Our first time in OSAKA JAPAN – Exploring Dotonbori – NOT what we expected

Our first time in OSAKA JAPAN – Exploring Dotonbori – NOT what we expected

Hi, everyone.
I’m Mark from Travelshorts. This is my daughter, Holly. That’s my son, Matthew. And welcome to the first episode of our
epic Japan trip, now that we’re in Japan. So we We arrived at Kansai Airport
in Osaka a few hours ago. We’ve got to our hotel, we’ve checked in,
we’ve relaxed for a little bit, but now we’re going to go out
into Osaka and explore the city. So I hope you want to come and join
us as we go touring around Osaka. We’re going to start in the Namba area
where our hotel is now and then go to the Dotonbori area. So Okay, so what we’re going to do now is head towards the Dotonbori area. I’ve set Google Maps to the Glico sign. It could be about a 12 minute walk. So we’ve made it to the Dotonbori
area here in Osaka. I can see the Don Don
Donkey ferris wheel ahead. We’re going to be going
on that very shortly. As you might be able to tell,
it is raining, but we’re not letting that dampen our
spirit We’re going to try and have as much fun as possible. If you’re not familiar with Takoyaki, it’s basically octopus tentacles, cooked in a batter. What I’ve learned from watching other
YouTube videos, don’t eat them straight away because it’s red hot inside. I think we’re going to give it a couple
of minutes before we start eating it. Let’s try these, see what they’re like. Not bad, actually. I only had the dough so far, though. Is it hot? Yeah, it’s quite hot at the moment. There’s the octopus. Actually, they’re not bad
because normally, I don’t believe the hype with things because everybody goes
to these places, say, Oh, it’s amazing. It’s amazing when you’re watching videos. But actually, that’s not that bad. That’s my only part of squid, isn’t it? There’s only a small piece of the squid. The rest is just all the batter.
We have a sauce. That’s actually quite nice.
Yeah, it’s not that bad. I think you could have it, Holly. If you don’t want to eat the squid,
you don’t have to eat the squid. I don’t want it. That was the takoyaki. Me and Matthew shared the eight
pieces we had four each. More tasty than I expected. Now we’re going to keep
walking around Dontonbori. Head towards the ferris wheel. But there’s a very famous
crab place behind me there. Let’s keep walking, Holly. There’s the Don Don Donky
ferris wheel. That’s where we’re going to head to now. This is probably the most famous spot
in Osaka for photographs, the iconic Glicoman. Well, I think we’ve taken enough
photographs of ourselves by the the Glico man sign. What we want to do next was go
on the ferris wheel on Don Don Donkey just behind us there. But since we’ve been here taking
photographs, we haven’t actually noticed it moving at all. I don’t know if because of the rain,
it’s actually not working. Maybe it’s just temporarily down. But we’ll head over there
now anyway and take a look. Unfortunately, the sign on the door does say that due to crowds, the Ferris wheel is closed today. Come back again and we look
forward to see you again. We’ve got our fingers crossed. It’s going to be open tomorrow. We weren’t actually planning We’re
planning to come to this area tomorrow. We got some other plans for tomorrow,
but I really do want to go on the Ferris wheel, so we’ll have to come
back to this area tomorrow. Holly has been going on about this place
called Strawberry Mania ever since we decided to come to Japan,
which was only a month ago. But we’ve just looked at Google Maps. It’s just over here on the left-hand side,
because as you know, if you follow our videos,
you’ll just know how much Holly Everybody loves strawberries. So a restaurant or a cafe called
Strawberry Mania she should be in her element. And there’s Strawberry Mania. Let’s see what they’ve What have you got? Hello.
Can I have two tanghulu yes. And one of those cakes there. So if you watched any of our China videos
from last year, you’ll know what Holly’s favourite food is in China,
apart from xi’an hamburgers. That good? Do you like it, Matthew?
That’s fine. I got myself a strawberry shortcake,
so let’s try this. It’s very light.
It’s got quite a lot of flavour as well. That’s Holly, yeah. That’s pretty good. I’ve got a strawberry on top as well.
You’re not having it, Holly. Did you enjoy that, Holly?
Yeah. We should get 5 million.
5 million? Yeah. That’s a lot of strawberries. I don’t think even you can eat
that amount of strawberries. There was tanghulu and there was
regular strawberries. But I like tanghulu Let’s go to our first Japanese arcade in the Claw Games. Have you seen which one
do you want to do, Holly? I knew about the cute one.
Yeah. So Matthew is going to have
a go on this Minecraft one. Good luck, Matthew. Oh, well.
It’s literally just one go. Yeah, one go is 100. It’s about £0.50. I’m going to give it a go on another
