Final tales of Osaka

Hi kids,

This post will wrap up all the loose ends of my trip through Osaka and one day in Kobe. You'll find the weired, strange and my attempts at trying to be photographic genius!

So on our first day after visiting the Aquarium in Osaka, we wondered through the nearby shopping complex. While wondering through the complex, we saw this store that had two people dressed as ninja's in front. I wasn't sure whether this was a ninja themed restaurant or whether it was a shop talking about ninja related things.

Unfortunately I didn't get to go in so I had to kick this ninja's ass instead!

On our second day in Osaka, we decided to visit Universal Studios. Universal Studios (or USJ as the Japanese call it) is one of the major attractions in Osaka and the venue of many school trips. Since it was the holiday period in Japan, USJ was absolutely packed with people. Both kids and adults. I should mention now that the Japanese seem to love lines and lining up. So we had to line up to get our tickets (40mins), then line up to get through the gates (20mins) ... and then the lines for the rides ... oh man!!! the lines!!! Some lines were rediculous, the ET line was 90mins wait and never got shorter than that.

Fortunately, they did sell express tickets for 4 rides for $30 (gate tickets were already about $50). The express tickets allowed you to skip the long lines and join a shorter line ... again, it seems the rich win ... but in reality, the poor wouldn't be in the theme park anyway. USJ seemed to be modelled on different cities in the US, like San Francisco, Old Chicago, etc. They also had rides like Spider-man, Terminator, Jurassic Park, Back Draft. There's also theatre shows like Muppets and Shrek 4D.

This was the entrance, still fully decorated in their Christmas theme

This is the famous Universal Studio ball. Had to wait til Australia came around.

Recognise this little machine, c'mon ... here's a hint ... its a De Lorean

Just off the train station to USJ, there's a shopping mall eqipped with the Takoyaki museum. Unfortunately, the museum was just a few pictures of old school takoyaki making along a wall and most people were buying takoyaki on the other side. This little takoyaki didn't want to be cooperative and come with me.

One of the specially painted trains for USJ

The Namba district which contained Dotonbori was quite interesting to explore. Here were some cool statue heads outside a building.

This was a cool restaurant front, didn't get to eat in here though.

This was a cool building and looked fairly new. Most of the floors were pachinko parlours, but that big double ended spoon in the middle of the building is actually a ride, that takes you to the top and lets you free fall down. We obviously had to have a go. The rush was pretty cool, and there were plenty of wobbly legs set in straight after.

A certain area of Osaka city had these really cool street lamps. The head is the light and there's even security camera's out of its butt.

The area were we stayed was pretty slummy ... there were piles of rubbish left on the streets, homeless people on street corners, and a really raggity church that played this biblical show in spanish. Anyway, braving all this I decided to explore around one morning. While walking around and dicovering that this was the area where all the Kushi-katsu skewer restaurants were. I had also seen these posters of the ugliest women I've seen in Japan, upon closer inspection, I found that it was actually a man dressed as a women. I also discovered this theatre, where these men-women were performing ... hmmm ... pass, I think

Advertisement to the Bunny Club, looks really interesting, doesn't it ... fellas????

This particular shop, decorated itself according to the Hanshin Tigers baseball team. Fanatical!

Believe it or not, this was outside a wrestling shop in Namba. Inside, they sold wrestling gear including masks, belts, tights, memorabilia. They also had a big ring inside for wrestling matches. Japanese love their wrestling.

This is Namba Parks Shopping precint. Its had interesting archatecture. Its sort of like Melbourne Central, only alot more classier, bigger and cooler actually ... so maybe nothing like it!

Another shot of Namba Parks. (One of my so called attempts at being artistic)

This giant ceramic vase looking thing was found near a Shrine. Initially, it reminded me of the healthy food pyramid, beacuse of the pictures of food and animals, but after looking closer found that there were scenes of different people around the world eating. Including one of the last supper.

