Osaka

This past Saturday, Adam and I went to Osaka for the day.  It’s about a two hour train ride.  We were blessed again with being able to sit even though the train was packed.  Kids are now on spring vacation, so we saw more families travelling.  We got to Osaka and immediately took a train to Sakuranomiya.  Sakuranomiya is a park along the river in downtown Osaka with 5000 cherry trees.  

The cherry trees (sakura) had just started to bloom.  The weather was warm, the sun was shining, people were having picnics everywhere, and the sakura were blooming.  When I’m in a nice park like that in a big city, I don’t mind the big city so much, I even start to appreciate how the sky scrapers look.  Having a picnic under the sakura is a big thing here in Japan.  I will be attending one such picnic this afternoon and I hope that it will be the first of a few.  We had our own picnic by what I believe were peach trees. 

You can see Osaka Castle in the background.

This bus is also a boat and drove right into the river.

I have cherry blossom pollen all over my nose.

I think this is a peach tree.

We had our picnic here.

 We planned it so that we walked through Sakuranomiya Park and ended at Osaka castle which also has a garden.  We did a quick walk through of part of the garden before we headed to Shinsaibashi.

Osaka Castle

 Shinsaibashi is basically a shopping area of Osaka.  When I was researching Osaka, it seemed like most of what I found were shopping districts.  When we got out of the subway station, we both agreed that we had to go in a certain direction.  Turns out that we were completely switched around and were going in the opposite direction we wanted.  Finally, we got going the right way. We were heading for the America-mura area where they were having a Kawaii festival of sorts.  Kawaii is (from my understanding) a type of fashion style originated in Japan.  Kawaii means “cute” in Japanese.  We thought it would be interesting to check out since I thought there’d be a lot of girls dressed up in Kawaii.  However, I was a bit disappointed.  Quite a few girls had their hair done Kawaii style, but the clothes were still fairly conservative on the spectrum, I would say.  The events didn’t seem all that exciting either, it might just have been the timing since I thought we might see a fashion show.  After a short while of being in Shinsaibashi, I realized once again how exhausting I find crowds and shopping places.  We didn’t stay too long before heading for the aquarium.

Cotton Candy

 We really enjoyed the aquarium.  I would say that the Nagoya aquarium we went to had more to see and would recommend that one over the Osaka aquarium.  That being said, the Osaka aquarium has a really nice lay out and an easy to follow route.  I kind of like that since you know that you’ve seen everything and you don’t have to keep looking at a map and planning out your own route.  It was also cool that they included otters, sloths, and some other animals that live close to water in their aquarium.  They had one touch tank where we got to pet a shark and a sting ray.  They had signs saying, “Don’t touch the sharks’ mouths.” And “Don’t touch the sting rays’ tails.”  Of all things to put in a touch tank why these?  In any case, I can now say that I’ve pet a shark and a sting ray and lived to tell about it.

This giraffe was made of lego.

Whale Shark

Seal

We had out picnic supper overlooking the sun setting on the port before heading back to Tarui. 

The weather is getting warm here and it’s been around 20 lately.  We’ve been loving it and the warm weather is helping all the trees bloom.  So get ready to see more and more pictures of flowers!

Kobe

Adam and I went to Kobe on Saturday.  It was a full day!  We took a train at 7:00 am and arrived in Kobe a little after 9:30am.  Thankfully, we were able to sit the whole ride despite the trains being very full.  It’s amazing how many people are going places early on a Saturday morning. 

Our first stop was the Hakutsuru Sake Brewery.  As we were walking from the station to the brewery, lo and behold a Catholic Church!  Now, if you’re travelling in Europe and you come across a Catholic Church it’s no surprise.  In fact, you’d be more surprised not to see one.  But in Japan, to come across a Catholic Church is special!  The church was open too, so we were able to spend some time with Jesus.  After leaving the church, getting lost, asking for directions, finding our way, we arrived at the sake brewery.  There’s 4 or 5 breweries in the area, but this one had good reviews.  They have a free museum that shows how sake used to be made and how it’s made now.  They had English pamphlets and English videos!  Making sake was a lot of work and quite the work out too; now, they get machines to do most of the work.  After we learned about the sake making process, we came to the end of the museum.  Before you exit, there’s a gift shop with free sake tasting.  We tasted 4 different kinds of sake.  Two were normal kinds, one was lemon sake, and the last one was plum sake.  This might have been the highlight of my day, partly because the information was in English and because it’s such a unique experience specific to Japan.

St. Paul Miki

Peach Blossoms 

Hakutsuru Brewery Museum

No, these guys aren't real.  

That's a big barrel.

Cooling the rice

Packaging the sake

They would put the rice in these bags and then press them.
The liquid (sake) coming out would go through this strainer.  

We jumped back on the train and rode into downtown Kobe.  We have this train pass (Seishun 18) that allows unlimited train travel on local trains for one day and we really made good use of it since they have local trains running within Kobe every five minutes.  We also used the pass to get to Kobe and back to Tarui.  We got off the train and walked to city hall.  I felt like I was in Europe.  I think I tend to feel like that when the weather is nice, I’m in a big city, and there’s people all around. Anyways, at city hall you can go up to the 24^th floor and there’s an observation deck for free.  You don’t get the whole 360 degree view, but you can look out towards the ocean and the mountains. 

On our way to City Hall.

Next, we walked to the Merikan Park port area and had a picnic lunch.  In 1995, Kobe had a really bad earthquake.  Over 6000 people died and it caused a lot of damage.  We had our picnic right by a little outdoor museum explaining the earthquake and the rebuilding process.  They have an area that they didn’t rebuild so that people can see how devastating the earthquake was.

Area that they didn't rebuild.

Then, we went to the Kobe Maritime Museum which really wasn’t worthwhile.  They have a section on Kawasaki since it started in Kobe, but even that wasn’t as impressive as the reviews sounded.  If you had little kids it might be a cool place to go to.  In fact, we might have been the only people there without children.  I think the fact that all the kids were busy doing the interactive parts of displays made us feel a little sheepish about trying them out.  Imagine: two foreign white adults waiting in a line of kids to get to try something. J  One interesting thing I learned at the museum was that back in the 12^th century the Shogun at the time ordered an island to be built off of Kobe.  That island is still being used as part of the port.  I just thought it was funny, like why would you order an island to be built?  The model they had of the island-building made it seem even funnier.  The Shogun was twice the size of any of the other people in the display and he had an angry face.  No one else had a face and they were all working hard moving rocks while being ordered on by the angry Shogun.  Maybe there was more of an explanation in Japanese as to why the island was built.

Kawasaki motorcycle

 At this same Meriken Park area, they have a giant mall.  It’s kind of cool and also extremely overwhelming especially with so many people all around.  We bought Adam some sunglasses and left.

Kobe Tower

Between buildings inside the mall.

Our last stop of the day was Suma Beach.  I had a few other things planned, but we didn’t have the time or energy for them.  We just hung out at the beach and ate our supper.  It was a relaxing way to end the day and get away from the noise of downtown Kobe.  We listened to the waves come in and watched the fish jump and believe me, they were doing a lot of jumping.  Every few seconds, we’d see them jumping all over the place.

 I had planned for us to go see this suspension bridge that has the longest central span of any suspension bridge in the world at 1.9km.  The whole bridge is 3.9km.  We could see part of it from Suma beach and were both satisfied.

On Sunday, we were invited over to a friend’s house for lunch.  They had a takoyaki party.  Takoyaki is an octopus dough ball.  As you can see we also got to taste a bunch of other delicious dishes.  The other people we met could speak English too, so it was a nice social event for us.

Takoyaki being cooked.