Japan Holiday, July 18 (The Sky's The Limit)

First day in Osaka, headed to Umeda in the northern part of the city. The subway exit and surrounding buildings here are rather confusing, it would be nice if they just stuck to a grid layout and it would have been even better if I had a compass. By the end of the trip a compass is the one thing I really wish I had taken with me. Happened to come across the visitor centre, so got a good map (note: Google maps and guide books just can't compare to the good old-fashioned mega fold-out city maps) and some directions to the Umeda Sky Building.

I'm not really sure why it's called a "sky" building and why they say there is a "floating garden observatory" at the top. I didn't see a garden and certainly not a floating one, but I was able to observe the city from outside on the roof, so that was good. I had no idea what I was looking at, but I did discover that Osaka is quite a large and impressive city, not quite to the scale of Tokyo but certainly well ahead of Melbourne.

Yodobashi Camera store in foreground, HEP Five with Ferris Wheel behind

Next stop was the bay area, a couple of short train rides south and east to Osakako station. There was a Suntory museum here, but unfortunately it was an art museum and not an alcohol museum with the company's products. Next door was an aquarium with a massive line, perhaps because it was both a Sunday and the start of school holidays. So, moving right along there was the harbor town mall next, which had some souvenir stuff and a food court with a bunch of interesting things on offer. I later found out I missed the store selling azuki (red bean) pancakes, which was devastating! Out on the harbor there was some kind of amateur boat race going on, seemed to be either high school or university clubs involved.

Another Ferris Wheel behind Harbor Village

Left the bay and a couple more train trips to the west (making good use of the daily train pass which costs 850 Yen, approximately $11 - divide by 100 and add about a third) to Osakajo Castle, the only castle/shrine/temple of significance in the city to my knowledge. Some of these places have some interesting stories, such as being built, attacked, destroyed, rebuilt several times in their history. Certainly the length and depth of the country's history is much more than that of Australia - people arrived by boat, not much happened, here we are today. We came to the conclusion that we'd be visiting lots of these type of places in Kyoto, so didn't go inside...and that never eventuated.

Entrance to Osaka-jo

Most of my photos seem to have about a 10 degree left slant :(

Back where we started the day at Umeda, to try and find Sega Joypolis in the HEP Five building! As I mentioned before the Umeda district is a little tough to navigate, and we somehow ended up in an arcade district instead. I wish I'd had a bit more time to spend wandering around here. Namco Town was a five level arcade building, with different themes on each of the levels. One of the shooting games didn't just use crappy pistols, you got to control a massive chain gun, brilliant! Even more impressive than that was the virtual horse racing betting games they had, the horse race itself is run on a massive screen, and each player gets their own leather chair and screen to place their bets. It's very elaborate, but I don't understand how you can bet on virtual horses. I played Kris on some fighting game that I don't remember the name of, and whooped him 3-0. Then I started playing the single player and kept on winning just by button mashing.

Made a few more turns down the side streets and ended up at HEP Five. It's surprisingly hard to find a building with a ferris wheel on the roof. Sega Joypolis turned out to be a bit disappointing. Besides the usual arcade and game machines they have a bunch of "rides" which mostly seemed to be virtual reality or geared towards kids, not as fun as those I remember from Sega World. The queues for these rides were also like 20 minutes long, so did not wait around.

I went on a solo mission for the rest of the afternoon to try and find a Japanese laptop power cable for my computer (since the Japanese outlets don't have a ground pin you can only get 2 pin Australian to 2 pin Japanese adapters). I tried Bic Camera which despite the name actually sells just about anything to do with electronics. I made my way to the computer parts level and it was just a nightmare - a huge floor, so much noise, announcements over the PA interjecting with the Bic Bic Bic Bic Ca-me-ra! theme song and it can get pretty overwhelming. I had to basically go aisle to aisle to try and find what I was after, since the overhead signs weren't in English, but with no luck in the end.

By the end of the day my feet had reached the point where I wanted to hack them off like Dr. Gordon in the first Saw movie, so I had to retire back to the hotel.

Before finding somewhere for dinner we took a detour through Amerikamura (American village) which was rather interesting. It's just one or two streets the opposite direction to where I've been exploring so far but totally different. Not just the amount of American inspired stores - mostly crappy t-shirt and music stores, but the locals that you come across in this area seemed to have turned it up a notch with the tanned skin, big hairstyles and clothing.

I forget how we settled on a place, but we ended up in a small restaurant in Dotonbori. As soon as we had our seats the couple at the bench, must have been in their 50's and the chef seemed to take delight in some foreign customers. The translations in the English menu were hilariously bad, beyond anything I could have expected. I had a lot more sake than I ever intended since the old couple next to use kept refilling our glasses (to the point of overflowing) and I've come to the conclusion it's just way too harsh for me, I imagine it's pretty much like drinking petrol.