Did Osaka for the whole day today. Nice city except that their signs for the tourist information center in the train station are WRONG! The guide didnt heelp much either saying that "people seem to have a hard time finding the information center" and "its in the SE corner of the station". Oh course, when ya get off the train and your underground in the station, its a little difficult to figure your bearings...
So i eventually found the office and got a nice English map of the city. First visited the Umeda Sky building which is one of the newest architecturally interesting buildings in Osaka. Basically its two buildings connected with a funky donut at the top with some misplaced escalators that are glass so you can look down as you ascend to the rooftop.
It DID offer some pretty spectacular views of Osaka. The weather was very clear with just a little bit of smog on the horizon. Oh yeah, i also saw a guy peeing in he park on my way up (Surprisingly, this is only the 3rd time ive seen this)!
I also got perhaps the best deal so fars of the trip, a nice Tonkatsu bento for only 400 yen. It had a small chunk of fish, 2 types of pickles, a small bit of string beans, spaghetti, half a hard boiled egg, and some onions in some sweet sauce, and a hunk of rice. mmm...mmmm..
Afterwards, I paid a visit to the castle, Osaka-jo. Its a reconstruction, so i didnt bother to go in. The surrounding area however were quite nice, being a park with some benches and with a few of the other castle structures (like the gates and walls) open for free viewing.
Next stop was the Aquarium. Im a sucker for aquariums and despite the steep cost of 2000 yen, I couldnt pass the Osaka aquarium which boasts having the former largest tank in the world (I think the new tank in Monterey is now the largest...). I dont know if it was quite worht 2000 yen, but it wasnt bad. It basically had a funky spiral layout so you end up seeing the SAME tanks 3-4 times, each at a different depth. But the tanks were pretty large and the humungous tank they have is at the center containing a spiffy manta ray (which loved feeding on the divers bubbles...more on this later), and a whale shark, along with a few other open water fish (tuna and some other large fish). They also had tanks with penguins, dolphins, sea lions/harbor seals, coral, etc...
As an added bonus....there were divers in the tanks apparently scrubbing the rocks and i swear it looked like one of them was manually vacuuming the rocks with a suction tube and a shovel! The japanese sense of cleanliness is apparently quite pervasive. Following the Monterey Bay aquariums lead (or maybe the other way around?), there was a jellyfish exhibit at the end. Overall, not bad and again, a good change of pace from the typical temples/castles.
To end it off, i went through the entertainment/night time district which. There was the Ebisu-bashi bridge where all the young-uns hang out to look cool, and the numerous blinking lights of pachinko parlors as well as restaurants, eateries, etc, etc. mostly reminding me of Shibuya in Tokyo.
Posted by eric at October 1, 2003 05:46 AM