Osaka (Kids Plaza and Cats)

After the hotel breakfast which was a weird mix of Japanese and Western options, we headed to Kids Plaza which I had heard was great for kids. From the moment, we stepped in, the kids were entranced. I was entranced! There was a massive Rube Goldberg wall display. We stood there fascinated for a bit. 

Lobby of Kids Plaza

Then we went up to the top floor to start our journey. It was pretty empty when we started but we realized there were hordes of schoolchildren about to be released. They were being given directions by their teachers. They were also all color coded by cap color. Once they were released, the place got pretty busy. There were cool science exhibits and the playground in the center looked really fun. Surprisingly, Hannah and Christopher spent a lot of time in the pretend play area pretending to be mailmen and delivering mail. Huh. We slowly had to drag them away. We were able to see a different view of the Rube Goldberg display on the way out and then we ent out the back way and immediately encountered a playground which sucked them in again. Slides in Japan seemed to go really fast and thrilled them quite a bit.

Playground behind Kids Plaza

We were finally able to drag them away by promising a cat cafe. I had no idea if this place had an age minimum but turned out it did not and there was also no time limit. We ordered light lunch/snacks which was a little hard to focus on knowing that the cats were everywhere. But one cat was very friendly and came and snuggled in my lap. All the cats were not as fat as ours nor did they have healthy tails for some reason.

We headed back to the hotel after that to rest a bit. We had a 4:45pm dinner reservation at the Pokemon cafe. This was a bit of a letdown food wise. I’m not sure what I was thinking but we should have gone there just for dessert or something.

Since dinner was early, we spent some time just wandering around afterwards. I wanted to see the Festival of lights while nice, wasn’t terribly striking. The Dotonbori neighborhood was oh so cool as a place to explore for sure. Later, after the kids went to sleep, I ran across the street to 7-11 since I was running low on cash (many more places in Osaka were turning out to be cash only!) and picked up some ramen for myself and mochi for Charles.