Japan [Day 11 - Kansai International Airport]

It's time to go back to Malaysia.

We left our hotel at 7 o'clock in the morning. We took JR train from Shin-Imamiya station to Kansai International Airport. The fee was around 1,400 yen if I'm not mistaken. The journey took approximately 50 minutes.

Sayonara Japan! Gonna miss you!

Kansai International Airport (KIX)

We sorted our luggage and planned to wrap our small bags before checking-in. The staff at the wrapping service suggested us to buy box and put all our bags inside. It was actually a great idea, and cheaper too. So we bought two big boxes, one for Lukman and one for me. We rearranged our stuff so that our backpacks were in minimal weight of 7kg. At last, we managed to check-in our luggage without any problem.

Toilet selfie

Pokemon Store KIX

Yeay, another Pokemon shop here. It's just a small shop featuring Pikachu statue in pilot costume. Didn't buy anything here, I'm broke already. Haha..

Pikachu

We had some time to wandered inside the airport and dropped by a few shops. We bought Uniqlo t-shirts which costed 1,500 yen. We bought one each. After that, we walked towards the boarding area.

Couldn't wait to eat Malaysian food again. We had enough onigiri.. Haha

Thanks reader for following my 11-day journey to Japan. It was definitely a great and memorable experience. InsyaAllah will be going to Japan again next year, but this time with my family.

For any detailed inquiry, you can just pm me or leave comments here.

Thanks you! :)

Arigato~

Japan [Day 10 - Osaka]

The majestic Osaka Castle

Shitennoji

In the morning, we took the subway to Tennoji station. We're going to Shitennoji shrine which is located nearby. Tennoji is also famous for its zoo. We skipped the zoo and went to the shrine instead. Going to the zoo might consume us half day. After 10 minute walk from Tennoji station, we arrived at Shitennoji. Too bad it was under renovation. Thus, we didn't get chance to take photos with the tower structure of the shrine.

Shitennoji front entrance

shrine compound

Osaka Castle

We took the subway again, from Shitennoji-Mae station to Tanimachiyochome. Osaka Castle is located not far from this station. We walked around 1.5 km to reach the castle. In front of the castle, there were a few food trucks and vendors selling takoyaki, grilled squids and matcha ice cream. We took our time to relax a bit before entering the castle. The entrance fee is 600 yen (adult). The castle has a few floors. We headed to the topmost first and enjoyed the view above, then gradually stepped down towards the ground level. We're allowed to take photos on certain floors only. The castle itself has become some sort of museum, all the historical event about the castle were displayed here via videos. You can rent a costume as well. For women, they had prepared kimonos while for men, only warrior costumes were available.

Triple selfie

600 yen ticket

View from above

Osaka Masjid

From the castle, we walked about 20 minutes to Osakajokitazume station and the toook the JR train to Mitejima station. Osaka Masjid is located quite distance from the station which required us to walk 1.4 km. The weather was still gloomy today. It rained lightly along our walk to the mosque. As usual, we performed our prayer in the mosque and visited the shop under the mosque. The prayer hall is located upstairs. I bought a couple box of tandoori spices here. Then, we hunted for a halal restaurant nearby. There are quite a number of halal restaurant nearby. There's one restaurant who offered us a chicken briyani set with a drink for 1000 yen only. So we went there. The restaurant name is Sitara Halal Restaurant. 

Namba Parks

After lunch, we headed back to the city. Emie wanted to go to the onsen (Japanese bath) so he went alone. Lukman and I continued touring the city where we visited Namba Parks. Namba Parks is a large shopping mall with beautiful gardens on top of it. Actually, to get nice photos, we had to go to another building nearby so that we could view the garden from far. Since we're inside the garden, we couldn't get the photos like we wanted, the stacked gardens. However, we did spent our time there calmly, before we entered the mall. Inside the mall, we dropped by a book store and some other shops before leaving the place.

Layers of gardens

Happy face, happy moment

Dotonbori

Back in Dotonbori, we're supposed to meet Emie here but because it's still early we just roamed around the area taking more photos, We toured around Dotonbori area to find halal dinner, there are a few halal restaurant around Dotonbori. We just had to use Google map to locate them. First we headed to a ramen restaurant but it was closed. Later we found KennyAsia restaurant which is a Malaysia/Singapore food restaurant but it was also closed. What an unlucky night. Haha..

Giant dragon

Giant clam

Giant hand holding giant sushi

Giant kuih apa tah

Giant crab

Silk Road Muqam Restaurant

At last, we found another restauran, Silk Road Muqam which is located not very far. We had dinner here, quite a unique Uighur restaurant. It's our first time eating Uighur food. We tried egg  fried rice (600 yen) here. The fried rice is made from the sushi rice, thus giving it a texture like sushi. Since I was still full of briyani from lunch, I managed to ate half portion of it only. We asked the brother to packed the balance for me to bring back to the hotel.

Lukman tak sabar meneliti menu yang dipaparkan

Lupa ambil gambar nasi goreng.

