Osaka

Last weekend Mark and I had to go to Osaka to get our tourist visas for our trip to Vietnam, and we decided to see the sights while we were in the big city. We went up Sunday morning and spent most of Sunday afternoon wandering around an area called American town, which is the hip, young shopping area. It reminded me of being back in Tokyo and shopping in Harajuku, actually, so that was neat. There wasn't actually anything very American, unless you count lots of t-shirts that say USA or have random states or confederate flags on them, and you see those everywhere, but there was a statue of liberty on top of a building (the second one I've seen in Japan; there's one on Odaiba, too). We had some beer tastes and edamame at a Kirin restaurant when we got tired of walking (the first picture at the top). That evening we had okonomiyaki, which is like a big pancake with cabbage and seafood. Osaka is famous for food, so I wish we'd had more chances to eat out, but we didn't have a lot of time.

Monday morning we checked out of our hostel (nothing stinks like very old tatami mats, but you can't beat 3000 yen - about 25 dollars - for a night in Osaka) and went to find the consulate. That was a fun adventure because addresses in Japan are not sequential. Every city is divided into wards and then each ward is divided into numbered boxes and then the boxes are divided once more, so you find the ward, then use the zipcode to find the area, which gives you a square block and you just have to find your place. After that we went to Osaka's famous aquarium, Kaiyukan, which is one of the world's largest. That was fun, though it actually wasn't the best aquarium because the displays didn't look very natural and a lot of the tanks seemed too small, especially for the dolphins and penguins. We had a good time discussing which would be the worst tank to be dropped into - the giant crabs with huge skinny legs or the creepy, crawly jellyfish.

Finally we stopped by Namba, Osaka's entertainment district. I've heard it's also the place with the highest concentration of love hotels anywhere in the world. We had fun looking at those, though I've read that love hotels are in the process of going up-market and are therefore getting less interesting (it's getting more difficult to find a hotel shaped like a whale or a spaceship, for example). Anyway, the picture at the top is the sign at one called Bali, which I took because it shows the options - you can go for a "rest" (from one to three hours) or stay longer. The next picture was a hotel called Mickey Cookies which had an all-pink room. Surprisingly the area is not too seedy, though I imagine it changes a bit at night.

Thanks for reading!
Cate