One of the reasons we stopped in Korea for a few days was to buy some time before going to Japan, in the hopes that we would arrive just in time to experience the Cherry Blossoms! This winter had been unusually warm around the globe, so we predicted (hoped) that the trees would blossom earlier than usual. We booked our tickets for March 29th and crossed our fingers. Since we booked so late (mainly due to work schedule uncertainty), we had a really tough time finding a place to stay. We eventually managed to book a place in Osaka through Airbnb… way higher than our usual price range, but at least it was well located!
The Cherry Blossom forecast website told us we'd be arriving just in time for full bloom.. it turned out we were actually a bit early, so our first visit to Cherry Blossom Alley was a bit disappointing.
We returned 4 days later and wow… what a drastic difference!!
Besides hunting for the perfectly bloomed cherry blossom tree, we also did few other touristy things in Osaka including:
Osaka Castle,
finding the coolest shrine ever - Namba Yasaka Shrine,
and plenty of shopping at an awesome Japanese "dollar store" called Daiso, the "cooking tools street (Doguyasuji), and the electronics/japanese toys area (Nipponbashi / DenDen Town). Jen even made a new robot friend along the way who seemed friendly enough, but it only spoke Japanese... we're pretty sure it was just trying to sell us stuff ;).