Hojenzi

There's a small shrine located in the hectic crowd in Dotonbori. We made a quick stop here to take photos. The shrine was quite pretty with the glowing lanterns hanging above. We saw a few tourists here as well. Thanks to the uncle who showed us the direction to the shrine. He overheard us talking about Hozenji when we were talking at the bridge near the Glico signboard.

....

Back in our hotel room, it's time to pack our belongings up. Our flight back to Kuala Lumpur was at 11am tomorrow. Since I bought a lot of stuff, I had to pack and repacked a few times before I was okay with the bags. I had one backpack and 2 small bags (to be check-in), while Lukman had one backpack and one guni. Emie had one backpack and two paperbags.

Japan [Day 9 - Kobe & Osaka]

Kobe, port city

KOBE

A another day, another journey. Today we're going to Kobe in the morning. We took the train from Osaka to Kobe-Sannomiya station which took 30 minutes. Kobe is located not very far from Osaka. When we arrived, we took a walk outside heading to Kobe Port Tower. We saw a few Anpanman statues around this town. There's a museum for Anpanman here in Kobe but we didn't plan to go there. I guessed Anpanman wasn't very popular in Malaysia as we knew a little about it.

Anpanman

Kobe Harborland

Kenapa abam2 paus berenang atas darat?

More Anpanman

Kobe Port Tower

The weather was gloomy today thus our photos mostly had grey background. Sometimes the rain did fall down, but only in slight drizzles. We enjoyed our walked towards the tower, passing through a dock where a couple of cruises were waiting to depart. The tower is a symbol of Kobe. The entrance fee to observation deck is 600 yen (adult). However, we didn't go up to the deck because Emie didn't want to due to tight budget. He said it's okay if we wanted to go up, he would just wait downstairs. Hmmm, in the end we didn't go up to the deck, we just wandered around at the lobby and visited the souvenir shop. I bought a few magnets here. What's the point of traveling together if you didn't to do things together right?

Kobe Port Tower

with the tower

Meriken Park

Next, we walked to Meriken Park nearby. Meriken Park is a water front where Kobe Tower and Kobe Maritim Museum. Museum? Sorry no. Haha.. We did nothing much here except taking some photos. We saw a bunch of teenagers and asked one of the to take our photo. Actually we helped them to take group photo first.

Kobe Port Tower & Kobe Maritime Museum

Ok la dia ambil gambar, walaupun tak center..

Ikuta Shrine

After that, we took a bus from the Meriken Park back to Kobe-Sannomiya station. Motif pemalas kan? Padahal masa datang tadi jalan kaki je. From the station, we walked towards a shrine nearby, Ikuta Shrine. It's just a small shrine. The structure is quite nice with red colour much like Fushimi Inari in Kyoto.

  

Kobe Mosque | Masjid Kobe

Then we continued our walking tour to Kobe Mosque. The walk was uphill, it it started to rain again lightly. Along the way, we saw a few halal restaurants and halal grocery shop. I was sure that we're heading to the correct direction. After a few turns, we saw the mosque. It's was very pretty. The mosque opened in 1935 and had survived in a lot of incidents such as air raids and earthquake. We performed our prayer here, then bought a few instant noodles from the shop nearby before finding a restaurant to have lunch.

Halal shop

Masjid Kobe

We had tandoori chicken lunch at Madras Kitchen Restaurant which is located just a few minute walk from the mosque. I think the price for the tandoori and rice was around 1200 yen if I'm not mistaken. The food was nice. Then we saw the person who sat next to us ordered a briyani and our iman were goyah. Tetiba nampak lagi sedap. Hahaha..

Lunch

OSAKA

Dotonbori Glico Sign

Back in Osaka, we continued our tour. We captured our moments with the famous landmark in Osaka which is the giant Glico sign in Dotonbori. We spent quite a long time here to adjust the photos since the background kept on changing colours. Dotonbori is famous for its food street as there are a wide range of local food could be found here. Most of the shops/restaurants have giant decorations such as giant crab, giant sushi, giant hands and many others.

Giant crab

a happy Lukman

Shinsaibashi

Again, we went to Shinsaibashi shopping street again as the previous night  was a failure. Lukman bought us a Belgian waffle each but the waffle wasn't as good as the one in Kyoto. We really missed Kyoto though. Osaka is too hectic I guessed. We entered a few shops such as Daiso, 100 yen shops and also a toys arcade. Many gashapon machines were located here and also the crane-thingy. We tried a few rounds of the crane machine in order to get a Stitch plush, but in vain. We're so unlucky. Or tak reti? We didn't spent much money here. Just 500 yen for 6 attempts.

Belgian waffle with chocolate

Star Wars Figures

BB-8

1 coin 100 yen

After killing some of our time here, we took the train back to our hotel. It's time for a good rest.

Tomorrow's going to be our last full day in Japan. Why so soon? 

We're leaving in two days time.

*cry*