Minecraft one, try and win it for Matthew. So that one there. Have a look, shall we? Go over there. There.
Press the button. Oh, Actually, if you pick
that up again, it might go. I’m going to try that one again because
if I pick it up again, it might go. Let’s have a go with another hundred. Let’s go that way. It’s going to get caught on that? It might not. Oh, there we go. There we go. I want that for Matthew. There you go. Hey. I’ve used all our coins. We only had three 100 ¥ coins. We’re going to try
and find a money changer. I’m going to change a 1000
so that’ll give us 10 goes. Here’s a money changer
right ahead of us here. There’s a thousand going in. Hopefully, you should get 10,
100 ¥ coins out. Here we go. 2, 4, 5, 5. Okay, let’s go and try and win some more
toys. You want to try a small one, you said. It looks like you not only win toys
in this place, you can also get crisps and sweets. Look, it’s even
pizza-flavoured crisps, Holly. Got some Pringles there, Holly. Yeah, high cheese. High cheese flavour. You want to get high cheese flavour. So Matthew is going to try and get that Mario mushroom. I think it’s made to drop them as
soon as they go to the top, isn’t it? Oh, Holly’s doing it now. It’s like I thought it still was a way. I’m not good at doing that.
Oh, you’re fine. You’re doing good, Holly. Just tell me how to go.
Well, there. That’s in the right place, Holly. Oh, got it a little bit closer. Do you want to keep trying it? You might be able to, if you… Can you try?
No, it’s your go, Holly. But you’re better.
Try it. Further away again. It’s got that label on it, though.
Oh, fair. It might stick to that. Oh, no.
It’s going to click. Oh. Okay, I’m going to try
and do this one for Matthew. There’s my 100 ¥. Go that way. Even worse No that one is too far away now. No. That’s all our money. Have you spent it all as well? No, Holly still got one left. It got close.
Yeah. I think the lesson for that is quit while
you’re ahead because we got that first one within two goes.
Yeah. Then we spent, what,
1,300 ¥, 1,300 ¥ in total? Mm-hmm. Our plan for tomorrow is
to visit quite a lot of arcades. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s Travel Log,
where we go to Denden Town to visit all the arcades, the gatchapons,
and the claw machines there. But I do think we should quit
while we’re ahead in one of those. If we get one early on, maybe not worth
wasting our money trying to get it again. It looks like it’s starting
to rain a bit more as well now. I think the plan is to go and try and find
a sit down restaurant to have our dinner for the evening. We’re going to keep walking around,
see if anything takes our fancy. We’re going to take a look what
the Ninja Experience Cafe is. Fourth floor, by the look of it. Under Top Secret Training,
please open the door and come inside. Here we go. At the moment,
the Ninja Experience Cafe is fully booked. But they did say if we come back at seven
o’clock, they’ll be able to fit us in. So we’re probably going to come back there
later maybe, but we still want to get something to eat first. Current time is 5:50,
so another hour and 10 minutes. Literally in about the last 30 minutes, the crowds have just become insane. So I think after half five,
gets really busy around here, which I I knew that anyway,
watching videos online before coming. You know how busy Japan is
and the amount of tourists here. And this is the centre of Osaka,
so of course, it could get really busy. Okay, we come to Saizeriya, which is
like a family restaurant here in Japan. It’s a chain. This is how you order. Here’s quite clear instructions,
what we need to do. We’re going to do that now. I’m going to flick through
the menu really quickly. If you want to take a closer look
at something, just pause the video if you see anything you like. It looks like using the app, you need to enter the item
number of the food that you want. Holly This is this grilled skewered lamb. We can get the double one. There’s four of them, yeah? That will be 1452. 1452. That’s four skewers. Okay, that Holly’s done. What do you want, Matthew?
The hamburger? Hamburg steak, yeah. I think me and Matthew are going
to go for the hamburger steak. Quite popular in Japan,
so I wanted to try it. I know it’s not really that authentic
for our first day here in Japan, but I’d be wanting to try that for
a while just to see what it’s like. I think it’d probably be
a bit like a grill steak. We’ve just finished our order. Please help yourself to water
and wet towels at the drinks counter. Our cutlery is in there
if we want anything. I think meat on a stick
and strawberries are your favourite food. What does it taste like? Like meat.
Like meat? What else? This stuff. Yeah, the powder. And then you know
those cumin we have? Yeah. They’re like cumin spice, maybe. Okay. And this is a doria. Never had it before. It’s meat sauce on some sort of base. And there’s mine
