{"id":11806,"date":"2026-10-21T14:47:50","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T21:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=11806"},"modified":"2026-10-21T15:04:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T22:04:30","slug":"japan-fall-2026-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=11806","title":{"rendered":"Japan Fall 2026: Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I passed out and slept all night. I had so many emails that I didn\u2019t finish going through them all. Why am I reading all the NYT emails?<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I got out of my room and wanted to spend time at the \u201cnew\u201d Kitte Osaka building. It\u2019s been here for at couple of years and I just haven\u2019t made it over there. It\u2019s in the west end of Umeda, near the hotel my mom liked but recently we\u2019ve been staying in the northern part of Umeda. I\u2019m staying at the west end right now, in the hotel next door to my mom\u2019s old favorite old hotel, and they\u2019re both close to Kitte Osaka. Even better: this hotel is connected to the underground so I never saw the rain.<\/p>\n<p>The Kitte building wasn&#8217;t quite open when I first went, but they did have a few restaurants open for breakfast. I went to a place called Absinthe. The staff was minimal and it wasn\u2019t until I bothered the staff three times that I realized you could (should?) order with a QR code.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"IMG_1624.jpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_1624-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"5712\" height=\"4284\" border=\"0\"\/><\/p>\n<p>I thought I forgot my pill case and a case for my glasses, but it turns out I forgot the pill case and my deodorant. \u00a0Stores don\u2019t open until 10 or 11am so I went across Umeda to the 24-hour Don Quixote because they sell western stuff and basicallly a little of everything. Japanese people don\u2019t use much deodorant and they had a very small selection. Then it was off to buy a pill case and Muji didn\u2019t have what I needed so it was time for the \u00a5100 store (plus tax). That 69 cents. I wandered around a bit more and started getting a headache. It also ended up being over 87\u00b0F and very humid!<\/p>\n<p>I went back to the Kitte building for lunch and the headache wasn\u2019t helping me any. I got some comfort food, omurice and Napolitan (ketchup) spaghetti. I also had some Ringl (ibuprofen). No picture of the coffee I had at the end.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"IMG_1628.jpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_1628-1-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"5712\" height=\"4284\" border=\"0\"\/><\/p>\n<p>I wandered around the five floors of the Kitte building and found lots of places to eat as well as \u201cantenna shops\u201d for prefectures around Japan.<\/p>\n<p>I tried to go back to the room but it wasn\u2019t ready. Luckily the Ringl started to kick in and I finally felt good enough to keep wandering. I went to a bunch of shops where I wasn\u2019t planning on buying anything. There\u2019s a new Apple store in Grand Front, and the Grand Seiko store turned into a Seiko store. I looked for a new iPhone case but they didn\u2019t have anything for the iPhone 17 Pro or iPhone 18 Pro.<\/p>\n<p>I wasn\u2019t hungry but I stopped mid-afternoon for a snack at Toki.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"IMG_1629.jpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_1629-1-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"5712\" height=\"4284\" border=\"0\"\/><\/p>\n<p>I finally got back to my room around 4pm and sat for a bit before I went back to the Kitte building for dinner. I let a coin flip decide and I ended up getting Niigata tare katsu. I think it was better than the tare katsu I got in Niigata. It was cheap, too.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"IMG_1631.jpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/IMG_1631-1-scaled.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"5712\" height=\"4284\" border=\"0\"\/><\/p>\n<p>I made arrangements to see my buddy Moriwaki on Thursday and bought a ticket online. The English version of the web page said I had to print out the reservation so it took me several trips to the convenience store to get that done. And it\u2019s two or three blocks away. Turns out my USB stick was formatted for the Mac, and the print station didn\u2019t recognize it. I have to figure out how to do this without a printer.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, just stayed around the station and I got in 20,058 steps according to my phone. And I still have 70+ emails.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I passed out and slept all night. I had so many emails that I didn\u2019t finish going through them all. Why am I reading all the NYT emails? Anyway, I got out of my room and wanted to spend time at the \u201cnew\u201d Kitte Osaka building. It\u2019s been here for at couple of years and I just haven\u2019t made it over there. It\u2019s in the west end of Umeda, near the hotel my mom liked but recently we\u2019ve been staying in the northern part of Umeda. I\u2019m staying at the west end right now, in the hotel next door to my mom\u2019s old favorite old hotel, and they\u2019re both close &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/?p=11806\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Japan Fall 2026: Day 1<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11806"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11806\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11810,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11806\/revisions\/11810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i8u.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}