Osaka

First trip by myself and admittedly I was a bit nervous about flights, getting lost, yakuza etc, but also very excited.  Twas a long flight from Sydney -> Singapore -> Osaka but arriving in a cool wintery airport it felt totally worth it.  I also got some strange looks for wearing a t-shirt and jeans in 2 degrees celsius =P.

From the airport I took a train to Namba station in south Osaka and immediately leaving the station I see this building.

I have no idea what it was because it was entirely fenced off, but still worth a photo (of which there were many).

The streets of south Osaka are in a grid fashion and very narrow, meaning cars have a hard time getting through all the pedestrians.

The third photo is of Dotonbori, a boulevard where all the nightlife is, however since these photos were taken around 1pm on a rainy Wednesday, not many people were around.

On the first day since I arrived in the afternoon, I had a nap (hadn't slept in 30 hours) and wandered the streets for a few hours at night.  First thing next morning I headed towards Osaka bay to check out the famous Kaiyukan; a purportedly amazing aquarium.

I took well over 100 photos here but I'll just post some of the better ones.

This is a giant salamander, over 1 metre long.  Insert penis joke.

A seal had a crazy night out, still a bit hungover.

The seal's best mate, this eel got totally smashed as well, sleeping on some rocks.

The rare hoboctopus, it lives in a piece of scrap metal.

Underside of a stingray.

He's a bit grumpy.

A deep sea crab, it was really small, around 10cm wide.

Another really small fish that lives in the deep.  The room had a dark blue light to maintain the dark nature of the deep ocean.

Taiyaki, a Japanese snack filled with red bean.  It's always made in the shape of a fish so it was obviously going to be sold in the aquarium.  I also tried one with peanut butter filling that tasted fantastic.

This a capybara, found in South America.  They mostly eat vegetables and are the largest rodents in the world, weighing up to 70 kg.  This one was pretty cute especially when it was chewing on the cabbage.

A turtle got jealous of all the attention and came for some veggies too.

A furry brown headless penguin.

There was also a seal show where the seals swam right up to the glass and waved at the audience, pretty cool stuff.

There were also plenty of other aquatic life but the lack of flash and the dark room made the photos come out a bit dodgy.  Anyway, afterwards right outside the Kaiyukan was a giant ferris wheel that overlooked Osaka bay.  When having fun though, always follow the instructions.

A shot of the ferris wheel from the ground. It seems to be leaning but that was just my poor hand-steadiness.

The building with blue and red is the Kaiyukan.  To the right is Osaka bay.

A shot of Osaka.

The boats coming in to dock.

Crazy highway bridge.

That was all for day two.  Next morning I got up and went to Nara (a nearby city) in the hopes of seeing some of the famous Nara Park deer.  It was a lot easier than expected.

Deer were just chilling on the streets.  Inside the park there were thousands of deer just eating weeds and walking around.  Vendors sell biscuits which you can feed the deer, but the second they see the biscuits, all the big deer start charging you and try to mug you.  It turns from a park into a ghetto.  They bring game.

Walking around the park I found some ancient religious sites build when Nara was the capital of Japan.  This is some famous place under a name I don't remember.  It was built around 700 AD and between it's construction until 1400 AD it was burnt down five times.  Yet they kept rebuilding it; fine line between determination and just plain dumb.  Cameras weren't allowed inside, so to sum it up it was made of extremely thick logs supporting the roof (the fence in front of the building is over a metre high just to give some reference) and the inside was filled with bronze/gold statues of religious and political figures.  Most of the statues date back to ~700 AD.

Right next door was one of these watchamacallits (pagoda?), but it was not open on the day.

This is where monks would pray and ring a giant bell.  A sign right in front of the building actually says: Don't ring the bell.  So tempted.

Also in Nara was a botanical garden free for tourists, unfortunately it also wasn't open on the day.

After wandering around the park for a while I decided to go to Byakugoji Temple which was supposedly a bit of a walk.  Through the park I come across this open field with a creek and a nice view of the mountains. It was totally serene.  Unfortunately I got a little lost on my way to the temple and spent two hours wandering  random streets and somehow walk right up to the front gate.

Which was of course closed.

I decided to go up anyway and turns out there were actually people working there that day.

First snow of my trip, quite exciting considering I've only seen snow two or three times in my life.

A rather well kept temple with quite a few buildings around the plot.

  Inside one of the rooms were some statues.  Although the statues themselves aren't that old, the temple itself is from around 600 AD, built up the side of a bloody mountain.

Free oranges/Kintoki.

 Some pics from the top of the temple overlooking the Nara suburbs.

That was the end of day three of my trip.  So far I had already fallen in love with Japan.  I didn't take any photos at night due to bright neon signs and shaky hands screwing up the photo quality, but it was really bright, loud and lively. The food in Osaka was the best I've ever eaten, cheap and delicious.  People were nice and and the streets were lined with food stalls, prostitutes and bars.

One thing that was mildly interesting was the overabundance of vending machines for drinks.  There was one every block for the whole damn country.  Plus there was at least one convenience store on every street.  I could literally live off 7Eleven it was that cheap.

Part two coming soon.