Today we said goodbye to Ichinoyu Honkan and the delicious food as well as great people at the Kamikaya restaurant.
From Hakone we took the bus back to Odawara and it was very crowded during the 30 minute journey. Once we reached Odawara we reserved tickets for the 12:08pm Shinkansen (Bullet train) to Shin-Osaka and then went to go find Odawara castle. The journey from the station to the castle took about 15 minutes (with luggage) so once we had reached the castle we could only spare about 10 minutes or so before we had to head back to the station again to catch our train. Still it was the first castle seen so far and there are many more to come!
On reaching Shin-Osaka we went to go visit the manga museum in Takarazuka before it shut as today was the only day we could do it. Takarazuka is a really interesting place as they have what could be described as a European Quarter which has Japanese ideals of Europe (I prefer it to the real thing!) It was very pretty with a mix of Spanish and English concepts (whilst having American words everywhere like “avenue”).
Tezuka Osamu Manga Museum
The manga museum was very interesting to visit although we only had an hour and a bit to spare in it. The way everything was displayed reminded me of what people in the 70’s thought the future would look like. Below are a few images showing some of the cool things inside.
Tomorrow will be a very long day exploring Osaka. Will talk about the Dotonburi Hotel as well as the huge difference between Osaka and Hakone.
Mata ne!
[…] You can also read Linaka’s account of the day “Hakone to Osaka” here. […]