Osaka, 17th April - part I
Friday now!:)
The weather was very good during the whole trip, every day over 20 degrees, and more like over 22, I think.
That morning while I was waiting for my friend arrive with the motorcycle, I took pictures from the walkway on the corner of the street my hotel was on.
This shows how close the station was to the hotel - the hotel was the second house from the corner while the Shin Osaka station is the black building in the far middle of the picture. Very very convenient (and the hotel was nice too, I guess I will be aiming to go back there in October).


Different directions from the same walkway, the surroundings felt so nice and quiet, even though it was so near to the station. When not exactly in Umeda or Namba or any other really central place of Osaka, it always felt nice and cosy and quiet with not a lot of people. That is not to say I did not like the central stations and centre of the city!:)




Alright, so then off we were to see the Osaka-jo which meant driving through the centre of the city and it is a wholyl different picture of the city you get than from when you are walking around.

This is already the park surrounding Osaka-jo, where we had to push the motorcycle to the parking spot (note: in Japan there are a normal amount of car parking spaces, bikes park everywhere they want to but for motorcycles the spaces are few and not easily accessible sometimes)...alright, we were going to push together but he did not let me, so I was carrying all the stuff instead :D.







The moat


As you can see it is right in the middle of the busy city and I very much liked the contrast of new and old.




Huge stones for the walls that have been brought there all over Japan, there was a chart up and it was really from afar some stones had come.


The park and sakura :)


?A well, I must say, never checked what it was. The moat is behind the well and the memorial something something that is behind the well.








Osaka-jo from afar


Loved the moat!


We are trying to take pictures of tourists taking pictures of themselves, LOL!




Cool tree on the way towards the castle




Again, the modern city just there, photographed from the walls

Hmm, was it one of those buildings that where there was supposed to be one of the TV companies Kanjani 8 have one of their shows on?!:D I think it was.











The Treasury, did not go inside! As you can see, maybe, lots of school children on field trip.




Aa, and then it was good, we wanted to get off the island and to the sakura-watching place...but we turned and turned and got a bit lost since there are about three bridges that take you to the castle but we turned instead to the path leading to the Nishinomaru garden....and found ourselves stuck there :D:D.



This was done off the wall, when we went around looking for a way over the moat :P

Stalking schoolkids

Finally, the castle for far enough to take a picture for my friend's camera! This is mine though.




So, we finally got out of the garden and over a bridge, then headed amongst a crowd of slowly moving tourists (when there are slow moving people before you, those are tourists in Osaka!:D) to the Sakuranomiyabashi. This was the place I saw the biggest crowd of people of the whole trip, a stream of quite tightly packed people moving through the sakura alley. Heard someone say "kawaii gaijin-san" behind my back :):).
























When we got to the end of the alley we turned the corner and were in another sort of street, lots of food and some festival kind of stuff - like the thing with the coloured balls floating in the water and catching goldfish with the sieve and so on. Did not try any of those, maybe next time.
Oh, and then got to try takoyaki the first time! As instructed you are supposed to eat it while walking - that I did not manage the first few times, just saw and ate it! It is hot...and big...and lots of sauce, so it is a task to chew it at first, I was half choking from that and how funny it was. I think I was funnier to look at even!! The last few I was even able to manage while walking, that made me feel proud!!
We were very thirsty but since the prices there were the "festival prices" as we jokingly named those, held on and headed back to the Osaka-jo to look inside...and before find a vending machine or we'd die. The day was very nice and warm, it got hot in the sun which meant that the amount of walking we were doing was quite the exercise.

The other half of the day I leave for the next post, otherwise this one will be even more monstrous than it is!