osaka, 16th April
I once more gave a promise I could not keep, updating only now but yeah, I was so busy in Japan there was no time to write or upload photos :D.
But here is the next day, day 2 in Osaka and...Thursday.

Remembered to take a photo out of the hotel window :P


As you can see the tracks were very near but that did not bother me one bit. The first night I did not open the curtains or the window, so when I heard the trains, I thought they were way off. In the morning I discovered the tracks to be in fact under the window but I am telling you, the noise was less than at our summerhouse where the tracks are maybe 100m from the house.
And the train is the Shinkansen, did not take it myself during the trip but I saw them a lot :).

Alright, it was the morning and I went out to explore on my own...with basically no map :D, I had only the guidebook (which I did not use during the whole time...and it was so heavy!) and a tourist magazine with maps of certain parts of Osaka.
First thing was acquiring the Rainbow Card for the subway and then off I was. My decision had been to walk as much as possible so I had planned to go to big southern stop of the Midosuji line and work my way north from there as far as I could walk, hoping it would be all the way to Umeda (the main station of Osaka that consists of five or was it six different stations of subway and trainlines and is a maze everyone gets lost in).
Since there was also supposed to be an Animate shop at the same subway stop, I wanted to check that out too.
Took the subway to Tennoji station and getting out of it what do I see on a sign...you never escape Apollo.


This is what I saw when I got out

Very Japan-like, isn't it, or so it felt to me.
Finding the shop took a bit of looking...I was to find out that it was in the building you see on the picture on the left. And then what do I do...smart as I am, I bought manga and a few anime and seiyuu magazines and chibi Kaname and Takuma cell straps from there. Remember, I had decided to walk then from Tennoji to hopefully Umeda! The bag was heavy and my shoulder ached from the first few hundred metres as I set out.
Aa, it was funny - there is the Tennoji park (with the zoo) there too that I had thought I could look at since I was there. But I walked right around it :P!!!! Never saw the place that day.
Without a map, I walk, aiming to the north, shoulder sore...and soak in the atmosphere as much as I can. I actually did not take a lot of pictures since that would have been too tourist-like and I wanted to just take in everything.
One thing I found out very soon - in Estonia I am so used to going everywhere with my mp3 player, I cannot walk around the city without it. In Osaka that is suicide...I saw only a few brave people do that - the reason - bicycles ride everywhere. The rules that apply to everyone else, every other type of vehicle do not to bikes or so it looked like. They ride the sidewalk in every direction, they ride the street in opposite direction to cars, they don't mind the traffic lights...it was fun...there was always the threat that if you did not look out, you'd get hit by one.
But now some images from that walk, of some buildings I am not even sure why I took the picture in retrospect, the house ripped out of the context does not work as in how I saw it, so the photo does not convey the feelings well.


Typical street, narrow and lots of wiring





Around here I eneded up on the Nipponbashi street that is the heaven of electronic goods! And I would say lots of DVD stores with R-rated anime and movies from the covers displayed by the doors:D:D:D.
Electronics are good but I got such an overload so turned to the west and then north again.
One house had different flowering plants around it with signs, I kind of made a shortcut through their back..not garden but...area :P.


Somewhere in the middle of this I found a Tower Records shop and bought three SS501 CDs and there were two Book Off-s of which I went into one but did not see my favourites and my shoulder was already crying, so left.:D






Tanuki...foodplace


This is the Nankai line Namba station


They showed a trailer with such good music...I don't know, something about emerging from around the corner and finding myself in that square with loud music and text echoing in it, that felt so so good, it was the perfect fullfillment of how I imagined everything to be in Osaka.




Too bad this came out blurry but I have no heart to delete the picture


The light was failing, resulting in the photo being so dark but the building looked awesome, in earthy colours and made to look like a hill or a small mountain with trees on it in some parts.


All in all I wandered from Tennoji to Dobutsuen-mae to Nipponbashi to Namba and since my shoulder was truly killing me by that time I took the subway back to Shin-Osaka station to the hotel. Even though it was not that late I did not go out that day anymore, as much as I can remember I posted the first journal entry that evening.

I'm uploading pictures for tomorrow and the entry about Friday...there are over 60 pictures I think!:D It was a busy day.