From Nagasaki to Osaka with a stop in Okayama - Japan at Cherry Blossom 2023 - 19
03.04.2023 - From Nagasaki to Osaka with a stop in Okayama
Weather: sunny
Walking distance: 13.5 km
Today is the last full day in Japan and it's mainly a transfer day to Osaka from where we will fly back tomorrow. To make it a bit more interesting we will use a longer stop in Okayama [↗] to visit one of the 3 best gardens in Japan. At least Japan Guide [↗] ranked it so.
Also today we have to use 4 different Shinkansen trains and two metro lines to reach our hotel in Osaka.
We arrive at 1:15pm in Okayama and have now 3 hours until our departure. We store the luggage that we don't need in lockers. I just have a small bag in addition to my backpack that I easily could have taken with me, but I share a locker with someone else from the group. Our guide goes to the information desk and figures out where the bus leaves for the garden.
The Koraku-en garden [↗] is indeed one of the nicer ones. Like many of them, it might look even better in autumn when the leaves have different colors. At the moment it is not really colorful, even though they have some cherry trees there. But they are located in just one area and many other trees are still missing their leaves.
I leave the garden at the south gate and walk over to the castle. It looks like most of the other castles here, but it's still a nice sight - especially with the pedal swans in the foreground.
At the bus station, I meet a good part of the group and like some others, I decide to use the spare time until the departure of the train to eat something. In a small restaurant at the station, I eat ramen (a kind of noodle soup).
We arrive at the hotel in Osaka and have our keys around 6pm. I just bring my suitcase to the room and leave a few minutes later. I decide to take one last walk and the destination I chose is a Ferris wheel built on the roof of the department store HEP FIVE [↗]. It should be half an hour’s walk away, which is fine.
On the way there I find some more motives and when I arrive, the blue hour is over and the wheel cannot be seen from below. So I take the elevator to see if I can take some interesting photos from the top. Surprisingly, there was no queue at all and the fee of 600 yen was in the range that some temples or gardens charge as admission. So after who-knows-how-many years, I take a ride on a Ferris wheel. It takes 15 minutes and is nothing spectacular, which is also due to the less spectacular view - but it was nice.
Back at the hotel I go to the lounge and check if they have a printer. They do and so I check in for the flights back home and print my boarding passes. Afterward I go to my room and do my usual homework. Arranging the luggage for the flights is something I postpone until tomorrow. Then I will have more than enough time to do it.
