Abroad With The Schaubs: Osaka Trip

This year, I decided that we would go places as a family for the kids's birthdays instead of throwing parties at the same limited places on base every year we're here. I can only handle so many birthday parties at the bowling alley where the kids don't actually bowl. Since the boys have birthdays so close and it's hard for Chris to get time off, we combined their birthday trips and spent the weekend in Osaka to visit the large aquarium there as well as Universal Studios Japan.

We rented a car from base and drove the nearly 5 hours to Osaka, stopping only twice for food and bathroom breaks--our kids are troopers in the car! We went to the Osaka aquarium which was less than 15 minutes away from our hotel. Rylan was so thrilled to see squids- his favorite, and Finley was also thrilled to see his favorite sharks. It wasn't a super expansive aquarium but did have some great features.

I had unknowingly booked a luxury room at The Park Front Hotel in the Osaka City Walk. It was about a one block walk to the front gate of the park and attached to a street of shops and restaurants similar to Downtown Disney is SoCal. We ate at a Wolfgang pizza restaurant our first night and TGIFridays the second night. Quinn and I did some shopping at the Gap outlet store that first night after the boys went to bed for a moment of girl time.

The park was a lot of fun. We started out at an interactive Elmo show that nobody wanted to go to but they all ended up loving at the end. It was so cold waiting to get into the park that we caught the first show so we could be indoors and warm up a bit. Then we wandered over to the Spider Man area and waited for the ride there. All of them were thrilled to go and only Finley walked out with a smile on his face- the other two were crying and upset! We spent a good amount of time in the Minions area, mostly waiting in line for a ride they all loved so much they wanted to go again and again (but the line was just too long). An indoor play area and ride inside a Snoopy themed area warmed us up again and Quinn got to see some Hello Kitty fashion displays. We briefly stopped in the Jurassic Park area and Harry Potter areas but the kids were so cold and tired we couldn't stay too long.