Now, on to the main point of this post. Last weekend, I went to Osaka. This all came together in about 3 days; I received a text message from my friend Theresa asking if I wanted to get out of town for the weekend on Wednesday and by Saturday morning we were on our way! WARNING - this post is huge. Really. Lots of pictures. It's been 11 days since my last post, what did you expect?
Osaka is about a 5 hour bus ride from Takayama, so we had to catch the early one to make the trip worth it. We left at 7am and arrived a little before noon. I did NO planning whatsoever for this trip. I was completely at the mercy of Theresa's planning whims. Lucky for me, she did a great job ^_^
So after we arrived and found food we headed out to Osaka Castle, which is apparently the most visited castle in all of Japan. Not to miss out on our chance to be lemmings, we made sure our trip included a tour of it.
Our first stop: the moat.
To our lucky surprise, it turned out there was some kind of marching band competition going on in the castle grounds that day. There were several bands, and all the show tunes made us feel like we were in the Magic Kingdom instead of Osaka. Plus, I think we may have been on tv somewhere...
The castle is quite beautiful, and like most castles in Japan, was completely rebuilt in the 20th century. It's been destroyed at least 2 times that I can remember; once by Tokugawa Ieyasu (1st Shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate) and once during the Meiji Restoration. There's really nothing left of the original castle at all. The latest version was built in the 1930's I think, and had to be restored again after WWII.
The inside is a museum, the view from the top was great. Especially with the fall colors
Hey Patty, do those shoulder straps look familiar? heh heh
After that we headed over to the National Bunraku Theater, where Theresa had managed to reserve the LAST TWO tickets for that night's Bunraku performance. We were really lucky, usually the shows sell out months in advance. Plus, they only do performances during part of the year. Bunraku is a form of traditional puppet theater, kind of like Kabuki but with puppets. It takes 3 puppeteers to move one puppet, and they are all visible on stage during the performance. The puppets are about half life-size, and all but the head puppeteer are covered head to toe in black. In fact, with their pointy hoods I thought they looked rather like executioners...
Anyway, if you're curious about it you can read more about Bunraku here and here.
After we picked up our tickets and found lockers for our bags, we headed out to see what we could find nearby.
There are some great shopping areas near where the theater is and there were tons of people out getting takoyaki (fried octopus balls). Everybody said we had to try takoyaki in Osaka. I'd already had it in Takayama, but who wants to be the only person to visit Osaka and not have fried octopus balls? I mean seriously.
A tako:
And some takoyaki!
The place was just crawling with people. I've gotten so used to being in my little village/ occasionally in the "city" of Takayama that it feels kind of strange to be around so many people.
See all that black down the street there? That's because it's full of heads of black hair...
After wandering for a while we headed back to the theater for our show. It was really cool, but I have to admit the first performance was kind of boring and it was really long. Plus, I've been sick so I was wiped out and it was hot.... all this to say that yes, I fell asleep during the first performance. There's about an hour intermission in between performances during which we had some dinner, and then there's a second performance that is much shorter and was way more interesting. I stayed awake for that one ^_^ All told, it was about 4 hours from start to finish. I don't have any pictures from that cause they won't let you take any. But click the links above and you'll be able to see what it was like.
The Bunraku ended about 8:30pm, and from there we headed to Spa World, an enormous onsen (spa) with two huge floors - one European themed and one Japanese themed. Men and women are split - one to each floor, alternating. We happened to hit it when the women's spa was the European one. It was absolutely INCREDIBLE. Once we got there, that is. We took the subway and asked for directions to find it but once we got out onto the street we almost headed in the exact opposite diection from the spa. Lucky for us, I shouted "Spa World!" as we emerged from the metro and an awesome local named Shun heard me and stopped us before we trekked the wrong way. In fact, he was good enough to walk us all the way to the spa! His English wasn't bad either. Not great, but not bad. Between our terrible Japanese and his English we managed to find out that he was born and raised in Osaka, works in the fashion industry, and is taking a trip to Laos this week actually ^_^
(it says "supawa-rudo")
We stayed at Spa World for 3 hours, so it was after midnight before we finally emerged. I can't exclaim enough how great I felt after that too. There's just nothing like walking around naked and gettting into baths with other people, ha ha ha Seriously though, it was really rejuvinating. Especially since I was sick. I'm sure the other patrons appreciated that ^_^
Our next plan was to drop off our bags at our "hotel" and then head to a local club that had a really low cover and a good reputation. Finding our "hotel" turned out to be quite a challenge; once again we asked for directions and thought we knew where we were going but went in the exact opposite direction. We weren't in the greatest part of town and it was really late so we decided to just hop in a cab once we realized we were lost. And then the cab driver had no idea where to go! So we ended up calling the place and having him talk to the driver. When we got there we found, to our horror, what exactly 1500 yen a night gets you in Osaka:
We knew they were 3 tatami rooms, but still, we had no idea they would be that bad. Then again, they cost 15 bucks. It was so depressing we decided to put both futons in one room - which was a challenge as the room was only 2 tatami wide and each futon is about a tatami and a half wide.
And then, after all that, we found out that the "hotel" (ok, it was more like a hostel) had a curfew! Midnight. And since it was after midnight when we arrived, we were totally locked in. So that killed the club plan. Looking back though, it's probablly better we didn't go out seeing as I was sick and it was like 1 am already o_O
Sunday we got up and headed out to the Osaka Kaiyukan Aquarium. It's one of the largest in the world, and it has it's own Ferris Wheel. Because all self-respecting large Japanese cities have Ferris wheels.
Yes, that's a Christmas tree behind me. And yes, the majority of Japanese people are not Christian. That doesn't stop them from celebrating it anyway ^_^
The aquarium was awesome. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking. Inside we saw... lots of fish!
We found Nemo...
And Santa is alive and well and scuba diving in Japan
AND, there were jellyfish
The aquarium is situated right on Osaka Harbor - yeay Pacific Ocean!
We did some shopping in the marketplace nearby, got some lunch, and then headed over to the Umeda Sky Building. Where they are, yep, celebrating Christmas!!!
It's a georgous building, with some amazing architecture
See those two lines going into the hole at the top? This is what they are:
The view from the top was awesome. But really windy. In fact, they have specific instructions NOT to open umbrellas (who does that?!?!) or take food or drinks out there. Or hats.
The ride up and down is in a glass elevator. I thought it was great! Theresa less so.
Phew! After all that we headed back to the station to catch our 5 hour bus home...
And when we arrived it was snowing >.< I woke up to this on Monday morning:
Quite a bit different, hu? It was so warm and beautiful in Osaka, it was quite a shock coming back home. But, I have my fabulous squishy dolphin, Taro, to keep me company ^_^
I shall call him squishy and he shall be mine, and he shall be my squishy. Come on, squishy Come here, little squishy....
1 comment:
wow, a whirlwind tour of Osaka, looks like a lot of fun! Didn't they have an underwater tunnel like that in jaws.....III? or was it II...
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