6 days in Osaka

We stayed 5 nights at Osaka Hilton.  Osaka Hilton is located in front of JR Osaka train station, and this area is called “Umeda”.  Umeda, the north centre of Osaka, is the urban transport network centre of Kyoto-Kobe-Osaka region.  You can catch trains of JR line, Hankyu line, Hanshin line, and subway & buses etc from Umeda.  There are lots of office buildings as well as department stores, restaurants and other shops.  And, Umeda has the biggest underground complex among other cities in Japan.  We couldn’t walk through this complex even though we had 6 days there.

The main thing we did in Umeda was shopping.  Yodobashi Umeda and HEP FIVE area are the places I usually go to.  Yodobashi Umeda building mainly consists of Comme Ca Store, Yodobashi Camera and cafes&restaurants.  There are also some other shops inside including clothes shops and gazette shops.  On each floor between 1F~6F the half space is Yodobashi Camera shop where huge range of electric related products are available.  I found many cool stuff there, including egg shaped digital photo flame (cute!), waterproof portable 1seg tv/radio and auto-cleaning robot.  Each floor sells different kind of products (eg: 1F = mobiles and beauty related products, 5F = toys, games and DVD) and there are huge varieties!  Even in “rice cooker” section there are 20~40 rice cookers to chose from…  I can spend a day there.

I bought a hair iron from Yodobashi camera, and clothes and zakka (gazette) stuff from UNIQLO and some individual shops.  During shopping we had a quick break at Yami Yogurt: frozen yogurt (ice creamy yogurt) shop on the 7th floor.  I actually thought Golden Spoon was much better.  Yami Yogurt had only one flavor, vanilla, and it tasted bit too sugary and sour.  At least Golden spoon has 8~12 flavors to chose from.

This time I didn’t buy anything from HEP FIVE as I had no time to walk through each floor this time.  (I had nothing to buy from there this time anyway.)  Because the ferris wheel on the top floor was under repair while I was in Umeda, and all the illumination was off, we couldn’t see where the HEP FIVE was from Yodobashi.  (I usually use the ferris wheel to get direction)  I was a terrible guide! :p

The room in Osaka Hilton was cozy.  I loved the sliding window cover made with wood and paper (Japanese thing).  I’ve stayed in four different Hilton hotels in this trip (Hilton Perth, Singapore Hilton on Orchard street, Conrad Hotel in Singapore, and Osaka Hilton), and this sliding door is the thing that was different from other Hilton hotels.  My house in Shiga has these paper sliding doors and window covers as well, and my hubby is saying that he really wants to have these in Perth.  I also want to have some Japanese-looking rooms or spaces in our house in Perth, but I guess it’s gonna happen only when we buy our own house here :p  We can’t modify his parents’ house just for ourselves!  Umm I really really want to have our own house now..