DAY 2 - Osaka City Adventure

DAY 2 is our Osaka City Tour.

For our Day 2 - Osaka City Tour, we bought the 1 Day Amazing Osaka Pass (AOP) from Kansai Airport.  The 1 Day AOP costs Y2500 (Note: There is no child ticket. Since most of the attractions are free of charge for children, so I suggest simply getting a 1 day Enjoy Ecocard for your child at Y300) and covers most tourists attractions with unlimited bus and train rides in Osaka.

For more details on the AOP please check the AOP website: Amazing Osaka Pass - if you do the math, you would need to visit at least 4 of the attractions to breakeven the cost of the pass. I am afraid we failed maximizing the AOP since the boys were already too tired to try the Night Cruise and to visit the Umeda Sky Building (which we hoped to schedule after dusk).

Getting ready for the Osaka Castle.

Osaka Castle moat... (and a really excited child doing his thing)!

Entering the Castle Gates (and loving the camera)

The Osaka Castle

Loving the scenery...

And what's a child to do with matcha ice cream all around?

There were lots of people around and the hot pre-summer weather was getting pretty hot.  We needed some aircon relief and decided to go to the Osaka Museum of History, across the street.

Off to the Osaka Museum of History (Tip: Take the elevator to the 10th  floor, then make your way down the escalator)...

At the top floor (Ancient Floor) is a replica of  Daikokuden of Naniwanomiya Palace. 

A nice surprise, awaits you as your make your way down... the Osaka Museum of History overlooks the Osaka Castle.

Look we were just there a while ago...

At the 9th Floor is a Tour of the Water City...

The Archeological Challenge at the 8th Floor...

Modern Contemporary Period at the 7th Floor.

From the Osaka Museum of History we took the subway and made our way to another Museum ~ The Osaka Museum of Housing and Living. 

My son hands on Japan's local toys  (way-way before Xbox and PS4s...)

Too cute, to scare...

And more pictures...

It would have been nice to be able to dress up in Kimono rentals - to take pictures in while touring the village.  However, we came in late in the afternoon and there were no more Kimono rentals left.

A short train ride from the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living is the Pokémon Center ~ Daimaru Umeda (Warning picture HEAVY.  My boys are addicted to Pokémon).

My little man literally losing it in Japan...

(#PokemonOverload)

Checking the merchandise (lol)!

So many to choose from... and all so cute!

Paying for his LOOT!

The Winners are Eevee and Snorlax (PS. I like Snorlax too. He is so soft and huggable).

Goodnight Day 2, 

our Day 3 starts early, we are going to Nara.

Please follow our Osaka Adventure by clicking the links below:
Day 3 - Nara DIY (and some shopping)
Day 4 - Part I (Instant Ramen Museum)

Helpful FREE Applications for your Tokyo Japan Vacation

Preparing for a family vacation in a foreign country that doesn't speak your language is a daunting task, so to make planning for our Tokyo Japan vacation easier, I have enlisted the help of free downloadable applications in Google Play.
  
I have listed below the applications that proved useful to us:

1. PLANNING - I did my planning by area and  these applications were especially helpful in pointing out key attractions with descriptions.  

TRIPADVISOR  

I checked TripAdvisor a lot to see other travelers'  reviews, experiences and tips.   

Tokyo Handy Guide (by 公益財団法人東京観光財団).
The Tokyo Handy Guide the official tourism guide application of Tokyo Japan. It contains useful tourist's information on Tokyo's prime attractions by areas. 

Tokyo Travel Guide and Map (by Sygic Travel)
This application allows you to create a day by day itinerary. What cool about this application is that it computes for the estimate amount of time spent (touring the attraction and travel time from one tourist spot to another).  You can later download your itinerary via PDF.

Touch! Tokyo - Guide you to Japan (by H.I.S. Co., Ltd.)
Contains the latest events and activities information by area, including invaluable tips. It is also so easy to use.

2. BOOKING - I spent a good deal of time looking for an affordable, but comfortable and accessible place to stay in Tokyo. 

AIRBNB
I initially planned for a hotel stay, but got turned off with the expensive small and constricted hotel spaces. I turned to AirBnb looking for a Tokyo home-sweet-home. 

3. NAVIGATION - do not underestimate the power navigation applications in Japan.  I have downloaded a few, but ended up using Google Map (which proved to be very accurate) most of the time. 

Google Map
The Google Map is our best friend in Tokyo Japan. It proved useful in both walking / taking the train to our destination.

Other Navigation Apps we referred while touring Tokyo:  

Tokyo Rail Map Lite (by Urban-Map ~ Vollmer & Becker-Asano)

Tokyo Route Planner (by Unwilling Developers)

4. TRANSLATOR

JAPANESE ENGLISH TRANSLATOR (by GreenLife Apps)
This is a talking translator and an offline dictionary. It can even translate via voice recognition Japanese to English and vice versa. 

A better option, which was a find by my eldest sons is the Yominawa Japanese Translator Application.

YOMINAWA JAPANESE TRANSLATOR
It provides an easy way to translate Japanese with the use of your camera in real-time. You take of photo of word/sentence you want to translate and this application displays the English translation.


5. TOKYO DISNEYLAND RESORT - these applications helped us a lot in navigating Tokyo DisneyLand and Tokyo DisneySea

TDR WAITING TIME (by ThreeSixtyApps)
This application provides realtime attraction wait times, fastpass service status and current operation status.

PERFECT DISNEYLAND GUIDE (by UchinokoMoratte)
Aside from providing attraction wait times, this application works as a navigation map.  It was sometimes difficult to make sense of the distributed hand maps, especially if you are inside a huge park.  This application shows where you are at the moment and the actual location of the attraction you want to go to.

Let me know if you have other mobile applications ~ you have tested useful in your vacation planning.