Osaka is also home to Spa World, a multi-level bathhouse for all. I didn't thnk much of it initially but after spending a few hours there, it completely changed my mind. Spa World aims to re-created bath houses from two continents that enjoy their baths, Asia and Europe. So aptly named the European zone and the Asian zone. As the bath houses are complete nudity, men and women are separated and designated a different zones, and this alternates each month. I got the Euro zone this particular month. The European zone has about 5 different types of hot baths ... one where you sit in the trevi fountain with neptunes horses rising at you. Another was a recreation of a grotto (cave type hot bath), also a scandanavian recreation, where you alternate between a hot sauna and then freezing ice like bath (not cool). There was also a roman baths recreation including a few bath with different types of herbs. Finally there was a bath that sat on top of a fish tank. I'm not to sure of the asian zone baths, but heard that they had a bali setting, oriental garden ... can't give much more on that. One floor was were males and females could mix. It was basically a leisure swimming pool, equipped with waterslides. Spa world was really a world on its own as you could practically spend a whole day there. If you were board of baths, then there were floors full of restaurants and there were amusements for the kids. You also wore their costumes while wondering around as to make it easier for you to get back into the baths. Men got these funky blue baggy pants and shirt, where the women got pink gowns. For obvious reasons, camera's were not allowed, but the unforms were a hoot. Definitely a must if you ever visit Osaka.

This was a special promotion for Spa World during December. The sign translate to Chocolate Spa. Unfortunately, we didn't go during December.

We explored nearby Kobe city during our trip in Osaka. Kobe is one of Japan's port cities that allowed foreign trade and therefore is marked as a place that foreigners and foreign culture first came to Japan. As Kobe had many foreign investors coming in, many of them decided to build their own western style houses to live in during their stay in Kobe. This is one such house, it belonged to some dutch dude, I think. This whole area is called the Ijinkan and contains many western styled houses, some dating back to 1868.

Japan doesn't not have boxing day, and therefore NO boxing day sales. Although, they do have sales. There big sale day is on the 2nd of January. As, let me tell you ... its packed everywhere, even with all the shopping centres they have.

An interesting sale concept that the Japanese put together for the sales is to pack items into a box (like the ones these people are holding) and sell them for about anywhere between $20-$100. Most are around the $50 mark, but they idea is to give you value for your money by giving you more than what you pay for. The thing is that your not sure whats in some of these packages ... so it would be a total surprise. Some stores would tell you what you get in them though. Such packages include, nike, addidas, jap clothing stores but also Mister Doughnut and even Haagen Daas.

These look like fake Sushi food, but look closer and you actually see that their USB keys!

Daimaru lives in Japan! Well atleast in the Kansai region

One cool thing about Departments stores in Japan, and should be introduced everywhere in the world, is their awesome food court ... its really really cool and you'll find them in every single department store in Japan. All the food courts are found on the basement levels of the stores and sell almost any food item you could want. They have a fresh meat, fish, vegies and japanese goodies section. Section with cooked food to buy, sections with Bento boxes to take away and ofcourse the Dessert and sweets section ... its heaven for foodies. Have a look yourself.

Kobe was rocked by an earthquake on January 17th 1995, measuring 7.3 on the Richter Scale. It killed 6,433 people, made 300,000 of its citizens homeless and destroyed large sections of the port. They re-bulit everything, but left this section as a memorial to the earthquake. This is a picture of some of the more famous sights in Kobe including the Earthquake memorial, the Maritime Museum and Kobe Tower.

These are the steps that lead to Hozan-ji Temple on Mount Ikoma to the West of Nara.

Hozan-ji Temple is situated up high on Mount Ikoma and is a fair walk from the ground, but fortunately there was a cable car to take you half way (Although we did walk down). The temple was really cool, cuz it looked like it was built into the side of the mountain.

The other unique thing about this temple was that it contained 100 statues of buddah, and legend has it that if you walk around them one hundred times, then you would have good luck. Eh, too much for me, I did stroll through them once.

Yep, the crazy Japanese women did try to get up some of these rickity steps in heels. This lady though, was seriously packing some high heels. No wonder the women here walk funny. Check it out next time your in Japan!

Another artsie attempt!

As well as playing with a new colour function on my camera, this was quite an interesting picture. While walking to Osaka Jo (Osaka Castle), we saw some girls (about 15 or 16 years old, even older maybe) playing with some dolls. They were dressing up the dolls and then placing them on the flower beds to photograph ... yeah, I hear ya ... CRAZY!!! You can see the dolls in the picture.

More colour adjustment with my camera. This was a cool little Bonzai garden arrangement

Osaka-jo (Osaka Castle) is one of Japan's more famous Castles, even though the building itself is not the oldest. Osaka-jo was first built in 1598 and over the years, wars and fires have led to its many restorations. The final restoration was completed in 1997. Speaking to the Japanese, they are not too impressed as its not really old anymore. It was cool inside though, and from the top, you could observe all of Osaka city. Take a look below.

Me and Osaka-jo

Hope that was enjoyable for all, til we meet again

Oyasumi Nasai