this little soup and gyoza place. It was just what we were craving. The gyozas didn't come with sauce but there was shoyu, vinegar, and sesame oil.

After diner we made our way back to the hostel and went to sleep.