and Matthew’s hamburger steak. It’s supposed to look good.
It’s going to be like a boot. It’s like a grilled steak, I’d imagine. Let’s try this hamburger steak, shall we? yeah, it’s just like a grill steak, covered in gravy.
It tastes okay. I think it’s a good price
for everything we got. I’m not sure what it is. 2,750, which is what? £14, £13, which I think for all
this is a pretty good deal. We also got unlimited
drinks as well, soft drinks. I’ve got a Canada Dry, I think it was.
Ginger ale. Holly’s got some apple Fanta. I’m happy he’s gone for Coke. Cheers. I’m going to try the Doria now. Okay, It’s not a solid base. I thought it might be like a base of bread
or something, a bit like a pizza, but it’s not. It’s got the consistency of like Béchamel
sauce that you have on a lasagna. Actually, it does taste like a lasagna. It’s without the pasta.
It’s just Japanese lasagna. Yeah. So my opinion says it’s Japanese lasagna. Which means Holly is going to try it. What do you think? Yeah. I’ve just discovered that the
doria is on a base of rice. That’s really nice for the price. I think that was
370 ¥, which is less than £2. You can see how busy it is now. The Ninja Experience Café is just
a three-minute walk away from here. Here we go.
Back to the Ninja Experience Café. After you two.
You’re ready, Holly? Yeah. You look like you’re
looking forward to it. A Ninja that drinks Coke. Travelshorts go Ninja. The first training is Shuriken
training with a Ninja Stars. You stand sideways, then you build a fan, and you have a Shuriken next to you. And you throw it like this.
You pinch it. It’s a mini target,
but the wood one is quite difficult. Okay, so the straw one.
Yeah, maybe. Wait, we’re in the wall.
That’s good. Both have another go Holly. Oh, well done.
Little Ninja. Well done.
All three were in the wall. Three, then you’re
probably going to beat me. Well done. Well done. Well done.
Wow. Here we go. Oh, wow. Oh, you’re good. Oh, on the wood.
Yeah, wow. You’re stuck in the wall. Oh, well done, Holly. Oh, well done. Oh, there you go, that’s good. Well done.
Oh, you’re great. I think you’re winning now, Matthew. Oh. Oh, wow. We put our dart inside. It’s quite pointy, so be careful. Then you put your mouth
to get some behind. Out.
The other way. The way?
Yeah. Just put it in your mouth
and you aim and blow. Okay.
In the target. We might need a bit more puff.
Yeah, bring more. Almost got there. Oh. Oh, wow. Put your back on it and spin round. There you go. Now it is my turn. Yeah, you can see the target from here.
Yeah. Yeah, we shoot it from here now.
Okay. Can you do it?
Yeah. What go down the rope?
Side down. Okay, first, we have to put
the katana on our left side. Three, two, one. Oh, so. And then two hands. The first hand is, is swings up and swings
down and make a perfect straight line. This is makogemi. Makogemi, yeah.
Makun giri. Makukeri.
Yeah. Makukeri.
Okay. Okay, one more time.
Makukiri. Okay.
Kesa giri. Okay.
Kesa giri. Yeah. Kesa, yo. Perfect. Kesa giri and Chidiage. Kesa giri and Chidiage. This is supa mek la eshi.
Skish. No. Okay. And then you can do
the Tsubamega-ashi and Ski together. Tsubamega-ashi, Ski. Okay, one more time. Tsubamega-ashi, Ski. One more time, perfect. Three, two, one.
Okay. Okay.
Makogiri. Makogiri. Kesaagiri. Kidiake. No, this one.
Kidiake. Sipamega ish. Sipamega ish. Ski. Ski, ski. Okay, Motogini, perfect. And then I teach you how
to baton like a Ninja. Three, two, one, bat off. Okay, do you know what? If I’m just going to attack you,
and this is your batof, and my katana will slide down, and you can attack me. Use the kesaakidi. I attack you, and the Keisake is Yohal. And this is a combination. That’s how to use the kesaakidi. It’s also batof. And then our training is finished. The Ninja stars and the blow
darts and the katana training. Thank you so much.
Thank you. So what did we all think
of an Ninja experience? Fun, It was fun, I think we
all really enjoyed that. If you’re under the cost,
it came to 15,100 ¥, and that was for the second-tier package. I’ll tell you what,
I’ll speak to you in a minute. It’s getting a bit busy by here. It’s actually raining quite a lot now,
so I’ll tell you more about the Ninja experience when we get back to the hotel. We might start for a 7 Eleven along the way. So we’re back in the room. It was just The rain was just coming down
too heavily to actually talk about that Ninja experience. And we did stop at 7 Eleven on the way home,
get some breakfast and some snacks for the room. I think we did say that we really
enjoyed that Ninja experience. So we started off with the Ninja Stars. We did that for quite a while, didn’t we? First of all, it was really fun
just getting dressed up as Ninjas. The package we had was the second tier. That included Ninja Training,
