Osaka Highlights

Okay guys, here's brief highlights from the Osaka trip - this doesn't really do the trip justice, but if I tried to do that, I would be here all night. So here goes.

Day 1 - wandering

To get to Osaka this time, we took advantage of the "Juu-hachi kippu," which is a deal offered by Japan Rail every so often to encourage young people on a budget to see the country. Basically, it gives you five unlimited days of use for all JR surface trains, and that doesn't include the bullet train. So going that way, it was very cheap, but very tiring. It took us 14 hours each way, with a lot of stops. Not terribly fun times, and we were pretty exhausted our first night there. But full day 1 was cool - we just wandered the city from south to north, hitting some of the highlights. One of the big ones was Dotonbori, which was a big shopping/nightlife district very near our hotel.

The main street.

We also hit the Umeda Sky building, which I hit last time I was in Osaka, and is always a hit. I saw it during the day this time, which I didn't last time.

Brigg got exposed to nuclear waste and grew until his torso took up the entire atrium of the building. Either that or I played silly buggers with the camera angle. I can't quite remember.

Here's something I couldn't see last time - in the middle of the photo is the view of Osaka castle from the Umeda Sky building. It was a little hazy that day, but it was still fairly spectacular.

In the evening of day 1, we found this great Mexican restraunt near Dotonbori, and met one of the waitresses - a drummer in a local band, whose English was passable. Too bad she was married, I might still be in Osaka now if she wasn't. So she invited us to a show on day 3, which was pretty rockin. We also went to a live show on our own on the evening of day 1, and another on day 5. We spent a fair amount of the time this trip checking out the local rock music scene of Osaka, which was a lot of fun.

Day 2 - Osaka Castle, Science Museum

We got up early and hit it hard on day 2, and were happy we did. Osaka castle was spectacular. We were there during the Sakura season, which just set everything off.

Here's the castle. There's a big museum inside, multi-level, that explains a lot about the castle and Ieyasu Tokugawa, the first shogun of the Edo period. This was his headquarters, won from the Toyotomi family. It also explains how the castle fell during the summer war. Here's a link to a site about the castle, reading material if you're bored.

http://www.tracyanddale.50megs.com/Japan/html%20files/osakac.html

I tried to find a site that detailed the screen that was painted to depict the fall of Osaka castle, it's really stunning, but I came up empty-handed. Feel free to search yourself, if you find it it'll be worth the effort.

The top floor of the castle is an observation deck. I'm a sucker for high places.

Crud, something just came up and I have to cut this short. I'll try to pick it up again on Thursday, but it may have to wait until the weekend. I'll do my best! Take care, everyone.