Trains are awesome. This is a fact. So Mike and I were excited to take the shinkansen to Osaka from Tokyo simply because we are nerds and like riding trains. We took the Nozomi train (because it’s the fastest one, obviously) from Shinagawa Station in Tokyo to Shin-Osaka Station in Osaka. If you have a Japan Rail Pass, you can only ride the two slower shinkansen trains, Hikari and Kodama. (We’re not on tourists visas, so we can’t get the Japan Rail Pass. But if you can, you SHOULD, because it’s a really good deal and train travel is expensive in Japan.) It was just over two hours, with brief stops in Yokohama, Nagoya, and Kyoto.

HOORAY FOR TRAINS, thinks Mike.

Mike trying to capture the shinkansen with his iPhone.

My bags always have cute things attached. We shipped our larger bags to Osaka via the amazing Yamato takkyubin service, which you should definitely use if you ever need to send your luggage anywhere in Japan. You can drop your bags off at any conbini, or have Yamato pick them up. Your bags will then arrive, stress-free, anywhere in Japan by the next day for around $12.

The Nozomi shinkansen car. More space than economy on any airline.

We picked up train bento boxes (or ekiben) at the station to eat on the train.

Mike’s ekiben was a bit more… uh, Western.

Speeding through Japan at 300 km/h.

A stop in Nagoya. It seemed like a nice place. I should visit.

Speeding again!

Once we made it Osaka, we took the subway to Namba Station to get to our hotel. We stayed at the Fraser Residence Osaka, which I would recommend because it’s EXTREMELY well-located. It’s right outside the station and close to Dotonbori and fun things.

View from the hotel window. Just to the left (outside of this photo) is Namba Parks, which you may have seen on Reddit.

The room even had a combo washer/dryer!

Somewhere around Namba Station, I came across an AKB48 cafe and shop! Unlike the store in Tokyo, there was no lineup to get in, so I was happy to wander inside and soak up all the AKB48 goodness. I didn’t eat at the cafe, but I wanted to…

…BECAUSE LOOK HOW CUTE THE FOOD IS! Wah, adorable!

Instead of animal-shaped AKB48 food, we went for real Osaka food, okonomiyaki.

SUPER DELICIOUS! I looooooooooove okonomiyaki.

After dinner, we walked around Dotonbori for awhile (and spent too much time in a Round 1) before heading back to the hotel. The next day was our early (11am is early for me, okay?) flight to Okinawa — more on that in the next entry!

THE REST OF MY PORTLAND/SAN FRANCISCO PHOTOS! Yeah, I neglected my blog for months. But it was for a reason! I was busy! I got a new Macbook! I’m moving to Japan!

Anyway, here’s the rest of the photos. Even though this was from, you know, APRIL.

The Amtrak train that runs along the west coast from Seattle to LA is called the Coast Starlight. Fancy! We decided to take the train from Portland to San Francisco just because we’re train nerds and it sounded like a fun idea.

We got a sleeper car and I made a fish face. (Those two things are unrelated.) The sleeper cars are pretty tiny but it’s nice to have your own little space with beds and a table and stuff.

I like champagne, even if it is from California and served in a plastic glass.

You could either eat dinner in the Dining Car or the Parlour Car. The Parlour Car is only for people who have booked sleeping cars, so we went for that. Also, in the Dining Car, you share your table so that it makes a table of four and we didn’t feel like making conversation with elderly American strangers.

This was the dining car.

We took a stroll over to the sightseeing car.

Seeing the sights!

There was even a cute little movie theatre.

The Amtrak amenity kit wasn’t as nice as the ones you get on airplanes but I just love transportation-branded anything.

The Parlour Car and the top of my messy haired head.

Train salad

Train… beef? I can’t even remember. The food was fine but not memorable (obviously). Here’s an example menu.

For relaxing times… take the train.

Pretty mountain scenery

While you’re at dinner, your sleeper car attendant comes and makes up your room into beds. Sleeping in a train was kind of soothing. I also had a shower on the train before I went to bed — now there’s something you can’t do on (most) airplanes!

Morning!

Amtrak coffee

The breakfast was also edible — I think Mike had a bacon and egg breakfast sandwich.

More pretty scenery. Almost in San Francisco at this point.

We also had some doughnuts left from Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland, which made an even BETTER breakfast.

Yummmmmmmmm

Heading into San Francisco…

… and we arrived at Fisherman’s Wharf! The whole Amtrak thing was pretty fun, but we were definitely some of the youngest people in a sleeping car. Most of the people were 60+ but I guess I just like doing things that old people like doing. I would only really recommend the Coast Starlight if you a) are a train nerd and/or b) have a lot of time on your hands because it takes at least 15 hours longer than flying.