The capsule beds were okay. It was too hot, there weren’t enough pillows, and the mattress was too hard. But, we all agreed that when we woke up it felt like the early hours of the morning as we were so comfortable and it was so dark. Chelsea had made a trip to 7/11 by herself which was brave considering she didn’t have any data. She finally got a make your own smoothie which I had been wanting since before the trip as I’d seen it on TikTok. She also got me a pizza bread and herself a custard cream puff. Chelsea had also tried out the shower whilst I’d been snoring and said it took her ten minutes to find out how to control the temperature, but after that, it was a nice one.
We got the train to go to Osaka Castle but Hannah and Liam got left behind as they needed to get some cash out but their card broke. They said not to wait for them so we went on. The park where Osaka castle is was really nice. We sat at a fountain and had second breakfast from Starbucks. I had a vanilla frappe. Chelsea had a caramel frappe which had the worlds supply of sugar and coffee in. Matt and Reece had a McMuffin thing. Chelsea also got us pastry sausage things like at Aunty Annes for later. Reece checked out Lawsons and saw they had Chelsea sweets, so Chelsea went in and bought some. They had a little land train running round the park which we enjoyed watching, and it also seemed to be a running route as there were a lot of people training. There were some people with tents which we weren’t sure whether they were just for the day or for staying overnight in. Almost all of the dogs we saw had outfits, ranging from pink tutus to orange coats.
We had a bit of a walk to the castle and Matt, Chelsea, and Jamie didn’t think much of it, until they realised they were looking at a lookout tower and not at the actual castle. The grounds were huge. The moat was huge. The walls were huge. The castle was not that big, but quite tall and very pretty. We didn’t think it would be very defensible compared to English castles. There was a massive queue to go in and we were running a bit late as we’d got up late so decided to give it a miss and walk back to the subway to go to the Bear Paw cafe. On the way to the subway we saw a karate competition that you could watch.
When we got to the cafe we struggled to read the Japanese menu but the lady came and gave us an English one as she could see we were tourists. Chelsea got a Halloween Parfait and Halloween Cookie. Everyone else got a small cookie. The bear really did come out of a hole in the wall. He gave you your food, then got you to do a hightouchy (high-five) and a kawaii symbol. We all enjoyed that and ate our snacks. I also had my pastry sausage from starbs. Everyone else went to Lawsons for some more substantial food.
We got back on the subway to go to the cup noodle museum. We lost Reece along the way and had a bit of a panic but luckily he caught up to us at the museum. We were directed by special cup noodle people to the noodle museum who Jamie said must have read noodle on our faces. We saw a coke man refilling the vending machines.
We went inside the cup noodle museum, and we found the place to make our custom cup noodles. There were 2 experiences, cup noodles or chicken ramen. We queued up and got our cup noodle pots from a vending machine for 500 yen. Then a woman told us what to do; sit down and colour in the pot. Chelsea was very artistic about it and did an amazing design. I did some shapes. Then we got to pick our flavours from a menu on the table. There were 4 sauces and 12 ingredients. We both chose the cup noodle seasoning. I got minced pork, corn, cheese, and garlic chip. Chelsea got minced pork, egg, cheese, and garlic chip. We took our coloured pots to the production line where several cup noodle workers were behind a glass wall at different stations. At the first station, they cleaned our cups by blowing and sucking them with air. They then put the noodles in and we turned a handle to flip the cup the right way up. The cups then moved to the second station where we told the workers our flavours. Then they sealed the cups in cellophane using a special hot press machine. The cups were very warm when we got them back, it was a bit like playing hot potato. We took our cups over to the bagging station and I struggled to blow the bag up and put the string in.
Downstairs was the famous cup noodle wall, with noodles all the way from the early 20th century to modern day. They also had a giant cup noodle showing you what was inside. It was a pretty small museum, the cup noodle experience was the main attraction.
They had a decent gift shop, I got a Takara/Tomy duck car and Chelsea got a mini cup noodle.
We then got 2 trains back to Osaka-Umeda and caught our bullet train to Tokyo. Matt and Liam had a sleep. I managed to get an ice cream from a vending machine on the platform so happily ate that and drank a coke too.
The friends got off at Shinjuku so they could go back to the Airbnb to have Dominos but we carried on to Tokyo for Ichiran.
It was a different Ichiran to last time and on the second floor of some office block, a bit weird. We got the same as last time as it was yummy. We sat next to American man and his dad who could read Japanese. I overheard him reading the information board and that they cook the noodles for 10 seconds at 150 degrees.
On our way back to the Airbnb we saw an old steam train outside the station. Also, a police car waited for the crossing light to turn green which we thought was a bit weird. There was also a smoking room as you’re not allowed to smoke on the streets. It even had litter in it which is quite something as no-one litters over here.
The friends had only just got their Dominos when we got back at about 10:30pm because the driver couldn’t find our place, then they had to walk and get it, then one of the pizzas was wrong, so we sat smugly before going to bed.
