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!