Kyoto for Temples, Osaka for Dotonbori Eats: Japan’s Ultimate 2-City Trip

Kyoto for Temples, Osaka for Dotonbori Eats: Japan’s Ultimate 2-City Trip

Kyoto is a region that there’s a lot of Japanese culture, like a lot of temples, good foods, and the best drink in the world is matcha. So, matcha comes from Kyoto. And we’re going to try to like get the best match ever to try to see there’s a difference between like the common matcha you get like in any coffee place and the matcha. Every bakery or dessert place will sell a matcha version of whatever the dessert is. For example, this this is like a cinnamon roll with matcha inside. Everything here is with matcha inside. And that’s what we want to see. We are getting one. These hat cinnamon cream poof matcha. We can see like the matcha cream here and cinnamon poof. M. Look at this. The matcha flavor is amazing. One thing I’ve noticed about Japan is that all of the temples are for free, which is so nice because we’ve been to so many temples all around Asia and you always have to pay. It’s a religious grounds and here you can just walk through them if you’re passing by or come have a look and appreciate without having to pay or or buy a ticket and there’s no cues or lines. The temples are very clean in perfect state. Temples are old but like it’s wellkept. I’m not judging but like some temple that charge you is really bad conditions you know and they say like this money to be taking care of the temple but like I don’t know what they do with the money but Japan again making more points than the other countries in India because everything here is walks is perfect. I guess these are ways that they make money. You can buy one of these balls and you can write whatever you like, your name on it and leave them here. So instead of paying for entry, they leave it up to you if you want to donate money. Kyoto is the kind of place where you just wander through little streets, stumble upon temples, and feel like you’ve stepped back in time. It’s so peaceful. And of course, we visited the famous 1,000 Tori gates. An absolute must when you’re in Kyoto. We got here at 8:00 p.m. and we mostly had the place to ourselves. We were able to get pictures completely alone. Our plan was to actually come here at 7:00 and I believe if we would have done that and came here before 7:00, we would have had so much time and had the place completely to ourselves. But even at 8:00 a.m. on a Tuesday, I don’t I think if you came any later, if your goal is to get pictures, it would be difficult. And this is compared to the way back. It is 9:40 right now and it is getting packed. There’s a lot of people and we are on our way back. One thing that is amazing, before you get to any temple, just before you go inside the main entrance, there is always food tents, food stalls with very nice looking food. What I love about these kind of streets before you get into the temple, there’s like any food markets with stalls of like traditional food that you can try from the country. And each one costs like 3, four, five, 6. So like we’re trying this yoga maki hiroshima something like that. It’s very good. And like you don’t have to go to a street food market where it’s very expensive to try this kind of stuff. You can try it on your way to a tourist attraction which has been surprising advice. [Music] Express ticket is required. So we spent 2 days in Kyoto and now before making our way back to Tokyo, we are going to spend one day in Osaka and we are going there for the food. So right now it is 10:00 and we have not eaten breakfast yet because we are on our way to eat a lot of food. People say that Osaka is the food capital. So let’s let’s do a lot. That’s our plan. That’s all we’re going to be doing there and then going back to Tokyo. We just arrived to Osaka. And one thing we noticed is that the main station that you arrive to is quite far away from the city. So right now we need to get three trains to get to the middle of the city. And that goes the same for when you’re going back to Tokyo with the bullet train. And our train is very early in the morning. So we’re going to have to go there very early to make sure we make it. So we just asked Gemini, what are the top 20 most traditional foods to try here in Osaka? And he gave us a list. So, we’re going to try as many of these as we can possibly find. We have arrived to the kitchen of Japan. So, we have just arrived and this is the first food place that we’ve seen. All things strawberry dessert. And of course, we’re getting one strawberry dessert with red bean. It’s a little bit heavy. It’s not a light dessert. I’m with red beans and strawberry. Very good. Looks very good. We found one. Looks so good. Second food on the list. Onoiaki right here. Very good. Amazing. We tried a very similar one in Kyoto. And this one’s better. It’s very eggy. Don Buri is the best place to sightseeing in Osaka. A lot of people going to want to go to the temple, the Osaka temple, Universal Studios, but these things are not so cool as here. Like here you can get amazing food. You can get like takoyaki, you can get like crab stick, a lot of meals, and it’s quite quite a little bit pricey if you compare with the food in Tokyo. cuz it’s very touristy, but like it’s very nice and it’s worth the experience. And what’s nice is that you can try one of each thing here because they have like almost kind of like street food. Like they have stalls at the restaurants where you can grab one tray of takayyaki or grab one crab stick and try everything. We found takayyaki place that looks very promising because there’s a long queue. So we ordering this takoyaki and we are in the queue and this is how it works. You order at a machine, place your order, and then you pick up your food here. And even though it’s a machine, sadly, it only takes cash. [Music] Tried one in Kyoto and now trying one in Osaka. really really good. It tastes really high quality. There’s no wonder there’s such a long queue here. The octopus is bigger. The filling is so good and the toppings are really nice. This cost €1,000 yen, so that’s like €6, but we could try five of one topping and five of another topping. If you’re here, this is the place for takayyaki. And of course, we couldn’t leave Osaka without checking out the iconic Bodori area. Bright lights, buzzing streets, and that famous bridge. It’s just one of those must-sea spots. Come to Osaka. But like I would not recommend stay here longer than 3 days. stay here like one day, two days.

Experience Kyoto’s historic temples and Osaka’s legendary eats in just a few nights! Discover:

Kyoto temple: Fushimi Inari Taisha (Senbon Torii), Kiyomizu-dera, Yasaka Shrine—free entry, no queues

Insider Kyoto tips: Best times to visit, hidden shrines, cultural rituals

Osaka food crawl: Dotonbori’s takoyaki, okonomiyaki, kushikatsu and more

Plan your perfect Kyoto → Osaka trip with these must-see temples and must-eat dishes!