Nick's student exchange life in both Japan & Taiwan

First trip to Osaka

Osaka (大阪) is the third largest city in Japan, the central metropolis of the Kansai region.

Osaka city is administratively divided into 24 wards (区), but in common usage the following divisions are more useful:

1. Kita (キタ, "north") — the newer center of the city, including the Kita ward (北区). Umeda (梅田) is the main terminal. Department stores, theatres and boutiques are clustered around JR Osaka Station and Umeda Station, which serves several city and private railways.

2. Minami (ミナミ, "south") — the traditional commercial and cultural centre, composed of the Chuo (中央区) and Naniwa (浪速区) wards. Namba (なんば, 難波) is the main railway station, and the surrounding area has the department store and showy shopping. Shinsaibashi (心斎橋) and Horie (堀江) is the fashion area. Dōtonbori (道頓堀) is the best place to go for a bite to eat.

3. Semba (船場) — straddles the line between Kita and Minami, and contains the business districts of Yodoyabashi (淀屋橋), Kitahama (北浜), Doujima (堂島) and Hommachi (本町).

4. Tennōji (天王寺) or Abeno ( 阿倍野) — generally means the area around JR Tennōji Station and Abeno Station of subway and Kintetsu lines. Tennōji Park and Zoo are in the area.

When you enter the restaurant, they will give you a credit card. After that you will found that there are a lot of hawker stalls inside the restaurant. It can be said as a restaurant complex as you can find souvenir shop, games shop, exhibition ship and others beside food in that place. There are total 5 floor in that building so you can slowly talk your time walk around there. When you want to leave, you need to pass through a counter. This is the place where they check how much you spend using the credit card and then only you pay them the amount.

Kani Doraku is one of the most famous crab restaurants in Osaka. The is a six and a half meter crab at the front of the restaurant is which its arms and eyestalks are mechanized to move. The foods inside is very delicious but this come with a good price too.

This is the sky tower in Osaka. You can see the whole city wiew from the top of the tower. It is beautiful especially during the night time when you can see the lighting in the city.

Here is a dessert vending machine in Osaka, you rarely see it in other places

Me, Andy & Tsubasa at the Ramen Shop

We are now in Umeda Shopping Mall

I am checking the Osaka Travel Book

You cab find a lot of new fashion and clothing around the area in Osaka.

All the latest Japanese fashion is available here.

We are now in a Karaoke in Osaka. In Japan, their Karaoke usually have "Nomihodai" that means the drink buffet. So you can refill whatever the drink you like as long as you are still singing there.

We sing for around two hours and it cost us around 5oo yen per person.

This price is consider cheap already in Japan.

Here you can see how busy is the street in Osaka

Street in Osaka is always full with lighting and people

There are also plenty of night club in Osaka area. Usually it is open till early morning and then you can take the earliest train which is 5am to go back.

End of the day, we are now leaving. We are going to take a 30 minutes train

to back to Hirakatashi Eki.

First trip to Kyoto

Kyoto

At the first weekend after we reached Japan, the CIE office in my university arrange a Kyoto trip for us. However, the trip is really casual. They just assign us, the foreign students with a group of local Japanese student that will be our tourist guide for the whole day. We are free to decide where we want to visit in Kyoto and what we want to eat either.

Here are the groups of Japanese friends that will take us around for the whole days.

There are total six of them.

This is the water in front of the temple. Usually people will wash their hand using the

water before they enter the temple to pray.

This is the Todaiji Temple in Kyoto

Hera is our group picture in Todaiji

After that, we went to Kiyomizu Dera which is one of the most popular temples to visit in Kyoto. Along the path to the temple, there are a lot of shops at both sides of the path. There are some souvenir shops, traditional clothing shops, Japanese sweets shop and restaurants. We have an enjoyable journey before we finally reach the top of the hill, where the Kiyomizu Dera Temple is located.

Night view in Kyoto. Less crowded compared to Osaka.

Here is the restaurant we have our dinner.

It is a “Tabehodai” which means eat all you can but only in 90 minutes.

We are free to take any of the foods ourselves at the counter there.

There are plenty of choices for the sources.

So what we need to do is put the food inside the milk to make it wet. Then we need to dip the foods with the nestum before we fry it in the hot boiling oil. We need to estimate correctly the time we fried the foods if not it will be black when we take it out.

Here are the foods that cooked by me. There are prawn, fish and potato.

Me, Andy & Tsubasa

Me & our tourist guides

Hera is the others two tourist guides

After that, we went to a entertainment centre to take the Purikura photo. The centre is so big with all six floors together. Every floor have the different entertainment machine.