My Incredible 8 hours in Japan.

Before reaching Vancouver, I had a transit in Japan for 10 hours, which meant to be walking around the city for 8 hours, leaving the remaining 2 hours for the on board preparation.

When I reached the Kansai Airport, I put my hand carry at a storage rental, it was priced 700 yen per day for 2 small luggages.

After that,I went to the Tourist Information center to sign up for a short trip in Sakai,Osaka before I'm off to the next flight. I bought package A,which was a map-based walking tour at the price of 1600 yen ( about RM 50+). It's altogether 9 destinations on the map, and there are all within walking distance and not too far from each other, finish visiting the 9 points will lead me the way back to the Sakai station, in which I'll take a 37 minutes train ride back to the airport.

The receptionist briefed me on the walking tour before I proceeded to the ticket collection.

There I started my incredible cultural tour on foot, without knowing the way and using my limited Japanese proficiency to ask about it.Just with a map and train timetables.

Map of the day.






It was my first time having this kind of experience, to have no one to guide me throughout the trip, and my schedule was very flexible and manipulative.



It was a Friday morning, and the street seemed to be rather quiet, a huge contrast to the lifestyle in Tokyo. Everyone was walking so fast in Tokyo that I never walked slow when I was in Tokyo, I know this was the speed I had to follow.

Sugawara Shrine,菅原神社







Japanese have a habit of writing down their wish or prayer on a wooden tablet (Ema,絵馬 in Japanese), and hang it at the shrine.

Just like the Chinese, they have Omikuji where some random fortunes are written on the paper. The Omikuji predicts a person's future and whether his hope will come true in any matter. The bearer keeps the Omikuji if it turns out to be a good fortune, or else he/she will tie it onto a string ( or a pine tree) in the temple ground when the prediction is bad.


I left the Shrine after 15 minutes and headed to another temple, the Honganji temple.

Honganji temple,本願寺堺别院







Continue walking for about 10 minutes, I reached another temple, Myokokuji temple.

Myokokuji Temple,妙国寺







There was no one collecting the entrance ticket. I just went in and had a brief look at it, I felt awkward, as though I was an intruder, but with an entrance ticket.

Walk, walk, walk and walk, and I found the Sakai Knife Museum.









I'm quite attracted to the wide variety of knives showed in the Museum, those that I barely see in life- Those knives used for cutting Japanese food like,sushi,soba,kashi,beef and even whale.=O
(The knife used to fillet the whale is the longest and biggest one in the first picture.)


Yaki Soba Teshoku

On my way to these tourist spots, I did some shopping whenever I see a supermarket ,pharmacy (the Kusuri store), or shopping malls as I did not have adequate time to do them separately on a shopping tour. This was why my walking tour was dragged to 7 hours instead of the required time of 4 hours for the trip alone.



Besides that, I had some hard time finding the way to some of the hot spots and it took me round and round before I could reach. To worsen the problem, I lost my way back to the Sakai station that it procrastinated my train time, it took me 90 minutes to go back ,far more than the estimated time. By time I reached the airport, checked in and picked up my hand luggages, it was already 5p.m( My flight was at 5.25p.m).
So...so.... I ran all the way madly for a few hours.

This was why I called it an incredible and shocking journey, also my first time traveling alone, really alone.