get dressed up, and also a drink. The three of us just had some Coke,
but you could have some alcoholic beverages if you really wanted to. We started with Ninja Stars. There was three different types
of Ninja Stars or Shuriken, as they’re properly called.
Then we did what? The blow darts, blow gun. Again, that was really fun. Then we did that Ninja Sneaky Through
a Wall thing and climbing down a rope. I’m trying to climb up the rope,
but we didn’t really do that. And then we finished off
with the katanas, didn’t we? With swords. But yeah, all that was really fun. So we just stumbled across
that in the Dotonbori area. It’s called the Ninja Ninja Training Cafe. Ninja Experience. Ninja Experience Cafe. But I would highly recommend it. Like I said, it came for the three of us,
one adult, two children. It was 15,100, which is around £75. I’ll do the full cost down there,
what it’s in different currencies. I think we’re going
to finish the video here. But before we do, I just want to let you
guys know that I’ve actually written a travel guide to Japan. It contains all the things we’ve done,
our experiences where we’ve stayed, the attractions we visited, the tips,
the tricks, everything we’ve learned along the way. It’s totally free. I won’t even ask you
for your email address. I’ll put a link in the description down
below, or you can also scan the QR code which is on screen here. I’ll just download it straight away. Like I said, it’s absolutely free. I won’t ask you for anything. I never do on this channel. I make these videos for fun,
not for profit. I’ll never ask anybody for any
money to create these videos. Should we show what
we’ve got from 7Eleven? Okay, so Holly is going to show
you what we got from 7Eleven. We got some snacks for tonight,
and also we’re going to have breakfast as well because we haven’t booked
breakfast with the hotel. We just got some things for breakfast. I will do the talking. So nice. Some crisps?
Yeah. We actually don’t know
what flavour they are. We know they’re potato chips
because it’s got potato on it. Yeah, I’d probably just say regular.
Yeah. They’re so Then we got some strawberries. A copy of potato flavour chicken feet. We got some strawberries for me. Drink of Pocari sweat for me.
Yeah, what’s that? Yeah. Electrolyte drink,
bit like Gatorade, or Powerade. We got Matthew, a chocolate, like an ice cream thing. Yeah, this is for tonight before it melts. Then Matthew got a probably apple Fanta. I got a blueberry yoghurt. Then Matthew got this, or
even this, it’s like cake thing. Cake thing, yeah. You got the forks and stuff. got two sandwichs. Yeah, so my friend got a BLT, and I got,
is it a pork or a chicken côtlet? Chicken.
Chicken côtlet. Yeah, chicken côtlet of sauce, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and mustard. That’s our breakfast food. Holly’s healthy with the strawberries. Then you got this.
Me. You.
Yeah. But I’m probably going
to steal the strawberries. A strawberry and what looks like
vanilla ice cream in the tub. I’m going to take the strawberries. Then I got this Fanta peach. How much has this come to? 3,427. Yeah, 3,427 this came to. I’ll put the conversion down
the bottom here somewhere. I think we’re going
to end this video here. It’s been a really long day. We’ve been awake since yesterday when we
left Manchester to fly here to Osaka. Tomorrow, we’ve got
an action-pack day lined up. We’re going to go to Osaka Castle. We’re going to go
to the Umeda Sky building. We’re going to go to Denden Town to go
to all the arcades there, as well as going back to Dotonbori
because we really want to do that ferris wheel. Fingers crossed, it’s going to be open
tomorrow, as well as some other things around the city. So stay tuned for that next video. If you’re new here, my name’s Mark,
along with my daughter Holly, and my son Matthew, we make Travel and
Theme Park videos from around the world. Now, here’s Holly with
a very special message. If you like this video,
please remember to like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell button.
Bye. Bye. Just one last thing. This is a view from our hotel
in the Monterey Grassmere Hotel in Namba. If you are interested in this hotel,
I did a complete room tour in our previous video, the Japan Travel Day one,
where we flew all the way from Manchester to Beijing to Osaka, then got the train,
airport Express to Namba, then we came to our hotel. There’s a full hotel tour in that. If you are interested in this hotel
as well, I booked it via trip.com Again, there’s a link
in the description down below. There’s also, if you scan that QR code,
you’ll go directly to the trip.com website to find out about this hotel. But I’ll be honest,
it’s in a really good location. We’re right in the middle of Namba,
less than a 10-minute walk to Dotonbori. See you tomorrow.
Thanks for watching. Next time on Travelshort’s
Epic Japan Trip.

