Visiting Ghibli Park

 We were all so excited to visit Ghibli Park which is sort of an amusement park but not in the traditional sense, based on the Studio Ghibli films. We caught a bus directly from Nagoya Station to the park which was a good 45 minutes away. We had breaky on the bus and enjoyed the ride before arriving at the park. This is no ordinary theme park as we quickly discovered. There are no ticket barriers to enter, we simply took the steampunk looking elevator down or there is also a ramp down to the main part of the park for free. There was a little bit of figuring things out because it is a large park which has several exhibits dedicated to the various films. These exhibits were hidden throughout the park and only required tickets to enter the exhibits themselves. We first foundThe Cat Returns area which had a small house with a very detailed miniature exhibit inside and a fun mock bus stop. We then made our way through a dark tunnel to another part of the park.

Exploring Nagoya

 After dropping off our bags we headed out to explore Nagoya. We were relatively close to a set of covered shopping streets. Before we got there we saw some pretty funny things including a marionette show of feudal Japan. It was really nice to walk through some of the covered streets with cool shops like the Alice in Wonderland themed store. We then had an interesting dinner before heading back to our accomodation because tomorrow was going to be a big day.

Lunch and off to Nagoya

 We had a great lunch at a local restaurant where everything was cooked right in front of us on a hot plate. The food was delicious and the owner was really friendly, which set us up really well for our quick trip to Nagoya on the Shinkansen. When we arrived in Nagoya we had a little walk to our accomodation where we dropped off our stuff.

More from Osaka Castle

 We decided not to go inside the castle as we didn't book a ticket before and the queue was quite long. It was fine anyway as we really enjoyed walking around the grounds and seeing the outside of the castle. The girls actually quite enjoyed taking photographs of each other around the castle grounds.  

Walking to Osaka Castle

 We decided to walk to Osaka Castle since it was only a few blocks away. It was a nice walk and we got to have an interesting view of the old castle juxtaposed against the modern high rise buildings of Osaka. The castle is certainly worth the visit as it is surrounded by beautiful gardens and moats. We enjoyed making our way through the various gates and fortifications of giant boulders. It ended up being a bit of a hot day though and the lack of shade meant the girls got hot and dehydrated making them a grumpy. A quick vending machine stop improved moral though and got us exploring again.

Making our own fancy food

 From plastic that is. We stopped in a shop where fake plastic food for restaurants was produced and we had an opportunity to make our own. The girls all chose different things to make and put them together before the assistants helped them set ther delights. Afterwards we got some real food and enjoyed it at home. Some of the real food was quite fun too.