Japan 2023, Day 6, Osaka to Tokyo

Turns out the rain was worse than we thought. Massive flooding all over Japan. It stopped the Shinkansen trains all day Friday making the train station in Osaka crazy busy. Trains canceled and delayed.

Fortunately we left compulsively early to take the local trains to Shin-Osaka Station where the bullet train we had reserved seats on was to depart at 1:18pm. We still had to pick up reservation cards that proved we had reservations. The lines for this were really long. Mike stood in one while I stood in a shorter line to see if I could get them from the automated machines. While standing in line I saw someone push a “call” button and a woman popped her head out of a little hatch next to the machine to help him. (Think guard at the entrance to Emerald City.) When I tried everything I could and couldn’t retrieve our reservations I pushed the call button and…

…a woman popped out and helped me get my reservation cards. Whew!

Mike and I made it through the ticket gates in plenty of time to…wait for a delayed train. 🤣

Turns out everything was running late or cancelled due to the torrential rains.

We had time to grab our ekiban (bento box for the train) since our gate still hadn’t been announced.

We made it to the track and after another delay we found our reserved seats.

We read somewhere about folks who didn’t reserve seats having to stand the entire train ride. We are incredibly grateful we’d reserved as many folks (possibly from delayed or cancelled train from the day before?) had to stand for the 4 hour train ride.

We were feeling bold and energized leaving Osaka but tapped out by the time we made it to Tokyo so we caught a cab to our hotel.

We decided to spend one night in The Disney Celebration Wish Hotel. It’s the cheapest Disney hotel but it wasn’t too bad.

We grabbed some convenience store fried chicken thighs (remarkably yummy!) and some other snacks since we hadn’t had dinner. And we finally had our favorite beverage KIRIN LEMON!!

Now to bed so we can go to Disneyland tomorrow!

Thanks for following along.