Whilst travelling I have a few personal rules, including why I will never put anything in a hostel bathroom sink, the amount of people in a dorm (though this is a bit different in Japan) and staying in a hostel near public transport so I don’t damage my back so much. Another one of mine is not letting hungry become hangry, so I set off to get some lunch straight after arriving in Osaka.

One of the travel bloggers I follow described a bowl of pork rib ramen as one of the best dishes she’s ever eaten so I went out to eat exactly that. This was also the one time the GPS on my phone decided to work too, so I took that as a sign. All I can say is that the bowl of ramen was glorious; the pork so delicious yet I knew it was so bad for me; the broth was the best I’ve ever had and the noodles were perfect. Sometimes I describe my life as a series of first world problems, and I couldn’t decide whether or not that made the top 5 or 10 of best dishes I’ve ever eaten, as I’ve eaten three-Michelin-star standard food.

I didn’t really fancy being a tourist, so I went back to the hostel and chilled. I noticed in the corner of the room that there was this metal post with a rope, so I took a closer look and it seems like instead of a fire escape, we have a harness and if we need to make a quick escape we are expected to teach ourselves how to abseil down a building. Obviously 100% safe.

Yesterday was a bit of a meh day, but I was in a good mood. I started off at a Pokemon Center – if I did not have a budget for this trip and wasn’t living out of a backpack for the next 3+ months, I would’ve totally bought everything in sight. It was nice to see other people who were older than me having a moment whilst in that shop, because I was too.

After, I set off for lunch and a walk, then opted to travel on the ferris wheel in the tourist area. As my day trip was going to be Himeji Castle which I did last week, I thought that I’d go to Osaka castle, and go to a much better castle for a day trip for the following day. Osaka castle wasn’t much on the inside, just a museum with a view from the top, equal to the view from the ferris wheel.

So, today, I was going to go to another castle. I’ve wanted to go for the past fourteen years; I’ve kind of been twice in England and the one I can actually visit was built whilst I was in high school. After a Google search, I found out that not only could I not visit Hogwarts at the Japanese version of Wizarding World of Harry Potter, there was in fact a typhoon destined to hit near Osaka today. Brilliant.

This morning I headed off to a convenience store to stock up on some food and booze, and I’ve been a grown up today, finalising my India trip, forgetting to pay off my credit card bill and researching a couple of things for when I get to Tokyo and beyond. Unfortunately, I have not yet managed to end up on BBC News like I did when I got caught up in Cyclone Debbie, but I should be able to move on towards Fuji tomorrow.