Spring 2011 Osaka & Kyoto Trip Days 1 & 2: Nothing Much but Mexican Food

Ana, at least, had to go to Osaka.  It's the only place in Japan where you can take the GRE, which is necessary for PhD program applications (I took it while at RIT to keep options open). We'd been considering a trip down towards that part of Japan, and with her train fare essentially mandated by the need to take the test, our spring vacation destination was decided.  She'd take the GRE early in the trip and then we'd see Osaka and Kyoto, along with at least one side trip.

Her test was scheduled for a Saturday, but we left on Friday so there didn't need to be a mad rush to get to the test site from Kanazawa in a single day.  The train only takes a few hours to get to Osaka, so we left in the middle of the day to arrive in early evening.  Osaka Station was confusing, with three literally separate but similarly named subway stations on premises, and only with significant difficulty did we figure out which one we needed and how to get to it.  We did a lot of walking around with luggage and consulting of maps first.  One to our subway stop we did some more walking around and staring at maps, mostly because the hotel was much closer to the station than expected, while not being easy to recognize.  We finally made it into the lobby, and it turned out that our room was in the hotel annex, which was across the street.  That seemed in keeping with the spirit of the evening.  The hotel was quite nice for the price, which was only around $50 a night with this last-second-fill-the-rooms-at-any-price deal we'd gotten online.  It could, however, be described as the smallest hotel room we've ever been in.

Not small enough to induce immediate claustrophobia, but notably not large at all

After the wandering we'd done trying to get the hotel, we were ready to eat.  Several friends had recommended a Mexican place named El Pancho that was only a couple of blocks away so we tried there first.  They were booked solid for the evening and turning away anybody without a reservation, so that was a no-go, but the gods of culinary cartography smiled upon us and and literally directly across the street from the building El Pancho was in was a branch of Barbacoa, the churrasco place we'd eaten at in Tokyo (long blog entry) and knew to be delicious.  We had to wait a little, but not much, before we were snarfing down all you can eat steak and ribs and the like, which was an entirely satisfactory dining outcome.

The next day Ana got up at a reasonable hour and went and found a Starbucks near the testing center a few hours ahead of time, to be certain that cross-city navigation wouldn't make her miss the test.  I pretty much just took it easy that day, with surfing the internet and napping, and a little bit of Japanese study.  Eventually she finished the test (it takes several hours) and returned to the hotel with her score results, which were very good, so there is definitely no need to try to take the test again and score higher.  The previous evening we'd made reservations at El Pancho, so we headed out for Mexican food to celebrate.

The restaurant's decor was described on the internet by one site as "festive cave dank" and I think that is pretty apt.  It really does feel like you're in a cave or basement somewhere, even though the place is on the 8th floor.  The food was decent, and cheap by any standard of eating in Japan.  I do think the Mexican place we go in Tokyo is higher class, but I'd not complain about having to eat there.  Plus, check out the size of the daiquiri Ana got:

 

 

 It's pretty much bigger than her plate.

Afterward, it was still early so we walked around downtown a bit:

Blade-Runner-esque scenery at night in a major Japanese city...check

This covered shopping mall area would take at least half an hour to walk from end to end of...at least, that's about how far we walked and we never found either end of it.  It may circle the earth for all we know.

We discovered a Kit Kat store...it doesn't hardly sell Kit Kats at all.  In Japan, there are more than 100 Kit Kat flavors and there is serious collector mania about them - we were hoping this place would show all the different flavors but it is basically a 100 Yen Shop with Kit Kat branding.  Pretty strange if you ask me.

We decided that additional celebrations were in order and picked up dessert from a somewhat fancy dessert shop on the way back to the hotel:

 Ana's dessert (Mont Blanc hazelnut torte, I think)

Lee's dessert, candied fruits over custard pie

The next day, the real tourism would begin.