The Misadventures of Jason - A Travel Blog: Kansai On Fleek 2023

Kansai On Fleek 2023 - Osaka Friday

Our first trip back to Japan and Korea in 5 years. Our pal Steven moved to Osaka 8 months ago and we wanted to visit him and it was the excuse Bob needed to finally go to Korea for the first time since being born there. We also coordinated to be in Osaka when Eric and Yumi were there. This was a big 2 week trip and the first time seeing our beloved Steven in 8 months when we used to see him every week. I have been working on an insane book project, 50 illustrations so I had no time to do anything but work all my waking hours on it. I was even working on it at the airport and a few mornings in Osaka so it finally ended as our Asia vacation began. I hated this because it meant I didn't have any time to refresh my Japanese and Korean

our flight was at 1:40am, yes AM which meant we went to the airport at 7pm at night on wednesday and would arrive in Osaka at 8am friday morning! I wanted to start our trip off with celebratory drinks at this random place Bobby Van's as a tie in to our Bobby's big asia trip but everything closed early and there was not a drop of alchohol to be had anywhere so we just had to go do the stuff in the below photo

me working, bob working, jen installing a very involved screen protector on her new Pixel 7 pro phone. It's the curved display that makes it so tricky. They even included a UV curing light stand

Jen said you're always supposed to do this but i've never heard of this so i thought it was funny. We flew JAL there so it was a nice flight like a lot of these Asian airlines are

call button symbol is a person in a skirt which i was going to comment on but actually when i think about it i don't see any male flight attendants on the premium Asian airlines and the women's uniforms are skirts so i guess this isn't antiquated, it's accurate

the perks of flying JAL

illustration used everywhere in Japan and Korea

great store name at Haneda airport tokyo on our transfer flight. CBJS coffee beer juice sandwhiches, so inventive. Also this photo is supposed to show a small coffee which by american standards is very small but i've found japanese serving sizes to be what a person needs and not the huge serving sizes of america

tonkatsu sandwhiches from Maisen from the conbini

Mt Fuji Osaka bound

more illustration

each urinal had a rug under it which seems disgusting and for SURE would be in america but i guess this is an example of Japanese cleanliness

unfortunately ended up on the mildly air-conditioned car where as we needed an extremely air conditioned car from lugging around our huge suitcases in that infamous japanese summer heat and humidity

more illo

Steven lives here

Steven's Japanese is as good as mine was if not better by the time I left Japan after 1.5 yrs. He's been taking language class very seriously, good job steve

couldn't check into our Airbnb yet so the first stop was Chigusa okonomiyaki which we loved last time we were here. This is the chigusa special and below is the modern yaki, okonomiyaki with soba noodles. I've been to osaka many times and this is bob and jen's second time here so it was nice that we didn't have to do any touristy stuff.

there would be a lot of walking down the tenjinbashi shotengai and it's feeder shotengais like tengo nakazaki dori shotengai

Tenmangu shinto shrine

that persistent japanese striving for perfection

Nakamura-ya an agemono (fried food) shop in Tenjinbashi shotengai. Thanks to the weak yen, a ham katsu for 90 yen = 63 cents. So buying a royal flush of ham katsus for all my friends ain't no thang. When we were there in June 2023, 1 USD = 138 yen. Or as I like to put it, that dollar mcdonalds hamburger only costs me 72 cents baby yea!