Part 4 - Osaka
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A view from the top of Himeji Castle of the town of Himeji (or at least a small part of it). A view of all of the trees below highlights why this must be an absolutely amazing site when Cherry Blossom time comes in April.
My first site to visit in Japan was Himeji Castle. This is one Japan’s most beautiful castles, and one of the few castles that wasn’t destroyed by war or fire. The inside is all wooden (there’s not a ton inside worth a photo...plus it was quite dark). It was pouring rain when I arrived at the site...luckily, it soon cleared up (and I got to lug around an umbrella for the rest of the day!)
The second castle of the day was the lovely Osaka Castle, in the large city of Osaka. This is not the original...it has been destroyed and rebuilt many times. One of the most recent was some unnamed country bombed it in 1945. Quite a beautiful place in the heart of Osaka.
Another nice shot of Osaka Castle. The inside of the castle is pretty much a modern building. I was able to get to the top of the castle...view wasn’t the best on a slightly gloomy day. One interesting view was a field full of police vans for transporting arrested people. Now, Japan is a pretty peaceful place - this huge number of paddy wagons seemed strange. Then I remembered that the G20 Summit (featuring 20 of the most important governmental leaders and all of the associated protestors) had finished in this very city the day before. I never really noticed anything other than the Bullet Train I took on the way down saying that they had removed trash cans from the stations for the G20.
Nice detail work! There’s something quite beautiful about Japanese castles compared to the European ones (one important one found later in this album excepted)
That night, I explored downtown Osaka. Shopping is a very different thing in Japan than anywhere else I’ve ever been. It’s something you’ve got to see to believe. This was the Shinsaibashisuji-suji area - right near the famous Dontonbori food street. The LED sign of the running man is a very iconic sign in Osaka - everyone was getting a selfie with the running man.
Many restaurants lined the river.
Every Japanese city that I’ve ever been to has a long pedestrian outdoor mall (usually covered, but certainly outdoors) spanning several city blocks. This becomes a big hangout place where you can find all manner of things to buy and eat. Osaka’s Shinsaibashisuji-suji area was more than I had ever seen before. As you can see in the photo, people are packed together as far as you can see. It’s miles of stores - including several indoor malls (that are so incredible that they deserve their own post. Imagine Amazon, but everything is there in front of you - there’s NOTHING like it in the states). I don’t love being in large groups of people typically, but there was something about the anonymous nature of being in your “Gaijin Bubble” and being able to move through the crowds as if they weren’t even there.
The next day, I took a train to Nara. Nara is famous for their deer - the deer are roaming free and are totally used to humans. Indeed, many of the stores sell “deer crackers” for people to buy to feed the deer. The deer are pretty smart...they’ve learned to bow when someone bows to them (Japanese people love that stuff - hilarious to watch). They’ve trained the humans to do dumb things to give them the crackers. The temple stuff there was pretty cool as well - Five Story Pagoda!
This is a big cool looking gate in Nara. You can probably see a bunch of Japanese school children under the gate - they were to be found a lot of the sites I visited. All of the students had the prototypical Japanese schoolboy/girl outfit on with slight differences between the different schools.
I’m a sucker for pouring water.
Baby deer!
Big temple with Buddha sitting in the middle. It was being reconstructed. I could have gotten in if I paid a couple bucks - but honestly, at this point the temples were all sort of running together.
Nice view of the Five Story Pagoda
The deer was explaining to me that he was actually the deer that stole that poor old lady’s purse. He didn’t have a ounce of sympathy...cold blooded.
The next day, I travelled to a city that I had been to before, but it had only been for a few hours to sleep and do laundry. As it is the cultural center of Japan, I figured that a more proper visit would be good to do. This first site is the Kiyomizudera Temple. I’m not sure what the red building is, but the dragon sculpture is pretty awesome.
You’ll see a scene like this at most temples (usually without the sign). Many Japanese people who visit the temples will use the ladles to wash off both of their hands, then they will take some water in their mouths, wash out their mouth, and spit it out. This is a cleansing ritual for visiting a shrine or temple. It was interesting seeing the Japanese seriously take part of temple proceedings in the middle of all the tourists.
Artsy-fartsy shot of a cool temple in the distance.
Otowa Waterfall. Each of the three streams of water will give a different benefit; longevity, luck at school, or a good love life. The trick is, if you drink from all three you are greedy. Before you ask, I didn’t drink from any of them. Thought about it but figured it’d be weird. I don’t mind observing other religious (even though I’m not sure this counts) practices...I just don’t take part in them unless they are mine. In other news, this photo was taken from the grand porch of the Main Hall. The Main Hall is a very famous beautiful building. Sadly, you won’t see any photos because it’s all covered up for renovations and it’s not much to look at at the moment.
