Wednesday, April 2 - Osaka

Today when I woke up, D had already left for school. It was already close to 10am. Weird considering that we returned relatively early the previous night. In any case, Vaso and I packed up our stuff and headed out. Vaso left a 1000 yen bill with a message written around the edges as payment for the two nights. We took a bus to the station and had Mister Donut for breakfast. We piddled around the station for a good hour waiting for our train to arrive.



Then we departed on the local train for Osaka. It took only about an hour to get there. Once again we ditched our stuff in a locker and headed to the information center. Because we did not have a guide here, I figured it would be best if we grabbed a map first. The first thing I noticed was the weirdness of Osaka compared to Kyoto. There were a bunch of interesting art things and most importantly, poster-boards of various things with the heads cut out.



We decided to hit up Osaka castle first. It was fairly close to Osaka station, but we took the train anyways. The castle was huge and had a fair amount of children playing around in the garden area. All around the outer moat sakura trees lined the grounds.



There were two moats to cross before coming upon the castle. It was a lot of climbing up stairs and walking. The castle has been changed into a museum for visitors, which was pretty lame. There were a bunch of old artifacts and video rooms which were not very interesting. I did however get to wear traditional armor and helmet and pose with a sword for pictures. This random guy took a ton of pictures of my outfit. He must have felt that a foreigner wearing samurai armor was a rare sight.



The castle grounds and the outside of the castle were amazing. The inside had more to be desired though. Vaso and I split some takoyaki while gazing up at the castle. In the grounds there were also a bunch of those wooden pictures that have a hole for someone’s face. We got our picture taken at a few of those. Being all castle and templed out, we decided that a trip to the local aquarium and I-max movie theatre were in order. It was on the corner of Osaka by the sea.



The aquarium was a bit pricy, but well worth the money. The fish tanks were enormous! They had more than just fish too. There were dolphins, penguins, otters, and seals as well. It was more like an aquatic animal museum rather than just an aquarium. We spent a lot of time sitting down and staring into the tanks. It was really relaxing.



That night we grabbed a 100 yen sandwich at McDonalds and returned to Osaka station. Once there we grabbed our stuff and sought out a youth hostel. The first one that we called was close to Shin-Osaka station and only cost 3000 yen a night. Dinner was already over, so we hit up an in-station okonomiyaki place for dinner. It was cheap and filling. Definitely the best okonomiyaki I have ever had. It took a little while to find the hostel. It was on the top three floors of this fairly large business building. The rooms were like a really nice hotel aside from the fact that there were 4 bunks. We roomed with another Japanese person traveling Japan. In the ofuro we talked with some of the other youths there. Everyone had a different story to tell.



Sleep that night was amazing. I don’t think I moved an inch the entire night!