Today was an action packed day to say the least. When we
arrived at the airport a few days ago we purchased an ‘Osaka pass’, which gave
us two days of unlimited use of the local subway and bus systems as well as
free admission to several local attractions. Dom activated his pass yesterday
but since I wasn’t feeling well I decided to go to bed and I think I made the
right decision because I quickly learned most of the attractions offer free
admission for a reason.
I still wasn’t feeling that great but I needed to power
through, even though we have been staying in Osaka all week I haven’t seen
anything other than the train station and a few blocks of the ghetto
neighbourhood between there and our hotel.
Our first stop for the day was Shittenoji Temple. Upon
arrival it was clear that the New Year season had finally ended because there
weren’t food stalls lining the walkway to the temple, and there weren’t a
million people there either. You could walk leisurely around the property in
any direction you wanted which was a nice change. The area around the temple
contained several smaller temples, shrines, and pagodas, and was a beautiful
sight in itself. The part you would normally have to pay to see looked much
like the surrounding structures only you weren’t allowed to take pictures. Both
the interior and exterior of the buildings in this area were pretty
spectacular. I thought Christian churches used a lot of gold but they don’t
hold a candle to Buddhists. They really love gold, it’s everywhere!
Once we had finished at the temple we decided to head to
Osaka castle. I was pretty excited about this since I love castles and our
previous two attempts to visit castles in Japan had been epic failures but Dom
decided it would be fun to make me wait a little longer. He saw the Osaka
History Museum on our way and insisted we go inside since we had free tickets.
I protested but we ended up inside anyway. It might have been an educational
experience if one of us read Japanese or if there was English text posted anywhere
but we don’t and there wasn’t so it was pretty much a waste of time. Dom
finally agreed there was no point in exploring anymore after we had moseyed
through 3 floors of nothingness and we were on our way to the castle.
We walked a short distance before arriving at the moat,
which we crossed by bridge into the walled castle grounds. We had a free ticket
for the castle gardens so we decided to check it out. It took us both a few
minutes to figure out why they referred to this area full of dirt and lifeless
looking trees a garden but finally it dawned on me, it was all about the trees.
The trees that were scattered through out the area were cherry trees and would
likely have been absolutely gorgeous had they been in bloom. We took some
pictures of the castle from the garden before heading to the castle itself.
The walk through the rest of the grounds was pretty fun.
There was a baseball team huddled together with their coach, chanting and
bowing which was an interesting thing to see. There were a lot of people
jogging or walking their dogs and there was a busker who was blasting some
Beach Boys music while setting up his performance. I enjoy people watching and
this was a good spot for it.
Our tickets said castle museum so I didn’t think we would
actually get to go into the castle, I thought we would end up in some building
beside it, but I was wrong we actually got to go in the castle. I was super
excited for about 3 seconds before learning that the entire castle had been
turned into a museum. There wasn’t even a single room showing what the castle
looked like back in the day when rulers resided there. I should be used to this
by now because a lot of castles do it but it’s always so much more fun when the
castle is still a castle on the inside. The first few floors contained some boring looking artifacts
that didn’t have any English descriptions so we rushed through them pretty
quickly. The bottom few floors made up for it though. They were full of swords
and traditional dress, stuff that was actually cool to look at.
We finished up at the castle and started to make our way to
the bay area to check out a few attractions there. We grabbed some lunch at the
mall food-court then headed to the pier. We had passes for a cruise on the
Santa Maria. This was quite possible the most boring cruise I have ever been on
and that includes the canal cruise I took in Amsterdam which more or less
consisted of someone talking about gables for 2 hours and me thinking I would
never get those two hours back. There was nothing of importance in the harbour
we cruised through, there wasn’t even anything that was nice to look at, it was
just a bunch a skyscrapers and container ships being unloaded. The only
redeeming quality of the cruise is that it was on a pirate ship and the people
selling tickets and helping to dock the boat were dressed like pirates.
From there we made our way to the Big Wheel, Osaka’s answer
to the London eye. Actually it might have been built first I really don’t know.
It was a 15-minute ride and offered some good views of the city. We could see
Universal Studios from the top and I was happy I hadn’t shelled out the cash to
visit because I’m pretty sure Santa’s Village has more to offer.
We were planning on going to the look out on top of a
building in the same area next but decided it would be a waste of time since it
would offer the same views and I was really starting to feel like garbage again
so we decided to move on. I was ready for bed but Dom convinced me to go to
Namba with him because it was the number one attraction on Trip Advisor. I
poked my head above ground after we got off the subway and didn’t see anything
of interest so headed back to the hotel. I definitely made the right choice
because when Dom came back a little while later he told me all that was there
was a shopping mall.
Tomorrow we leave for the airport around 11:30, my Osaka
pass is still good so I might do a bit more exploring since I have been waking
up by 6:30 every morning but I will wait and see how I feel then.
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