So, the time has come for our egregiously long car trip through Japan. You may wonder why we would take a car trip through Japan when the country is so accessible by train. It's because taking a family of six on the bullet train in Japan is about as expensive as taking the whole family on a trip to space. If it wasn't for military bases spaced pretty evenly throughout the country, traveling would be unbelievably cost prohibitive. Travelling by car in Japan is also cost prohibitive (we would have paid about 700 dollars in tolls by the end of the trip), but government vehicles travel for free on the toll roads. So we rented a car and headed out on a 3,300 km trip through the bottom half of Japan. It was killer!
Our first stop was in Osaka, which is a very modern city that sits next to Kyoto and Nara. The downtown of Osaka is awesome and seems much more accessible than Tokyo because there is less urban sprawl. We stayed at the Hilton next to the train station, which worked out perfectly because the Castle was only a few stops away on the train. Sightseeing in Japan revolves mostly around shrines, temples, and castles. Of all those things, castles are my favorite. Who doesn't love a good castle. There are moats, huge walls, defensive positions, and cool stories. Plus, its a great place for the kids to run around and get out all their energy before piling into the car again. The kids had a blast running around the grounds and exploring the inside of the castle. Osaka castle had been rebuilt since a fire destroyed it, so the inside was more like a museum (very modern) than some of the other castles we had been in before, but it was cool to see the exhibits of different samurai armies fighting each other. In our minds, the third coolest castle in Japan but definitely one of our favorite cities.
