Universal Studios Japan and last morning in Osaka

We are currently driving from Toronto to Sudbury after an amazing trip!  I didn’t have the energy to do the blog on our last night when we had to get all packed up etc. Figured I’d do it in the airports/flights but wasn’t thinking that without internet, this can’t save on this blog platform and I didn’t want to write it all and have it disappear like has happened before!

Before get into the last day, this is the bathtub at our Osaka Airbnb. No idea how Osaka just got linked or how to undo that. 😆 

Joel came out the first night and said I can’t figure out how to get the bath tub on can you come and look?  And I was like Joel I’m trying to unpack. Figure it out. Sometimes you have to try a few things to get it on. Turn the faucets. You will figure it out. And he was like: that’s the thing. There is no faucet. 

Turns out you use this panel to turn the water in. You set the water temp and then press fill. 

And then the tub starts filling from the inside!

It also has a TV! 😆 

The difference between Anna and the boys is hilarious. I went into her room the night before our last day and found this. 

Her bag packed and ready to go and all of her clothes laid out. The boys pull some dirty crumpled shirt from their bag as we are ready to walk out the door! 😆 

Our last full day was a day at Universal Studios Japan. 

We had paid for the fast passes which covered 8 rides. So when the park opened, we bonded for the first couple that we don’t have fast passes for. 

This one is called Hollywood Dreams and it was a pretty decent roller coaster. Anna and I were nervous. Joel decided to skip this one. Trev and owen thought this was a piece of cake!  Unfortunately they put is in the very front seat (which Trev and Owen loved!)We did it!  It was scary but fun!

From there we did this fun one which was an indoor spinning and turning coaster. We all did it. It was faster and more exciting than we thought it would be!

This was a minions blaster thing that turned out to be a bit of a dud. Owen’s blaster didn’t work and you just stand in a moving conveyor and shoot at screens

We had an early lunch to avoid the lines. 

Snoopy custurd bun

Joel has been trying to find a Japan rubber duck since he collects them as souvenirs. He found this duck dressed as a velociraptor at the Jurassic Park gift shop. 

Ann’s and Joel and I passing the time while Trev and Owen went on Fkying Dinosaur which we were not going to do!

These baby dinosaur puppets were very impressive!  It was a baby dinosaur meet and greet

It was hard to get a good pic of flying dinosaur. But you basically lay parallel to the ground so it feels like you are flying when you move forward. 

Some stock photos

Trev and Owen emerging from Fkying Dinosaur

From there we went to see the Waterworld Stunt show

This was a very cool show. The stunts were amazing. There was a little comedy thing in the last 10 minutes while we were waiting for the show to start and they were filling the theatre. They were interacting with the crowd and i thought it was interesting that even though it was all in Japanese there was physical comedy mixed in and it was amazing how much of it we understood!

I love when people commit to the bit! 4 teenage boys all dressed full minions and each carrying a stuffed Cookie Monster. 

We spent a few minutes in Harry Potter world. Our timed fast passes had clicked in now so 

We were now moving ride to ride. We didn’t have much time to explore. Just did Hkight of the Hippogriff (a bit more than a kiddy coaster) and Forbidden Journey which is an amazing ride

Joe and Trev being height checked for flight of the Hippogriff. They made it in, but just barely. 

We were getting hungry mid afternoon and we knew we needed to head to Super Nintendo World for our 3 back to pack fast passes. So we stopped at Jaws in the way for a quick shark cake snack to get through the afternoon. 

And then into Super Nintendo World. Thanks to Kayla for lending us 2 of these bracelets from her trip to Universal in California. It saved us significant money because they aren’t cheap!  We bought 2 more. 

Mario, Luigi, Yoshi and Toad ready for Super Nintendo World. 

Entering Bowser’s Castle for the Mario Cart ride

You put in these visors and then when you get into the car a VR headset clips into the hat. 

Trev and Anna ready to go!  This ride was pretty fun. 

From there it was the Yoshi ride which is a very slow kiddy ride that just takes you around Super Nintendo World.  Great views of the park from here!

