Should You Visit Amazing Osaka?

Hey everyone! I am in Thailand after 3 weeks in Japan. We had a fantastic trip. Japan is an amazing country. Everything is such a great deal because the USD is so strong. We felt like everything was 60% off. We stayed in Osaka for 9 nights at the start of this Japan trip. I wanted to take it easy for a few days and recover a bit before moving around more often. We visited Japan twice before, but have never been to Osaka. It’s a huge sprawling city. Some people might think 9 days is too long for Osaka, but it turned out just about right for us. We visited different areas of Osaka and took day trips to other cities. Osaka is a convenient base for taking day trips.

Japan is an amazing country with so many locations to visit. Should you put Osaka on your itinerary? In my opinion, you can probably skip Osaka if it’s your first trip to Japan. Osaka is similar to Tokyo. Both are huge cities. But Tokyo has more to offer. We already visited Tokyo and Kyoto previously. That’s why I wanted to explore Osaka a bit on this trip.

The main attractions of Osaka are food, shopping, and the nightlife. You’ll love Osaka if you enjoy these activities. The shopping arcades were always full of people. It was pretty amazing. Unfortunately, we don’t enjoy shopping and don’t go out at night. The food was awesome, though. There were so many choices and price points. I’ll share some of our Osaka food experience below.

Oh, we visited Osaka Castle, the Osaka Aquarium, saw a show, took a ceramic class, and explored many shrines. We didn’t go to the Universal Studios, though. I heard it was super busy. We don’t like spending the whole day waiting in various lines. We walked around 20,000 steps every day. My legs were blasted.

Dormy Inn is the best

Fortunately, I booked us a room at the Dormy Inn. This is a Japanese business hotel chain, but it has many extra comfort features. The best bonus is the onsen (hot spring) facility. I loved going for a soak after a long day of walking. The hot springs helped relax my aching legs. RB40Jr didn’t like the public bath, though. I took him to take a quick look and he said he was traumatized. There were two naked guys in the hot springs. Americans are such prudes. I told him to get used to it because he’ll have to use the locker room at school at some point. He said he’ll skip taking a shower after PE. Okay… Do it your way, man. Mrs. RB40 also felt uncomfortable at the public hot springs. She prefers to go at 3 am when nobody was around. Anyway, I enjoyed it. They also had a sauna, but I didn’t use it.  

Another great benefit is the laundry facility. They have washing machines and dryers at the hotel. The washing machines are free to use. They dispense laundry detergent automatically. Wow, that’s great. The dryers cost 100 yen per 20 minutes. That’s a good price.

They also had 2 great massage chairs. I used it every day. The massage was good. Not as nice as a real massage, but great for a chair massage.

Lastly, they provide yogurt drinks, ice pops, and ramen (not instant) at various times. Nice!

BTW, we had a private bathroom in our room. RB40Jr didn’t want to use the public onsen and he took a shower there. Anyway, Dormy Inn is our new favorite business hotel chain. Dormy Inn has way more personality than a normal business hotel.

Food

From what I read, Osaka is the food capital of Japan. There are all kinds of restaurants there. We ate so much food. I’ll start with what I wasn’t impressed with and go from there.

Unimpressive

Takoyaki – Takoyaki is an Osaka specialty. They’re balls of batter and octopus chunks. The Takoyaki was good, but it wasn’t any different than what I had before. Nothing special.

Kushikatsu – Kushikatsu is another Osaka specialty. It’s fried food on sticks. These were good, but that’s too much fried food in one meal. Every stick tasted pretty similar. We had this in a bar and it was fun. However, I’ll avoid kushikatsu in the future.

Good stuff

Karaage – Japanese fried chicken chunks. We had these several times on our trip and they were all delicious. The batter was light and the chicken was tender. Good stuff. For some reason, we liked the karaage way more than the kushikatsu.

24-hour restaurants – We went to a few of these 24-hour restaurants for breakfast. Here is a Japanese breakfast I tried. It cost around 500 yen ($3) and it was very interesting. This dish had quite a few slimy things in it – okra, natto, grated yam, raw egg, seaweed, and raw fish. It sounds strange, but I enjoyed it. You order from a machine and the staff will bring the order to your table. We had fun trying various Japanese dishes. The gyudon (beef bowl) was another affordable delicious option.

Okonomiyaki – We tried a tiny okonomiyaki restaurant in the Shinsakai neighborhood. It was great. They had something we never had before – the negiyaki. This dish uses green onion instead of cabbage. It was delicious. The atmosphere was fun at the Okonomiyaki Chitose. I highly recommend it if you visit Osaka.

Wagyu beef – We visited a restaurant that specialized in wagyu for lunch. They had these awesome lunch specials. The lunch below cost 1,580 yen, about $10. These are black wagyu aged aitchbone beef on rice. It was delicious. The whole RB40 family loved this meal. We should have gone back for more. This was at Yakiniku Kitan Minamisenba.

Bento boxes – We also tried a more economical and convenient option, bento boxes from the grocery stores. These are cheap and mostly delicious. Here is a duck with rice bento that I had for lunch. It was excellent and cost only around $3. If you’re extra cheap, wait until 7 pm and they’ll slap discount stickers on all the bento boxes.

Goodbye to Osaka

We had a great time in Osaka. The stable location gave us the time to recover from jet lag. The onsen at Dormy Inn helped a lot too. The highlight of Osaka was the food. We ate so many delicious meals and everything was cheaper than the US. We felt like everything was a great deal. We shopped a little, but got tired of it quickly. Shopping isn’t our main priority. We also missed out on the nightlife. I’m not 25 anymore so I wasn’t interested anyway.

I’m glad we visited Osaka, but we probably won’t come back next time. We’ll spend more time in a smaller town and get to know it better.

Have you been to Osaka? Should visitors put Osaka on their itinerary?

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Joe started Retire by 40 in 2010 to figure out how to retire early. After 16 years of investing and saving, he achieved financial independence and retired at 38.

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