Osaka - Day 3
Trip Start
Apr 19, 2012
1
4
15
Trip End
May 03, 2012
Osaka, Kinki, Japan
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Osaka Aquarium is located at the harbour along with giant shopping centre and Tempozan Ferris wheel. Guess what, that Tempozan Ferris wheel is one of the tallest wheels in the world. It looks like that whatever big, long, tall, large, fast you’ll find in the world, Japan has the same and maybe even bigger, longer, taller, larger and definitely faster.
Aquarium itself is very interesting and displays habitats from Ring of Fire area of the Pacific Ocean. It’s built around central tank, which houses star attractions: whale shark and mantra. Both whale shark and mantra are massive animals. I saw them before in TV but mantra surprised me by its size. It was just unbelievable. We saw also other sharks, including zebra shark, leopard sharks, hammerhead sharks and dolphins also. There are also countless other species of rays and fish. A walkway inside aquarium winds around the main tank which displays eight different ocean levels. The tour starts on the top and finish on the bottom where we saw jelly fish and giant spider crabs in Japanese Deep Ocean section. Because it was Sunday and it was raining, the place was crowded but I personally didn’t have any problems with that, purely because everybody was smaller than I, lol.
We left aquarium and went to Tempozan market place. According to our Japan guide, there should be large food court serving traditional Japanese food with free samples of their kitchen. The guide was right; there were plenty of small restaurants and stalls in there. As soon as we walked in we were taken by one Japanese woman, who surprisingly spoke English, to her window to taste Okonomiyaki, kind of mix between pizza and pancake with vegetable topping. That was nice. This woman asked as where we are from. When we said we came from Slovakia, she turned into restaurant and started to shout something in Japanese. Only thing we understood was Czechoslovakia (common mistake in the world), but when she has finished all employees in that restaurant started to shout, wave and clap their hands. Do not ask me for reason why, because I really don’t know. After that little bit of entertainment that women told us to go and have a look around and then come back to her restaurant. Strange, we are used to more aggressive style from other places in the world, where once you speak to somebody who sells something then you won’t be free to go until you buy something from that person (you folks probably been in that situations before too). So we walked through that countless stalls and restaurants looking for pictured menu to choose something. However there weren’t many of them so we bought some food from a stall. We saw a lot of people buying it, thinking we can’t be wrong we bought it too. We were given our lovely chopsticks, found a free wooden bench and started to eat. To be hones we have eaten better staff like this before. During our dining we were trying to figure out what we are actually eating. We are 100% positive there was beef in it, second ingredient we identified as Tofu (can’t guarantee that) and obviously rice. Even if it was not the best food ever we had finished it and were ready to go back to our apartment. Not far away from metro station, we found a place where I bought Takoyaki – most favourite street snack in Osaka. And people of Osaka are proud of their Takoyaki, saying their Takoyaki is the best in Japan. It is ball-shaped dumpling (little bit smaller than table tennis ball) filled with octopus served with mayonnaise and sprinkled with some aromatic spices. I finished four dumplings, Hedka couldn’t even smell it. Now I can say that octopus inside was delicious and dumpling itself was the part which I didn’t like too much, lol.
We got back to our apartment to have some rest before we hit the streets of Osaka later in the evening. At 19.30 we went to part of Osaka called Minami, well known for its night life, shopping and neon lights. In three days we have learnt how to use metro and how to use ticket machines so moving around Osaka became more comfortable and easier for us. Our first stop was Dotombori which is the liveliest part of Minami. Let me call it neon madness. It was amazing to stand on the Ebisu-bashi Bridge watching people walking by us. Japanese people have strange feeling for fashion. Some people looked like from fashion magazines other looked like they don’t have mirrors at home. Anyway, we moved on to Amerika-Mura (American village). This place is where Japanese teenagers are living out the myth of America. Boys seemingly love hip-hop and girls are walking up and down in their tiny shorts. It was funny to see small Japanese boys wearing hip-hop outfit which was good few sizes bigger than their actual size.
That was the last part of city which was on our "must see" list for Osaka. There are still few things on “to do” list though.
Once back at our apartment we made a plan for next day, took shower and went to bed. Tomorrow we’re going to Kyoto for temple hopping and geisha hunting. Can’t wait.
Comments
Looks like you're enjoying jet leg! XD
It has got its pros and cons :)
Majulik pri citani tvojich blogov sa citim, ako keby som tam bola a to vsetko zazivala s vami. Super bomba spica zazitok...Pozdravuj Kyoto x
Som rad, ze sa blog paci. Snazim sa don zahrnut vsetko, co sme zazili, ale to sa neda, kazdy den je plny bomba zazitkov, proste nejaka haluz na kazdom kroku. To co sa tam nezmesti vam porozpravam ked prideme domov :)