Collecting coins in our way to the Donkey Kong ride. Trev mad a group of kids laugh by collecting the coins with Mario jumps!

Thank goodness for our fast passes because all of the lines in Super Nintendo World were 3 hours plus

Collecting more badges in Donkey Kong world. The Dinkey Kong ride was fun!  It’s a small coaster that zips quite fast along a track in need of many repairs so it jumps and turns and the tracks break. It was fun !

This is the cart from the Donkey Kong ride

From here we wandered around the Donkey Kong worked and Super Nintendo world just looking at the theming and collecting things with the bracelets.

The theming is quite impressive. For anyone who has t been to a big theme park like this, they are very well designed and immersive. When you walk into Suoer Nintendo world, 100% of your surroundings are themed as Super Nintendo. There is no site of earlier minions or snoopy etc. Every theme park worker is dressed in theme. Every snack you can buy is themed. Drinks are themed. It’s very immersive and you really feel like you are inside a Mario game!

We had dinner at Kanopio’s Cafe (Toad’s bar is Kanopio in Japanese)

This is the cutest food we got!  A Kanopio pizza bowl. That’s what Anna picked

Owen had a Flower Power pasta

Trev and I had the Luigi curry chicken sandwich

Joel got a Mario burger

This is a good pic of what it looks like when you look around

There were games you could play with your bracelets to earn keys. You needed to unlock 3 keys to be able to battle Bowser. 

The first one you just had to turn this crank to get this mushroom to come out

Every time you got in links the person working there would make you do this Mario jump before you got in line! 😆 

The next game we did was a group challenge where these alarm clocks would start ringing and you had to run around turning them off 

And the. We did this Pow one where you had to hit this pow at just the right time to hut the shell

From there we went to battle Bowser

This was a 10 person group challenge where you had to do a bunch of different moves to interact with the things in the screen

By this time it was about 6pm, getting dark and cold and we were pretty tired!  But slwenstill had a few things to do!

Anna used some of her money to buy a Yoshi souvenir. 

Heading out of Super Nintendo World 

Jurassic Park looked cool at night!

We still had our fast pass for Jurassic Park to ride. None of us really felt like it because it was cold and you get wet on this one but we had our fast pass so we figured we’d do it. We actually all had a lot of fun!  It’s a fun ride with a pretty bit drop and splash at the end. You start out touring Jurassic Park and seeing some cute dinosaurs in your boat and then suddenly you see flashing lights and broken cages and it turns scary and ends with a huge trex roaring at you and the you drop down the big drop. We all had fun!

Not sure how much you will be able to see in this. 

Me, Anna, Joel and Trev all screaming and Owen on the left had put his poncho hoot completely over his face so he wouldnt get wet which looked hilarious. We were all wet and cold but laughing at the end of this one. I’m glad we did it!

Anna had wanted one of these caramel popcorn churros all day and they were warm and we were cold. Definitely our best theme park snack. They were delicious and just what we needed. 

We had to just run through Harry Potter world earlier to make it to our fast pass reservations. So we went back and spent about a half an hour there. We had brought our interactive Wanda from Universal Orlando but they didn’t work on the spells here. 😞 

Trying to get our Wanda to work

Once again completely immersive you can’t get coke here, just butter beer. Workers dressed in theme. 

Hogwarts Castle is so impressive at night!

And that was it for our last full day!  We were back at our hotel by about 8:20pm I think. And we rearranged our bags to have the stuff we needed for the flight in our daypacks and liquids separated etc We fit Joel’s vaccum packed pokemon no problem into our bags!

Saturday our flight from Osaka wasn’t until 4pm. So we stored our luggage in a locker at the train station and we went off to explore a couple of last minute areas of Osaka we hadn’t got to yet. 

First stop was a 5 minute walk from our Airbnb. Bozeman-hi Temple. It’s a tiny little temple where people make a dig and throw water at this moss covered statue. It was very quiet in the morning and a peaceful fist stop. Kids were entirely templed out but they put up with this 5 minute stop!

