Today it is goodbye China and hello Japan, or for some goodbye squatty pottys and hello heated toilet seats. We landed in Osaka and what a change from where we had come from. The city is beautiful and clean, and it is not excessively noisy like a lot of China’s cities. The roadside food stalls are virtually non existent and there is peace and calm on the roads. Everyone stops at traffic lights and crossings, even the bikes. We even saw some pedestrians stop at a red crossing light and there were no cars! 

Abbie was at first confused with the new and improved toilets. We had to very quickly tell her not to touch any of the buttons otherwise she might get a little surprise. Ella loves the fact that they can sometimes even play music. 

Everyone here is very polite, from the man at the subway who helped us, to the people working in all the supermarket’s and convenience stores. They don’t beep every 10 secs on the road like they do in China, they are usually happy just to wait their turn. 

We only had one full day in Osaka, as we had planned to see Nara and Kyoto later on in the trip. So we headed off to the Osaka aquarium and the Tempozan Ferris wheel to entertain the girls for a day. The loved the otters, penguins, a capybara, and the whale sharks in the main tank. The Ferris wheel was over 100m high and you could see a lot of the city. The next day we picked up our car and headed off into the countryside.