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osaka

Osaka, 19th April
I've got to write everything down fast or I'll forget!:D Sorry, wanted to save space and use the tables-function but I thought of that after posting and editing them in is a head ache so I stopped half-way, defeated.:)
The 19th was Sunday and the hottest day during the whole trip, it was 26 degrees or even more.
We started up with Tennoji Zoo at about 10am or maybe a little before that. Parking the car needs very much precision in Japan:D, and my sense of distance if funny so we ended up very close to a post the first time :P.
Up we came and over the bridge to the zoo and began with the African Savanna area.
 

I think the animals I saw most during the time in Japan were penguins :D:D Kawaii desu ne?!


This might be Tanuki...not sure and forgot if I checked the name on the cage.


Red Chinese wolf. When I was back my friend sent me a link showing wolf cubs but they were not out when we were there. And Tennoji zoo was supposed to be the only one in Japan to have that wolf.
Oh, but why was he in African savannah then..no idea...:P
 
It was already so hot that the animals were starting to doze off or right out sleep, must have been around 11am then.


As you can see the glass messed up most pictures :)


This was the funnest animal there - it has a certain trajectory it always took, so we could anticipate where it would be to take a picture. I bet my friend got better ones than those:P.

 
Since we were hungry had a quick takoyaki bite. While we were sitting and talking I saw that besides the takoyaki stand was one for chipped ice (no idea how the right term is) and I had seen it from doramas and movies and I had to try it - melon flavoured this time and it was very very green :D.
With the ice in hand we headed to the Asian Tropical Rain Forest section.
 
You could buy food to feed the seals but the birds kept intercepting the flying stuff!:)        </div> </div>

The other one was sleeping in its "cave", we joked it was dead since it was so so hot and the bear did not look that alive.

  


For the birds they had these big sphere-shaped things. Aa, forgot to mention that the railroad is right beside the zoo and the cage-spheres I saw already on the first day from the train window.










It was feeding-time:


I killed my camera batteries on trying to catch birds flying, no luck...




"Fnyan fnyan"


You can see the tower from the zoo


Reptile house (no reptile pics though)





Alright and that was it for the zoo and we were off to the "other place". I had no idea what it was, all he said was it was the other place. Drove through Hyogo that was supposed to be the place where the rich people live...then onwards and I had no idea where exactly.
There was the whole fun thing about getting a little lost, you have to turn off the highway in the right place but we did not...and you have to pay every time you get off it and this time since the card was left home we paid in cash - i think some ojisan at the tollbox saw us more than once, "haven't we already seen him before?" was our line at one point :D.
We landed on Nikko Island but that was wrong, so doubled back and finally only drove by google maps in my friend's phone. Had to get to Port Island (all of those are man-made).
The place is Kobe Kachoen, so inadverdently I had ended up seeing a little bit of Kobe too.
The Kachoen is really magical, it is lots of greenhouses with flowers hanging from the roof and bird, moving around freely in the big rooms along with the visitors. And now we get to the ironical part - my camera batteries lasted there only the first 20 minutes and the show they put up of a hawk? and two owls. We had just made it there on time.













And this was where my camera died! I had attempted to catch the birds flying but these are the only pictures I did not delete in the end. So I am linking the homepage of the Kachoen and the blog - if you have ever been a little interested in birds, check the blog out, the pictures and some of the videos are priceless!!
Got to try green tea ice cream here :D!

When we got back to Osaka, it must have been around 4pm, which left me with lots of time to do something more, so what did I decide to do - go and get lost again at Umeda, hoping to make sense of it in the end. I also needed to buy new batteries for the camera.
Got out of the station and I had a map and all to get to Umeda Mandrake but suddenly all my careful thought was wiped from my head when I heard Kanjani's "Gorigori" from the street. I totally forgot everything and hurried to see what it was - a truck with the regular album cover image on it's sides blasting the music and driving along. Alright, my camera is dead...and then I remember, my phone! So I am digging in my bag to get the phone while the traffic light goes green and the truck starts moving, I'm jogging through the crowd arm in my bag...and then there is a traffic light for me. And Japanese traffic-lights are long. I wait and wait, praying that the truck won't get far (it was almost to the next traffic light). As soon as mine was green I dashed after it and luckily it was waiting for its light, so I took a few pictures.
Now I cannot show you those right now since they are in the Japanese phone and the one I have does not connect to the computer, so we have to do the IR thing (like Bluetooth, I figure) with my friend when he comes here since I forgot to do it before I left, so the pictures would be in his phone and then from there I'd get them through the computer.
Kanjani truck gone, I started to look around to see where I had ended up :D:D. As I later found out I was in the right place and only had to cross the road and go straight and I would have been on the right street, but no, I started to go on and then turned to the wrong street and so on and so on, very Umeda...at one point I was in the right street, the Hankyu shopping street, but I was not sure and turned off of it. After quite a bit of walking around and discovering Umeda :D, found myself before the Yodobashi Camera store and got my batteries

This is from the doorway of the store


Later did a few pictures from a pedestrial overpass, Yodobashi was to the left and the place I had to get to in front of me behind the buildings.






Finally I tried the street - it has funny fake sakura blossoms on the walls in almost the beginning!! - I was not sure of before and walked onwards and onwards, doubting all the time, almost about to give up when I saw the sign of Mandrake. Now, if you want to buy manga, this is the place, I would have saved at over 1000 yen if I had not bought some of the manga from Animate. It was bigger and seemed to have more titles than the Tennoji Animate.
About to leave, I mistakenly ended up on the second floor I did not know existed and after a few steps what are staring at me - uchiwas of JE bands!!!!!!!!!:D:D:D Dumbfounded I move forward and yes, there is Kanjani, NEWS and so on. I got Ryo-chan and the other guys my friends like most and I got the 47 tour Photobook which I love - one day I opened it at the Tokyo concerts and there is Uchi on the stage! I know that he was, I've heard the audio but to see the image of Ryo-chan triumphantly dragging Uchi forward, wow!! Later I saw that the previous evening's (also Tokyo) concert pics you can see Uchi in the backstage photos...everyone looks so happy there!!!
And when I got out of the shop it was already dark so I headed back to the subway station. Too bad the ferris wheel pictures came out all blurry:

That was it for the day and Sunday was over...now there were only 3 days left.