Osaka, 2025

The Japanese are legendary when it comes to doing everything better than the rest of us. Their streets are clean, their delicacies sumptuous, their public transportation flawless. During my short trip to Osaka, it seems to me that everything we hear about them as being almost perfect in execution, is true. The Japanese are to be admired for their advanced civilization and the way their society runs.

This time, my parents took advantage of my daughter’s school holiday to take us on a trip to Osaka for 6 days and 5 nights. The highlight of this trip was a visit to Universal Studios Japan, to experience especially Nintendo world and Harry Potter. Everything about this trip blew my breath away. Indeed, Japan is a much-revered holiday destination which presents us with the chance to enjoy the unique Japanese culture.

We stayed at Apa Hotel near Namba, only a short walk to the bustling Dotonbori. It’s no surprise that Osaka, especially Dotonbori, is called the food capital of Japan, with rows and rows of restaurants serving everything from Wagyu and Kobe beef to the freshest seafood, sushi and premium fruits. We didn’t deprive ourselves of the opportunity to taste the softest, buttery-like Wagyu A5 skewers that were grilled in front of our eyes by the street market. Its soft, perfectly marbled beef simply melts in your mouth, moist to the bite, its oils mingled so finely with your taste buds. The trip wouldn’t be perfect if we hadn’t experienced this.

When one thinks of Japanese food, ramen comes to mind. Although it can be a challenge to find pork free ramen in downtown Osaka, we were lucky to find Ichiran, a beef ramen shop. The experience eating ramen at Ichiran was novel. One can get by ordering and enjoying a meal without talking to a single staff, as orders are taken by machines and a system that only required us to fill our orders on a piece of paper and passing it through a window. My daughter enjoyed this experience and the ramen was simply delicious.

I can rave on and on about Osaka, especially about their food and shopping. Osaka is a shopping haven for tourists; we were spoilt for choice. If we feel like browsing for upmarket brands, there’s Takashimaya and a street of designer shops in downtown Osaka selling products made especially for the Japanese market, which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. For travelers like me who are on a rather tight budget, there’s a myriad of shops underground in Namba station where we can find some quirky Japanese brands of clothes and shoes.

We joined a tour bus for a short day-trip to Kyoto. During this trip we managed to visit three places. Our first stop is the Nara deer park where we saw deer roaming freely and mingling with the people around them. Be careful when feeding the deer, as they can be quite aggressive when they see you holding the biscuits.

No trip to Kyoto is complete without visiting the Shinto shrine, Fushimi Inari Taisha, famous for their red arches arranged in rows. I took this opportunity to take photographs along the arches despite the throngs of tourists walking by the pathway.

There’s a stream along one of the must-see areas in Arashiyama, Kyoto, where the Bamboo forest, Kimono forest and the UNESCO heritage site of Tenryu-ji temple, are located. Due to the short time we had to visit Arashiyama, we only managed to walk along the Bamboo forest clad in kimonos for a photo session. We then rushed to return the kimonos and hopped back on the bus, leaving the other two attractions not visited.

There is one particularly novel food experience we tried in Kyoto. Our tour guide was raving about a tofu dish called yube. We had meals with yube as the centerpiece, accompanied by a rice dish and an udon dish. Sampling the yube was a unique experience, being a dish that originated from Kyoto.

On our last day in Osaka, we decided to take it slow. We strolled along the street near the hotel and visited Takashimaya and Namba station for the last time on this trip. We shopped for some souvenirs and beauty products peculiar to Japan and managed to get a decent haul. The next day, we boarded our flight back to Malaysia.

I’ve always loved Japan. It has notable exports, but far beyond the matcha and anime, it offers a deep cultural experience so uniquely its own. We feel very lucky to have experienced their hospitality and immersed ourselves in their culture. Japan is undoubtedly one of my favorite places in the world.