Day 20: Osaka castle and rotary club.

Today we went to Osaka. When we first arrived, we got the Kansai region rail passes because it’s cheaper to travel to Kyoto that way. We had a proper lunch in a cafe. I had a chicken katsu sandwich and 2 cakes. The cafe was quite expensive with a coke costing 350 yen.

After lunch we looked around Osaka for a bit and spent some time in an arcade. David played Tetris and I played a Mobile Suit Gundam game.

After that, we went to Osaka castle which was amazing. It was huge with 8 floors and we explored every one of them. The views at the top were breathtaking. We learnt a lot about Osaka castle’s history and the battles that occurred in the region and I finally achieved my dream of being a samurai.

We then went to the station where we met Michiko and went to the sight of the fundraising event. We met the president of the local Rotary club and he treated us to a drink. David and I both had a bizarre milk drink akin to yakulk. We then met the other Rotarian’s and had dinner with them. Dinner was soup, dim sum and Chinese noodles. I thought it was really good. The president gave a speech and we performed Hey Jude and Come together. There was also a French family there who gave a speech about their experience in Japan whose daughter had stayed in Japan on an exchange sponsored by the rotarians for a year. After the fundraising ended, we returned to Michiko’s house.