Osaka

 After visiting Kyoto we headed over to Osaka.  The main reason for visiting Osaka was to visit Universal and go to Harry Potter World, but I almost wish we had a bit more time to explore Osaka.  It was a fun city for everything that we did see.

Our first day we did got to Universal and it was tons of fun.  We met up with our friends the Sofes and got to do some of the rides/experiences together.  We spent the whole morning at Harry Potter World, which was magical.  We had butter beer, checked out Honeydukes, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes, Olivander's, rode the hippogriffs, and Jake and Pace took the tour of Hogwarts (unfortunately it was a bit intense for a pregnant lady like me).

After Harry Potter World we headed over to the Jurassic Park section and met up for lunch with the Sofes.  The kids LOVED the dinosaurs, and I must say they were impressively real....Grant was a bit scared at first.

Then Nicole and I took the littles over to the kiddie rides while Jake and Raage took the older kids to ride one of the bigger Jurassic Park rides.  The Easter decorations were so cute and Kai just wanted to climb on over to them.

Then we headed over to Minion land but got distracted when we saw spiderman.  And then we decided to watch the Sing show, which was so cute.

We all rode the Minion rides together, and then headed to find dinner in the park (which was hard because everything closed early).

We had fun Universal!  Thanks for providing such fun worlds.

The next day we headed out to see Osaka Castle.  This was by far the best place on out trip to see sakura.  They were beautiful and the castle was great too.

After the castle we headed over to the aquarium to see the whale shark ( and the other fish).  But the whale shark was the attraction.

After we headed over to the mall near it for dinner.  They had a fun street food style food court.  With fun photo ops.

We also found a wax food shop.  Wax food is found outside most restaurants in Japan.  So it was fun to see them all lined up in a store.  We also thought it was fun that you could design your own wax food.

Before heading back home to Yokota we made one last stop at the Umeda Sky Building.  It had a glass elevator and escalator that connected the two towers.

There was a love lock area on the roof.  The boys enjoyed checking them all out.

Looking up you can see the escalator going across

We loved this translation we found out in the garden

We also loved the name of the downstairs lobby

So glad we got to visit Osaka!