This is what a shrine looks like. Japanese people could come up to one of these, usually give a few coins in a box, clap their hands, and bow their heads in prayer. I am certainly not the expert in all of this, but I saw it a bunch.
Pretty flower.
Later in the day I made it to one site that I very much wanted to see - the Golden Pavilion (actual name of Kinkakujicho). It’s absolutely stunning to look at - it is covered in gold leaf.
Neat shot of a cool looking sign. Right after I took this shot, I was asked by four Junior High students in their teacher to do a quick survey so they could practice speaking English. It was quite fun hearing them trying to put together sentences and then reply back to them in a simple way. They called me “Chris-Sensei” after I told them that I was a teacher! It was a fun little interaction in a country where you have very few interactions.
Artsy-fartsy shot of the Golden Pavilion.
I am not a fan of fish...my body doesn’t react well to eating it. But I’ve always been interested in sushi (by the way, this is what real sushi is...it’s more than just the rolls). This one store was offering Beef Sushi - truly a delicious fish. I wonder what the English name for this type of fish is ;). The meat was quite high quality and very lightly cooked (it wasn’t raw)
Last time I was in Kyoto, there was one place I really wanted to visit (once I realized it existed) but I got there too late. That is the Kyoto Railway Museum. The Japanese love their trains - it’s how I mostly get around towns (although I was a bad boy and took a bus to the train museum...). This museum was AWESOME - they had a ton of exhibits on old trains, the science of trains, how the railway systems work, model trains, etc... This is the first ever bullet train to come to Kyoto (they look much cooler now - I ride them all over the place!)
This is a shot from the top of the Museum showing the entrance to Kyoto Station (The station is in the background). Madness!
The museum put on a really cool model train exhibition where some lady talked about all of the trains (I’m assuming that’s what she was doing...). The lights did cool things, different trains went around at different points, the signals and track switching all worked...it was pretty awesome. The people’s favorite train is a track maintenance vehicle that looks like a bullet train but is painted yellow. The train is called “Doctor Yellow” and all the kids love him. To me, that’s the most Japanese thing ever!
There were a ton of steam trains kept in the station. This is a train that they use to pull around tourists. As it was the end of the day, they backed the train onto a roundabout and rotated it around a few times so everyone could get a look. One of the drivers was hamming it up as well!
Before getting back on the train, I went to the top of an observation tower to get a nighttime view of the city of Kyoto. I feel like I did a lot in a full day and I’m glad I returned to see the city properly.
The travel day between different cities is always a little awkward. You’re never sure whether to spend all of your time in the first city, or travel to the second and see it. Plus, there’s the matter of luggage - what do you do with it? I didn’t have a big thing I wanted to see, so I did something silly. Osaka has a Universal Studios - including Harry Potter World! So I went to a Theme Park! It was awesome! It was funny how American the whole experience was. It was VERY similar to Universal in Orlando...including some of the same rides. I did the Harry Potter zoomy-around thing twice. It’s exactly the same as the ride you’ll find in Orlando with one key difference...the ride features video clips of several characters talking to you. In this park, the characters were the ones you’d know from Harry Potter - but they all spoke Japanese. It was slightly hilarious to see videos of these British actors with Japanese voices coming out. The funniest was Dumbledore. At the end of the ride, Dumbledore congratulates you on something you supposedly did. I just broke out laughing both times at that scene.
Japanese people have to get a shot with a train!
Hogsmeade - exactly what you’d find in Orlando.
Nice looking park.
They even had a Minion Park - it was quite cute.
My favorite ride was the Dinosaur Flight ride (Jurassic Park theme). This was a “Flying Roller Coaster”. The means that you sit in a seat of sorts, then before the coaster starts, it rotates you 90 degrees so you are looking at the ground. This means that you are going through the coaster head first. This is the longest flying coaster in the world, and it’s pretty intense at times. I think I rode it four times (gotta love the single rider line!) before I stopped due to my head hurting and losing my voice from shouting.
Waterworld - remember when that was a thing! They put on a really neat Waterworld stunt show with boats, divers, fires, etc...
The jet ski guy (I called him America Man because the two “hero’s” were obviously not Japanese) was really good at making a giant wave to defeat the enemies. I’ll admit, that I had trouble following the deep and nuanced plot, as it was all in Japanese!
A fiery plane appeared for some reason!
When in Japan, it’s important to drink the local drinks...Butterbeer in this case! Delicious!
Yeah...I thought it’d be fun!
A fun shot of the coaster. They are pretty strict about not having ANYTHING in your pockets for obvious reasons.
