Today was an interesting day, to say the least. I woke up early once more, and while most people opted to stay near the hotel and take it easy today to rest and recover from all the activities this week so far, I felt ready to go still and so decided to take the Shinkansen to Osaka! I went with Liam, and so together we managed to get a ticket from the JR Service counter and catch one. The ride was surprisingly short, only 30 minutes! Once there, we navigated the Shin-Osaka station and manged to find the subway. I refilled my Suica card that I had purchased earlier on Day 2, and honestly I can’t believe I didn’t fill it up sooner, it’s so convenient! Although I did almost put it in the ticket slot and get it stuck in the machine conveyor. 

Once we rode the subway into Osaka, we moved on to our main goal: finding the Rikuro Cheesecake Store and buying some fluffy cheescake! Pavel really wanted to have their cheesecake, but was too tired today to make the trek, so I offered to go and bring some back for him. We walked through the city, and it was shocking how urban and reminiscent of NYC it was! There were so many stores, and once we entered into a shopping street district, it felt somewhat similar to Nishiki market in terms of spacing. A bit farther down, we found Rikuro’s! They were selling their cheesecakes, but I wanted to try going to their café upstairs, since we had came all this way I figured we should sit down and enjoy their cheesecake before bringing some back. But then we learned that their café only opens at 11:30am! It was about 10:15am when we arrived. so we wandered around the area a bit. We found a Book-Off store, but it was infortuantely closed until 1pm, and we also found a small temple nestled in a side street near the shops. It was very quaint, and I was even able to get another stamp for my stamp book!

Finally, it was 11:15am, so we headed back to the café and got in line. But then the worst happened; the café cut off the first batch of guests right before us. The wait was an hour, and that wasn’t quite worth it for us a that time, so we settled for getting a cheesecake to go and found a place to eat it by the river in the city. The cheesecake was super light and fluffy, but also wasn’t too sweet either. It was warm, and honestly tasted pretty good! It was about 18cm in circumference, and I ate about 1/3 of it, then packed up the rest for Pavel. After that, we took the train again down to the Osaka Pokémon Center! It was very cool, and I bought my first piece of Pokémon merch from there. 

Liam went back to the hotel a bit earlier while I stayed behind to look at the Nintendo and Capcom stores there, and then I made my way down to Umeda station there and found a JR ticket machine to get a Shinkansen ticket back. However, the machine gave me an error when I tried to verify my JR Pass, and so I had to go on the in-person line and get a ticket from the counter. Once I got it, it was for a 2:18pm train, and it was currently about 1:50pm, so I had time.

Or so I thought. 

I walked back to the main plaze of the station, and realized my first miscalculation: I had no idea where the Shinkansen platform was. I ran around a bit trying to get my bearings, before finding stairs that led to JR Lines, and on those platforms I saw signs for the Shinkansen. “Good” I thought, but then I noticed that it didn’t look similar to the other platforms I had been on before. I found a transit officer and asked him in Japanese if I was at the right platform. He pointed down the tracks, and said that I had to be at Shin-Osaka station to catch it. I was at Umeda station. But, he told me, I could catch a train here to Shin-Osaka, but it was on the platform next to ours. So I rushed over there, and was still confused because I wasn’t sure how this would work, like if I had to pay a fare for this local train? So I asked another transit officer nearby, and he said the same thing, and pointed to track 7 and said to take that one. Track 8’s train arrived first though, and the sign said both trains stopped at Shin-Osaka. Track 7’s train even said it was delayed a few mins, so I opted for track 8, thinking it would leave sooner. 

I was wrong, turns out, and the other local train arrived and left before mine, and mine moved much slower for some reason. When it finally arrived at Shin-Osaka station, I sprinted out and weaved through the crowds, frantically searching for my platform, but alas to no avail. I finally asked one last ticket officer nearby where to find my platform, and he looked and said that it had left already, and I should take another train arriving at 2:54pm instead. It was 2:21pm, I had missed my train 3 minutes. Tired and a bit defeated, I walked up the escalator to the new platform, and waited until the Shinkansen came and boarded.

After the whole bullet train fiasco, I had about half an hour to decompress at our hotel room before heading back out to our first meeting with the KCG students and the first session of the Game Jam! After receving a great tour of their new building, we met with the students in a casual snack and pizza social, and I had to put my Japanese lessons to the test. Since many of the students didn’t really speak a lot of English, I tried my best to use my Japanese to conversate, and I think it went somewhat well! I was able to hold a few longer basic converstations, and any phrases I didn’t understand I was able to somewhat decipher through context clues. I met Shoma and Reo (both from my Game Jam team) as well as Oono, Kento, and Ryotaro. During the meetup, Shoma and Reo introduced me and the team to an old Japanese snack, deep fried sugar that was similar in texture to cotton candy, in the sense that it was very airy, but had a crunchy shell to it. It was very good, probably my favorite snack of the night! After food and socializing, we worked a bit in teams to set up projects, and then we all headed home at around 8pm. Some of the KCG students rode the bus with us to get dropped off at the train station, and I had a great converstation about Gundam with Kento!

Overall, it was a very eventful day, and culminated in a great experience! Now on to see what tomorrow holds for us!