Osaka Japan - Part 1

It has been well over a month since I last blogged and a lot has happened.  I will divide up our adventures into a few different posts.

The biggest thing that changed was the fact we are moving back to the US.  Patrick is already home, and I am staying for about 2 more months.

Our last Asia outing was to Osaka, Japan to take advantage of the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday time off.

We had a red eye flight in - so our first stop was a cafe for a cup of coffee to keep us awake.  This cafe actually had an i-pad mini at every seat.  We played some, but it was all in Japanese.

We headed to see the Umeda Sky Building - Floating Garden Observatory.   We had beautiful weather, and it was only about a 10 minute walk from our hotel.  We took a bunch of pictures of the Osaka area from the observation deck.

Escalator ride to the observatory.

Our hotel - we were able to pick our our room - left our curtains up.

We posed by a heart (that is apparently famous).

Our next stop was Dotonbori - an area known for nightlife, but we went for lunch.

Started with some local beer - Suntory

Takoyaki (Octopus Balls)

Yakisoba

Patrick cooking our Yakisoba on our table.

 It was a long day - here is the sunset from our room.  We went out for an early dinner:

Found some familiar beer at dinner.

 Friday we ventured to Kyoto and saw some amazing temples.

Nijo Castle

Kinkakuji Temple (Golden Pavilion)

Kyoto Imperial Palace

Heian Shrine

These barrels in front of the shrine are filled with Sake

When people get a bad fortune from the monks, they hang it on the tree to make it go away.

These are wishes people want to come true.

A wedding

Sanjusangendo Hall - we could not take pictures of the 1000 buddhas inside.

Kiyomizu Temple

Our treat for all the walking we did - green tea ice cream.

As we were heading back to the train to return to Osaka we noticed an office building of a company we worked with when we lived in SC.