From there we went to pass some time at Kuromon Ichiba Market. It’s always fun to walk through these market streets. So much to look at!  

Huge (real) tuna!

Oden is very popular in Japan in the winter. They simmer all of these vegetables, fish cakes,l etc in a broth and you pic and choose what you want in it and then they add broth. We didn’t get a chance to try it

This was the kids request for last snack of the trip. They loved these candied strawberry skewers

Then we ended up back in the Dotonbori area. We let the kids buck the last meal and they picked Ichiran Ramen again. And Trev and I were good with this because it’s absolutely delicious!

You just can’t get tired of it!

And in the way back to get our bags we decided to pick up one of these Make it at home Ichiran Ramen kits. 

We hopped in a bus to the airport. The bus filled up and then these boys walked in and the bus driver went to the back and flipped this little rat out of the chair armrest so he could sit in the aisle. And then he proceeded too open several more in the row and all the guys sat down we were all cracking up including the guys who sat there. 

Don’t think it would pass Canadian Safety standards as I have no idea how we evacuate in an emergency.

We mabaged to cross ‘food from a vending machine’ off our food scavenger hunt list by getting some ice cream while waiting for our flight

I thought this sign was funny at the airport. Adult smokers only. I guess no children smokers are allowed. It’s actually weird that they had a smoking room at all!

The Osaka flight had a funny Pokemon themed flight instruction video

They also put a live video feed from the plane of the runway as the plane was landing which was cool to watch!

We had a 1.5 hour layover in Tokyo before our next flight. Turns out this is barely enough time. It only left us 50 minutes before boarding time.  We had to take a bus which we had to wait for for 10 minutes to get to the terminal. Then it was a 15 minute bus ride. And then we had to get from the main area of the airport to security, go back through security and then make it to our gate (which was not close). We booted it and got to our gate tired and sweaty at 6:20pm when boarding always was 6:30pm. 

The flight was fine once we were on it. The 13-14 hour flights weren’t as bad as I expected them to be honestly. You just have to have a different mindset than an3-4 hour flight. Or even a 6-8 hour European flight. We all got a bit of sleep. 

We arrived back about 23 hours after getting up that day. It was about 6:30pm Canada time. We picked up our car by about 7:15pm. We knew we couldn’t go straight to the hotel to sleep or we’d all be up at 3am. So we went to Boston Pizza to get some food and pass some time. We got to the hotel just before 9pm. We all sleepy pretty well!  We were up pretty early (everyone between 5am and 6:30am). So we got an early start for the drive back to Sudbury and should be back by lunch time.  We just got Wolf Energy meatballs so we can make an easy meatball sandwich supper. 

Our favourite meatballs. Who knew our favourite meatballs would come from Wolf Energy gas station!

All in all a fantastic trip!  I loved our Italy trip last year but I have been to Italy several times before and to Europe  many times so it didn’t feel very new and exciting. I absolutely loved this trip to Japan and exploring a brand new culture, new foods, etc. it was easier to travel in than I thought. Not overwhelming. Our airbnbs were great.  Owen and Anna day they thought Itslynwas their favourite trip (I think the food was a big part of that). Joel, Trev and I pick Japan. Everyone really had a good time though. Owen said he would have liked to have done more if he could have teleported back to Sudbury and had a couple of day break and then teleported back. 

 I’m never ready to come home. I could have done 2 more weeks easily. I just absolutely love getting up with a plan to explore a place ive never been before, seeing all the sites and eating all the food and then crashing into bed at night exhausted. It’s just my favourite. 

The kids were ready to come home. They were templed out and we went very hard every day so we were all tired.   It’s a lot being together 24 hours a day and we can all use a break from each other 😜 Our beds will feel great tonight. I’m not looking forward to getting back to snowmageddon at our house. Hopefully the jet lag isn’t too too bad this week (although I’m expecting us all to be dragging for most of the week)   Thanks for following along for those who read the blog!