Osaka, Japan
Osaka is an enormous metropolis with almost 20 million inhabitants when you include the nearby cities, yet everything functions as if it were a much smaller city—traffic, metro, and train connections. We had a very nice hotel with an Italian restaurant at the bottom, which we used only on the last day while waiting for our departure to the airport. You should definitely eat Japanese food in Japan as it is also healthy—a lot of seafood, no bread, smaller portions, and many soups (miso soup, udon noodle soup, ramen, etc.).
We visited the Museum of Osaka, Osaka Castle, and explored the urban city center, which hosts a lot of events every night. We had a fabulous dinner in a super cozy izakaya restaurant named Nikoh Risskohuten. The waitresses were very pleasant, and you could watch the main cook prepare the tapas meals because everyone sits on bar stools around the cooking area. They don’t speak English, but Google Translate always helps.
We have one fun situation when we were ordering our dinner. We asked waiter if the rice comes with the main dish and he said: “No”. I told then to him: “We will order three rice bowls” and he brought us three empty rice balls 🙂
