Travel With Phie

Day 5: Choose Your Own Adventure

We had been exploring Kyoto for about two days, so we decided this morning was a bit of a choose your own adventure depending on what parts of the city each person wanted to see more of. Chatting with Laura and John we decided since we were so close to Osaka and it wasn’t on our agenda we would wake up early and explore it for a couple hours. 

We woke up around 5:15AM, so we could catch the 6:07AM train to Osaka. I woke up, quickly changed, brushed my teeth and then we headed out the door. We walked the 15 minutes to Kyoto Station and arrived around 5:48. There was another train arriving towards Osaka, so we decided to hop on. We didn’t realize at the time there was the ‘local’ and a ‘rapid’ train we had just hopped on the local train. This meant we were with the local commuters and it would take a bit longer than expected. 

This was okay, because we still arrived in Osaka at 6:48AM which meant we had a full 3 hours before we had to take the ‘rapid speed’ train back to Kyoto. When we arrived at Osaka Station, Laura and I immediately went to the Dotombori area. This area is a huge shopping area and right by the famous Glico Sign which was the main reason we decided to go to this area. We took a couple photos before we continued on our way walking through the empty street of closed shops. We were just imaging how busy the streets would be if it wasn’t 7AM. 

After walking a little we landed at Hozen-ji Temple. It was a temple in which all the sculptures were covered in moss. It was pretty small and tucked within an alleyway. It was cool to see and glad we happened upon it. After we continued walking to find a coffee shop. 

Most coffee shops seemed to only have the basics of Cold Crew, plain Lattes, Iced Coffee’s etc. but there wasn’t a lot with fun coffees. We looked to see if we could find a place with more speciality coffees and found “Monday Coffee” this place had a wide variety of options including a pistachio latte which Laura got and a Tiramisu latte that I got. They were delicious and we decided to stay and eat as well. We both got French toast. When it came it was a lot larger than we expected, so we were glad to see that John was heading in our direction to finish his run. He came in and joined us for a bit to help us finish off the toast. 

After the toast, we decided to make a quick excursion to the Osaka Castle. Since we were on a bit of a time crunch, we decided to train instead of walk. It was about a 10 minute train ride and then a 15 minute walk. We arrived and attempted to get in one direction and realized it was the paid entrance and since we only had 15 minutes until we had to make our way back at this point we decided to find the free view point access. We did a slight jog to make it there, snapped a few photos and continued on our way. 

We had to train from the metro station to Osaka Station to get the high-speed train back to Kyoto. The first train was easy and we would have 7 minutes once we arrived to get the next train. We originally thought this would be an easy task, but turns out there are like 7 different areas and 2 different train stations. We ran through the train station (although all signs encourage you not too) and made it with about 30 seconds to spare onto the train. We rode the train 25 minutes back to Kyoto Station. Once we arrived John and I headed back to the Airbnb to shower and grab our bags meet up with Ashley and Nick and to head to the rental car place to pick up the car for the next adventures. 

We headed to the rental car place and John headed in to get the car. Once the car was ready we went to get in and they looked at us like we had each had 3 heads cause apparently most of the cars are only built for 4 people and we had 5. Thankfully, they were so sweet and let us rent a larger vehicle that we would all fit in. We loaded in the bags, packed into the car and headed on our way to Kiso Valley. 

The drive was around 3.5 hours with some pretty epic views. Laura was driving and did a great job with remembering to drive on the left side of the road (at least most of the time). We drove for around an hour and half or so before stoping into a 7/11 to grab some snacks / lunch. It was conveniently located at a rest stop, so we didn’t have to get off and back onto the expressway. 

We stopped for a little while to use the restroom, fill up on some snacks, and then continued on our drive. We were getting close and were deciding if we stopped, or continued onward as we were staying in a small town and knew everything would close early (5pm). We decided to simply just drive straight to Magome in case we had any issues getting/finding the place. When we were pulling into the town we started seeing some lightning and hearing thunder. Our Hostel seemed to be up a walking only road, so we quickly grabbed the bags out of the car and carried our bags up a large hill to our Hostel. About 5 minutes later it started down-pouring! 

We checked in and headed up to our rooms to drop our items before we were going to find dinner. Nick and I headed over to the front desk to see if anything was still open in walking distance. Sadly, we had arrived too late and all restaurants in Magome were closed. The storm was now in full motion with lightning all around us. Nick, John, and I grabbed some beers sat outside and simply just watched the storm for about an hour until it lightened up. Once it lightened up, we connected with Ashley & Laura and headed into the nearby town (15-20mins via car) to grab dinner. 

Via Google Maps, we found a local joint that had the typical food items (Soba, Udon, Fish, etc.). We walked in, sat down, and the entire menu was in Japanese so we all pulled out Google Translate and began on our journey for what we wanted to order. Most of us got Udon or Soba, with a side fish of sorts. I got the Tempera which included tempera veggies as well as Shrimp. It was delicious! 

Towards the end of dinner, an elder Japanese Man walked in and tried to spur up conversation with us to practice his English. We chatted with him between his broken English and Google Translate for a while. He was very kind and we enjoyed learning more about the area from him. We talked and hung-out for around another 20 minutes before we decided to head back to our Hostel. 

When we got back, we went to the picnic table outside our place and hung out for a while longer before eventually turning in for the night. 

Goodnight!!