06:19:23 AM JSTFor the final day in Osaka I had a few things I wanted to do myself, so I was off exploring alone for the day. I had to go to Umeda first, to get myself a map, past the Sky Building where I was on day one.
Near S. Coast Of Western Honshu, Japan (34.30N, 135.74E)
5.0
49 miles
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| The two escalators going through the hole seem to spoil the whole design. |
Then I headed over to Osakako again because I knew there was a Lawson store there and that's where you can buy Studio Ghibli museum tickets from. The problem is the ticket machine is completely in Japanese. I had some instructions written down to try and get through the menus, and I was successful in reaching the payment screen, only to get stuck at the final hurdle. It seemed to be asking for a special Lawson card rather than a regular ATM or Credit Card (sigh) so I tried to ask the staff. All they did was point at the ATM thinking I wanted to withdraw cash (their store ATM's don't even accept international cards so yeah that was a great help). Later that night I found out there's apparently a second option somewhere that you can enter your name and phone number instead, and pay at the counter. On further reading about the museum I actually decided it didn't sound like it was worth going, given that we might be short on time in Tokyo already. I also passed by the aquarium on the way, more highlights from day one revisited.
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| The aquarium isn't *that* big, those are little kids. |
Not far away from the bay is Osaka Dome, I thought it might have been a baseball and soccer stadium, but only baseball it seems - not sure where Gamba Osaka plays in the J-League then. The dome was open even though it was late morning and there wasn't a game on that night. There was some restaurants and the team store on the lower level, some similar stuff on upper levels but it didn't really seem like the best idea to just start wandering around the stadium by myself. Except for that the whole area around the dome was strangely deserted.
So on to Den Den Town, otherwise known as Nipponbashi, which is Osaka's version of an electric (shopping) town. After getting lost and heading in the wrong direction back to Namba station first, I made it to the main street. My expectations weren't really met, a lot of small electronic shops for the most part, a few selling some anime type collectibles but overall quite underwhelming. It wasn't really any better than just wandering around in a Yodobashi Camera store.
I headed back up to Namba on purpose this time, via Namba Parks which was a mall / building with shops and a bit of space laid out for plants and trees (as the name might have indicated). It was actually really well done and had a Californian feel to it.
Finally stop of the day was Tenjimbashi Street. This is an even bigger version of Shinsaibashi-suji, a 2.8 kilometer shopping street with covered roof, claiming to be the longest in the world. The shops here were a bit more like what you get in a market, i.e. a lot lower end than the stuff in Shinsaibashi. Which is fine, just depends what you're after. I found it best for picking up some snacks and drinks. The walk itself was a bit of an effort, made no easier when people are riding their bikes down the same walkway - at least the Japanese walk and drive on the left.
The street kind of just ends at the south without much fanfare, where I had two choices, turn back where I'd come from to the nearest station or keep walking south and west towards the hotel. I figured if I keep walking a few blocks south and west I'd be following the train line back down to the hotel, and it would only be a matter or time before I came across a station. Wrong. I walked about three blocks south, then three blocks west. Didn't see any station, but I figured I must almost be back by now. Wrong again. It was several more blocks before I even started seeing something familiar, it was the worst.
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| Two cars outside a clothing store near Amerika Mura, don't know why. |
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