After enjoying breakfast, we start the trek back down to Osaka and this time, we're not just passing through.
We locate our hotel and immediately we're off to see the sights! First stop is the aquarium. We should have known better than to visit the aquarium on a weekend, before it is packed with families and their strollers. Nonetheless, we are already here so we push on.
Seeing the massive queue, we decide to grab some food, in the hopes that the crowds will die down somewhat. Walking around a local food court, we successfully find a Takoyaki place and bite down on the local delicacy.
Feeling sated, we discover that our time away hasn't had much of an impact so we join the masses and enter the aquarium.
The Osaka Aquarium is pretty remarkable, with the number one attraction being a whale shark, which is quite impressive, in the largest tank. Tim's favourite part of the aquarium however, is the river otter exhibit. Visitors to this section of the aquarium will see river otters in the same enclosure as a school of fish. The beautiful thing about this setup is that the river otters regularly dive into the water, presumably to catch fish. In what appears to be always the case, the otters are too slow and the fish scatter, coming back together again once the otter leaves the water. So here are a few pics of otters and other cute, large and scary animals from the aquarium.
After the aquarium, we decide to take a ride on the nearby Giant Wheel. A fairly relaxing experience, the Giant Wheel provides pretty decent views of Osaka.
Next we head to Dotonburi to find one of Tim's favourite dishes, Okonomiyaki. Eating these delicious, saucy, vegetable pancakes, we hear what sounds like a huge number of drummers. After finishing our meals we head out onto the street and follow the crowds towards the source of the drums. We soon arrive at a river, where brightly coloured, company sponsored boats, are travelling in a procession past crowds lining the riverbanks. The boats have a variety of tools for attracting attention, be it lights, or musical instruments, but our favourites at the boats with numerous drummers. Watching beat in time and feeling the rhythm in our chests is quite an experience. After watching the boats for a while, we make our way back to our hotel for the evening.
Nara
The following day we take a train out to the former capital of Japan, Nara. Nara is famous for its temples and herds of friendly deer and we are not disappointed.
Heading to the Nara Park we immediately see the famous deer. Ness picks up some deer food and is surrounded by the hungry Cervidae. After disposing of the deer food, we buy a some human food (i.e. green-tea ice cream for Ness) and continue to stroll around the park. We see giant pagodas, guardian statues and temples. The place feels like something out of a martial arts movie.
We next head into town to have a lunch of tempura (for Tim) and unagi (for Ness). After lunch, we decide to drop into a local arcade to fill our desire for some retro gaming... in the form of Street Fighter 2. Unfortunately, our gaming attempts don't go according to plan.
Not having the right change when we enter the arcade, Tim tries to convert approximately $10 into coins and thinks he's succeeded when he receives a bucket of coins from a man who doesn't speak English. Sadly, we're soon to discover that Tim has converted his money into these valueless gaming coins, that can only be used for gambling machines and not arcade machines. After making this discovery, Tim tries to convert the gaming coins back to real coins and discovers there is some law that makes it impossible, as (paraphasing) "gambling should only be for fun, not monetary gain". Apparently the only thing you can win while gambling in Nara is pride in obtaining a high score and your name in the rankings. In the end, we give the bucket of fake money to an old gentleman.
Amusingly, we did end up finding a machine that would give us change, and it wasn't too far from the Street Fighter 2 machine, but the machine wasn't working properly and we couldn't play a decent game against each other. Oh well, it was a pretty funny story.
We head back to Osaka for dinner and find a local yakitori place. We look over an entirely Japanese menu, without pictures and do our best to use Google translate to figure out what we should order. Figuring out which dishes had vegetables and which had chicken (but not which parts of the chicken), we gamble and order a few different dishes (just by pointing at what we want). All in all, the meal was pretty tasty, but there were certainly some dishes that we would not normally have ordered.
Minoo Park
The next day we head out to Osaka Castle, which actually isn't all that exciting. It's a beatiful building, check out the photos below, but we wouldn't recommend spending much time there, unless you're really interested in the history.
Next we head to Minoo Park to visit the local waterfall. We're expecting to follow a trail through the forest, which ends at the waterfall, but instead we walk along a peaceful, nicely shaded, concrete path, which ends at a viewing area with seating, below the falls. It is indeed very pretty, but not what we were expecting. Given it's summer and we're in Japan, we buy some ice cream (green-tea flavoured for Ness) and enjoy the sunshine.
Osaka Floating Garden Observatory
We're soon ready to head to our last destination of this trip, Osaka Floating Garden. We arrive at this impressive building and jump into an elevator that's heading up to the actual garden. Once we're about 10 metres off the ground, the elevator has cleared the solid walls around the base of the elevator shaft and we discover that the elevator walls are actually transparent. Ness freaks out a little.
We exit the elevator, approximately 30 floors above the ground and are presented with open air escalators that span the 30 floor drop, travelling up approximately 9 floors. Ness freaks out again, ends up sitting on the escalators, tightly holding on tho the handrails. But somehow manages to ride the escalators to the top.
Upon arriving, we're disappointed to discover that there isn't actually a garden up here, it's really just an observation deck. The view is pretty great however and we spend some time looking out over Osaka, before heading back to our hotel for our last night in Japan.
And that pretty much brings us to the end of our trip to Japan. Until of course we come back later in the year to revisit everything we missed in Kyoto!