Join us on our first day in Japan as we explore the Dotonbori area of Osaka.
👉 Free 56 page Japan Guide Book PDF with all our tips, tricks, best hotels, places to visit and more: https://bit.ly/TravelshortsJapan

After arriving on our flight from the UK the first thing we did was walk from our hotel to Dotonbori to see the sights, eat the food and generally explore this area of Osaka.

Dotonbori was just a short walk from our hotel the Hotel Monterey Grasmere Osaka.

After having a photograph of ourselves by the famous Glico Man sign, we get food at Saizeriya, a popular chain of Japanese Family Restaurants.

Unfortunately the ferris wheel is closed so we will have to try to go on that tomorrow.

The highlight was the Osaka Ninja Experience Cafe were we dressed as ninja’s and trained to be one. This involved throwing ninja stars (shuriken), blow darts, training with katana’s, climbing ropes and sneaking behind walls. it was very enjoyable and I would highly recommend it.

We also enjoyed some street food whilst walking around Dotonbori, Osaka like Takoyaki and Tanghulu.

Stay tuned for more daily vlogs from our Epic Japan Trip.
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Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:58 Walking to Dontonbori
01:19 Exploring Dotonbori in Osaka
07:04 Claw Machines
14:15 Saizeriya Restaurant
18:37 Ninja Experience Cafe Osaka
27:09 Heading back
27:58 Summary and thanks for watching