After returning on the ferry from Miyajima we took the Shinkansen on to Osaka. Man did I get a shock there, it was SO cold!! Miyajima had been lovely, Hiroshima a little chilly maybe, but Osaka was downright freezing! Next shock was the location of our hotel, serious ghetto. LOTS of homeless people too. But oh well. The first day started with a search for breakfast. Having our hotel in the ghetto and really no clue which part of Osaka to go to for breakfast, we wandered around the neighbourhood until we found this cozy little place that looked halfway decent. On top of that, it was dirt cheap too, the breakfast set, so we went in. Our waitress turned out to be a handicapped. Well we thought, why not. Until we realized that every other person in the café was handicapped in some form or other haha. It’s what makes breakfast interesting I guess!?
After e-mailing back and forth with my friend Risa (a Japanese girl I know from when I lived in Nagoya, who now studies in Osaka) about what time to meet up and deciding to just go ahead and do whatever we wanted, we headed to Osaka castle. Nót very interesting if you ask me, but the view of the city was cool I guess. Daan and Luuk also had their first Tako-yaki (octopus balls) which is an Osaka specialty. Having received word from Risa she wouldn’t be able to make it for quite a while yet, we decided to go to the big Osaka aquarium, famous for its whale shark. 
It was actually quite impressive, the aquarium, and the whale shark and some of the rays were definitely big. The scariest were definitely the Japanese crabs though. Seriously alien-like. By the time we had had enough of living under water, Risa had arrived. It was so good to see her again!! And it clicked instantly if you ask me, it was really fun! She took us to this little quaint shop that had, well, quaint ice cream. It was basically frozen milk, shaved, with a flavour of choice on top. Very yummy! She then took us to downtown Osaka, Dotombori and such, and took us for Osaka-style okonomiyaki at this big big okonomiyaki restaurant. The cool thing about those restaurants is they prepare them at the table. It makes the place ridiculously hot, that’s the downside, but also cool to see them do it, and really came in handy in Tokyo. But you have to wait a little longer for that story! We ended the night with another go at Karaoke with a crappy nomi-houdai, and a plan to meet up the next day to go to Nara with Risa and her friends~! Yay!
The morning we were going to Nara we first of all couldn’t find the place we were supposed to meet only to find out we were already there, then found out they were ALL going to be late, so went and had a good ‘ole breakfast while waiting for Risa and co. The next obstacle was taking different train lines. Daan, Luuk and I took the JR line because they have JR passes, but Risa and co had passes for a different train line, which means different stations. We managed to find our train easy enough, and having arrived in Nara struggled our way to THEIR train station, which was a good 15 minute walk away! Grr…Anyway, we traipsed around Nara, saw deer and temples and walked through a nice little park, and then went to have lunch. We all sort of lost our energy after lunch, so we went to have a coffee break at the nearest starbucks. 
By chance there was a festival near the big Buddha hall and so we thought we’d go see Buddha before going to see the festival. Unfortunately we had lingered too long and the Buddha hall was closed!! So no biggest bronze Buddha of Japan for Daan and Luuk. Aww. The fire festival was awesome though. Took a bit of messing around with camera settings to get a decent shot, but I think some of the photo’s are quite artistic! :D Luckily we managed to find our station and our way home again, where we met up with the rest again to go for a big fat nomi and tabehoudai. Which means lots to drink AND eat. I think both Luuk and Daan were a little surprised by how much, and how FAST these Korean (girl) friends of Risa could drink! It was almost disturbing!! But the food was extremely delicious, especially the okonomiyaki on a stick, that was cool haha. We stumbled/rolled back to our hotel, and the next morning it was off to Kyoto!
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