We locate our hotel and immediately we're off to see the sights! First stop is the aquarium. We should have known better than to visit the aquarium on a weekend, before it is packed with families and their strollers. Nonetheless, we are already here so we push on.
Seeing the massive queue, we decide to grab some food, in the hopes that the crowds will die down somewhat. Walking around a local food court, we successfully find a Takoyaki place and bite down on the local delicacy.
Om nom nom -ing down on Takoyai and Taiyaki. To be honest, we were really full after the Takoyaki but I when you're in Japan...!
Feeling sated, we discover that our time away hasn't had much of an impact so we join the masses and enter the aquarium.
The Osaka Aquarium is pretty remarkable, with the number one attraction being a whale shark, which is quite impressive, in the largest tank. Tim's favourite part of the aquarium however, is the river otter exhibit. Visitors to this section of the aquarium will see river otters in the same enclosure as a school of fish. The beautiful thing about this setup is that the river otters regularly dive into the water, presumably to catch fish. In what appears to be always the case, the otters are too slow and the fish scatter, coming back together again once the otter leaves the water. So here are a few pics of otters and other cute, large and scary animals from the aquarium.
Otter cuteness!
As happy as a... stingray?
Grumpy seal and chubby seal.
Next we head to Dotonburi to find one of Tim's favourite dishes, Okonomiyaki. Eating these delicious, saucy, vegetable pancakes, we hear what sounds like a huge number of drummers. After finishing our meals we head out onto the street and follow the crowds towards the source of the drums. We soon arrive at a river, where brightly coloured, company sponsored boats, are travelling in a procession past crowds lining the riverbanks. The boats have a variety of tools for attracting attention, be it lights, or musical instruments, but our favourites at the boats with numerous drummers. Watching beat in time and feeling the rhythm in our chests is quite an experience. After watching the boats for a while, we make our way back to our hotel for the evening.
Sights of Dotonburi
Nara
The following day we take a train out to the former capital of Japan, Nara. Nara is famous for its temples and herds of friendly deer and we are not disappointed.
Heading to the Nara Park we immediately see the famous deer. Ness picks up some deer food and is surrounded by the hungry Cervidae. After disposing of the deer food, we buy a some human food (i.e. green-tea ice cream for Ness) and continue to stroll around the park. We see giant pagodas, guardian statues and temples. The place feels like something out of a martial arts movie.
Oh deer me...
Not having the right change when we enter the arcade, Tim tries to convert approximately $10 into coins and thinks he's succeeded when he receives a bucket of coins from a man who doesn't speak English. Sadly, we're soon to discover that Tim has converted his money into these valueless gaming coins, that can only be used for gambling machines and not arcade machines. After making this discovery, Tim tries to convert the gaming coins back to real coins and discovers there is some law that makes it impossible, as (paraphasing) "gambling should only be for fun, not monetary gain". Apparently the only thing you can win while gambling in Nara is pride in obtaining a high score and your name in the rankings. In the end, we give the bucket of fake money to an old gentleman.
Amusingly, we did end up finding a machine that would give us change, and it wasn't too far from the Street Fighter 2 machine, but the machine wasn't working properly and we couldn't play a decent game against each other. Oh well, it was a pretty funny story.
We head back to Osaka for dinner and find a local yakitori place. We look over an entirely Japanese menu, without pictures and do our best to use Google translate to figure out what we should order. Figuring out which dishes had vegetables and which had chicken (but not which parts of the chicken), we gamble and order a few different dishes (just by pointing at what we want). All in all, the meal was pretty tasty, but there were certainly some dishes that we would not normally have ordered.
Minoo Park
The next day we head out to Osaka Castle, which actually isn't all that exciting. It's a beatiful building, check out the photos below, but we wouldn't recommend spending much time there, unless you're really interested in the history.
Osaka Castle
Next we head to Minoo Park to visit the local waterfall. We're expecting to follow a trail through the forest, which ends at the waterfall, but instead we walk along a peaceful, nicely shaded, concrete path, which ends at a viewing area with seating, below the falls. It is indeed very pretty, but not what we were expecting. Given it's summer and we're in Japan, we buy some ice cream (green-tea flavoured for Ness) and enjoy the sunshine.
Tim at Minoo Park Waterfall and a very cute, older Japanese couple trying to take a selfie with what looked like a flip phone.
Osaka Floating Garden Observatory
We're soon ready to head to our last destination of this trip, Osaka Floating Garden. We arrive at this impressive building and jump into an elevator that's heading up to the actual garden. Once we're about 10 metres off the ground, the elevator has cleared the solid walls around the base of the elevator shaft and we discover that the elevator walls are actually transparent. Ness freaks out a little.We exit the elevator, approximately 30 floors above the ground and are presented with open air escalators that span the 30 floor drop, travelling up approximately 9 floors. Ness freaks out again, ends up sitting on the escalators, tightly holding on tho the handrails. But somehow manages to ride the escalators to the top.
Upon arriving, we're disappointed to discover that there isn't actually a garden up here, it's really just an observation deck. The view is pretty great however and we spend some time looking out over Osaka, before heading back to our hotel for our last night in Japan.
Scale model of the observatory building. Look closely and you'll see the escalators we had to ride from one side of the building to the other.
And that pretty much brings us to the end of our trip to Japan. Until of course we come back later in the year to revisit everything we missed in Kyoto!
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