Kenichiwa From the Land of the Rising Sun

It’s been a long day.
We were up before dawn and in the Incheon International Airport a few hours prior to takeoff . As soon as we boarded our Peach Airlines flight, (they had a purple color scheme going) Nick and I fell asleep and stayed that way for the rest of the hour and a half ride.
We arrived in Osaka around 9 AM and after going through customs and quarantine and what not, the first thing that caught our attention was the vending machines. Well, they weren’t exactly vending machines, more closely related to a gumball dispenser that you insert coins into and your reward rolls out the bottom. There were hundreds of cheap, plastic trinkets up for selection. From spongy sushi to movie collectibles and tiny plastic soda bottles, they had everything. It was funny to look at all the knickknacks that we were offered and we took pictures of some of our favorites, like the tiny sniper and tiny milk. Is it real? Powdered? Guess we never get to know...
 Just as an experience we voted to purchase a tiny, squishy yellow rodent who we named “Squishy Squirrel.” We decided that if we didn’t lose him, (easier said than done due to his diminutive size) he would be our trip mascot, making appearances in our future pictures.
After an 80 minute train ride from the airport to the city of Kyōto, we checked into our apartment where we will be staying for three days, a few hour early. We were quite exhausted from the travel and rested for a bit before getting out and about, hoping to get a sense of the neighborhood. After an in between meal at 4:00 PM we went to a local grocery store to stock up on snacks for our fridge. Now that we have a kitchen we have more cuisine options for a quick meal, something other than ramen that is.
Tomorrow we have plans to meet up with another traveling family from New Zealand (See post “So Now We are in Mokpo”) and go to the Kyōto Railway Museam as well as Fushimi Anari Taisha, a shrine. Sorry we don’t have more details on that, don’t worry, we will know more about it once we have been there.