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Seoul, Kyoto, & Osaka Journal. June 16th, 2026

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 Kyoto to Osaka, Shinsekai MAP Rode the Haruka Limited Express Osaka Station. We are staying at the Hotel Hankyu Respire Osaka. Getting from the Haruka platform to our hotel was like navigating a maze! The trick is to be on the second floor where there’s a bridge between the station and the hotel building. The hotel starts at the 9th floor. Below is a huge shopping complex called “Links Umeda”, with one floor devoted to restaurants. Below that are various shops, and in the basement is a super market. Adjoining all of this is a 5 story Yodobashi store. We checked our luggage at the front desk since check in wasn’t until 3, then went for Italian lunch at one of the many restaurants. Ordering was on a tablet, which is becoming increasingly common in restaurants in Japan. This tablet was Japanese language only. Also, the restaurant didn’t accept cash.  Pasta for lunch. We checked in at the automated terminals, and went to our room on the 20th floor. It had a great view to the nort...
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Seoul, Kyoto, & Osaka Journal. June 17th, 2026

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 Uji MAP I’m still getting lost around this hotel/shopping/station complex! Good thing my sister-in-law is familiar with it. We took the JR Loop Line to Osaka Castle. Even that’s more complicated than the Yamanote Loop Line. We had a quiet walk through the park and enjoyed seeing the iconic Osaka Castle, even if it’s really a castle-shaped museum. We exited on the side of the park so we could catch the Keihan limited express. It was very comfortable and fast. We were sitting in the front car, and there was a great view forward. Even better would have been the front four seats which are all right behind the driver's compartment. Then we transferred to a local at Chushojima.  Limited Express to Chushojima with an Ultraman Exhibition headmark. Arrived at Uji and walked across the Uji bridge - it was so windy that the cracks in the wood were whistling. There is a small platform on the bridge that extends out over the water. It’s used in a festival where they recreate the drawing o...
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Seoul, Kyoto, & Osaka Journal. June 18th, 2026

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 Shopping and Dotonbori MAP I spent the morning tracking down some model train shops. There were actually two near the hotel. There was a Popondetta in the Hankyu Sanban Gai building. I got some Green Max building models here that fit in well with the Showa era switching layout I want to build.  Railroad diorama in Popondetta. Then I went to Hobby Land Pochi Umeda in the nearby Akashi Building. This chain usually has a pretty good inventory of used model trains. I was looking for a DE-13 model locomotive and I found one there. I asked the clerk if it was new or used:  “これ は 新品(しんぴん) です か、中古 (ちゅうこ)です か”. He said it was used, but the price was still good. So I tried to ask him if I could run it to check it out. I incorrectly used this phrase: “走ってもいいですか” (Is it okay if I run?), but he understood what I meant. I should have said “試運転(してんつ)してもいいですか”.(Is it okay to do a test run?). I ran it slowly back and forth over their test track, and it ran smoothly. I also bought a littl...
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Seoul, Kyoto, & Osaka Journal. June 19th, 2026

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Last minute shopping and bus ride to the airport MAP We checked out and left our bags at the front desk again.  We all went to the 13th floor of the South Gate Building's Daimaru Umeda department store. The Nintendo OSAKA flagship store is located here, and they don’t sell the actual Nintendo games, but character goods, such as Mario plushies. Pokemon, Capcom, One Piece, and Tomica stores are also here. After that we went to the fifth floor and relaxed on the Toki-no-hiroba Plaza, a glass ceilinged astroturf park that spans above 11 tracks of the Osaka Station.  Back at the hotel, we did some more shopping at Uniqlo and Yodobashi. Then we picked up our bags and headed to Hankyu Sanban Gai to catch the Limousine Bus. We paid for tickets at the machine, and then we were able to get onto the very next bus. We were given tickets for our baggage, which was marked with our destination terminal at KIX and  put below. The bus followed elevated highways along Osaka bay - at some p...
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Iwate and Sendai Trip Journal: Wednesday, Sept. 24th

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 In the morning, we got some more gifts from the Nippori drugstore that we had stopped at yesterday.  Fire station next door to the drugstore. Then we watched trains at the “train museum” again for a while until Tomato opened up.   Keisei AE series Skyliner - the fastest non-Shinkansen train in Japan. E231-0 Series running on the Jōban Line. E531 series running on the Jōban Line. Elbows resting on the bridge railing while watching trains has worn away the paint. We checked out of the hotel and I accidentally asked them to crush our luggage for us. They knew what I meant and gave us luggage-holding tokens. It had been a long trip and I had been making more and more errors in Japanese. We had fun shopping in the fabric district and got some nice things for ourselves and our friends. Had veggi burgers for lunch at MOS Burger where they spoke good English. We picked up our 預りました (not 崩した) luggage at the hotel and got on the Yamanote line to Hamamatsucho station. It wasn’...
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Iwate and Sendai Trip Journal: Tuesday, Sept. 23rd

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It was Autumnal Equinox day, so we were hoping for most stores to be open. A few were closed including Tomato in the fabric district. But first we headed to the Nippori “Railway Museum” and watched and photographed trains for a while. They had installed a billboard to help you identify the different types that passed.  E235-0 Series on the Yamanote Line E5 Series Shinkansen on the Tohoku Line E233-1000 series on the Keihin-Tohoku Line. E231-1000 series on the   Utsunomiya or the Takasaki Line E7 Series Shinkansen on the Hokuriku or the Jōetsu lines Families gather at the "Train Museum" on Shimogoinden Bridge. 2500 trains pass here daily. We continued up the hill to the Yanaka cemetery where several famous people are buried. These include Tokugawa Yoshinobu - the last Tokugawa shogun, Soseki Natsume, Makino Tomitaro (a botanist). We never found any of them because it turns out that it’s a huge cemetery, and we only went through a corner of it. We did encounter Tennoji, whi...
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