Day 5 Osaka: A Slacker's Guide to Universal Studios Japan and Trip Postmortem
The children loved it; the adults found it just meh.
On the night before USJ, a 3.0 earthquake hit Kyoto while we were all sleeping. The beds were rocking from side to side with surprising force, which woke me up. Pen had leapt out of bed and called the reception.
When we took off for the USJ, it was already raining outside with overcast skies. It rained the entire day. A few brave souls bought Minion raincoats and continued to take the thrill rides.
As Pug was only 5, he was not eligible for most of the rides. We did like the sights of shops and castles at Harry Potter Land, but by then we had caught a chill through the unrelentingly wet weather.
Slackers that we were, we declared force majeure and headed back to the hotel. The day was concluded with shopping and dinner at Aeon Mall.
All in, we spent $10,200 for 4 people over 6 days. I actually enjoyed the brevity of the trip. It forces me to focus on what we really wanted to do. Most of the cost was due to air tickets, hotels and USJ, in that order. I found taxis in Kyoto to be cheap, so we took taxis most of the time. I also loved the cheerful, white-gloved and black-suited drivers.
The JPYSGD exchange rate also meant that food and shopping were affordable. We put most of the charges on our Trust card, which had a very competitive exchange rate and caused no problems.
Everywhere we went, the Japanese people were smiling and exceedingly polite. In Kyoto, train station signs urged people not to walk on escalators and to mute the volume of their phones. When we asked for help or directions, the Japanese people, even if they didn't know the answer, would whip out their phones to help us find the answer.
Finally, their high-tech bidets. Their toilets show how far they've come. Their train toilets are as clean as hotel toilets. There were no cleaners in sight. It really felt like the First World.
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