We arrived early in Ōsaka and had time to kill while waiting for our room. So we headed to the city of Wakayama to check out the castle there.
Before that, though, we took a special train to a special station in the little village of Kishi. The cool thing about this station is that it’s run by a cat. Nitama, as she’s called, is the official stationmaster and in charge of the staff. It seems like a pretty chilled job, as she mostly just lies around the station letting tourists take photos of her. Nitama (meaning “Tama the Second”) is the successor to the previous station cat named Tama, who sadly passed away in 2015.
Inside the station, there’s a café and a little shop selling Tama souvenirs. Plus, there are special trains running on the line between Wakayama and Nishi, each decorated differently. One of them is a museum carriage, which unfortunately we didn’t have time to actually go inside, so we could only take photos from the outside.
