Namba station is one of the biggest stations in Osaka and has heaps of shops and restaurants throughout its building. Here are just two photos I took when i went out to dinner one night.
One of the main roads right outside the station. To the left, near the orange sign, is a covered street. It stretches about 2 km lined with shops and has a roof over the top so rain/snow doesn't affect shoppers.
I went to a random restaurant in Namba City (the name of a shopping district, not actually a city). Since I'm Asian, people just naturally think i'm Jap, so it's funny seeing the shock in a waitresses eyes when they realise I can't speak properly. Anyway, I got katsudon and curry udon for about 890 yen and it was umai.
So on the next day I went to Osaka Castle Park. It's kind of like Central Park in New York, but more touristy due to the Osaka Castle.
A band just playing for fun.
Because it was a weekday, there weren't too many people walking around, most of them go straight to the castle.
The moat.
Castle in the distance.
The design of the area was interesting because it had two moats in concentric circles. And the walls of each part of the premises were slanted, which I assume was so that defenders could roll stones down on attackers.
Finally reached the centre, the Osaka Castle.
The middle of each floor of the castle was turned into miniature museums, each floor showing a different thing. For example one had screens with short documentaries playing, one showed off the armour, another floor had all the paintings/artwork of the different eras. Once again, most of the exhibits were no camera zone.
At the top of the castle (8th floor), there's a circular observatory to look at the whole park.
These were affixed to the side of the castle but due to fear of weather damage, they have been moved inside.
The well right outside the castle doors, approximately 35m deep.
I think he dropped something.
This is part of a wall near the edge of the inner castle area. It's the largest single stone in the park, over 5m tall. I have no idea how they moved this 1000 years ago.
Next stop was a nearby temple called Shittenoji. It wasn't too far, so I decided to walk over.
I didn't want to go up close to take a photo since people were nearby, but a lot of the gravestones had triforces engraved into them. I wonder what the significance is there.
There was a small pond with heaps of turtles lying around.
And a cat.
Shittenoji was a lot smaller and less fancy than other temples, but it is one of the older temples in Osaka.
Next stop was also somewhat close, so I walked there as well. The Tsutenkaku tower.
The area has a lot of restaurants and is famous for kushikatsu, which is deep fried everything. Every part of every animal, every vegetable, even fruit and desserts.
Not sure if donkey, or just ass.
On the way back, I decided to walk to my hotel via a long street similar in length to George St. Tsutenkaku is quite far south of Osaka CBD, so it was a long walk back up, however I saw heaps of interesting stores. Lots of anime/manga merchandise, arcades, technology stores, I even went to a shop which sold 70-80s Z movies. A treasure trove of the worst movies ever made.
On the eighth day I took a train to Kobe, first stop Suma.
Suma is a relatively small coastside town. No one was on the beach because it was around 5 degrees and windy.
A trek up a small hill led to Sumadera, a very quiet but old temple.
These were pretty much the only other people here, apart from construction workers and monks.
After checking out the temple I was about to head to another point of my trip when I saw a funny looking shop near the train station.
It was a cozy little store run by a Danish guy who spoke fluent Japanese and English. There was a TV showing a live concert with 'New York Minute' playing, he was a making jokes with Japanese customers and the food was pretty great. Just an amazing atmosphere.
A hotdog with cheese, chili sauce, onions, some sort of pickled vegetables, 'special sauce'. Gotta say that was something different, in a good way.
Bjarne Lindboe Hansen, very funny guy.
After getting full and warmed up, I took a train to the other side of Kobe and got off at Rokkomichi. I was originally planning on going to one of the highest points of the city on Mt. Maya, but the cable was down due to construction. As a compromise I went to Mt. Rokko.
The cable car ride up the mountain.
The tracks splits to allow the two cars to pass each other, and then form up again. Pretty dangerous manoeuvre if you ask me.
First glimpses of snow.
Once I got off the cable car, I found out that there was actually a lot of roads at the top of the mountain. Next to the bus stop there was heaps of snow, and we weren't even at the top yet.
Kobe city.
The bus ride went for about 10 minutes before we finally reached the peak.
The view was stunning. And cold, about 0 degrees.
The plants were frozen.
Half the snow was shaded from the sun. Mildly interesting.
There were cafes, and a small lodge up here, but sun was setting and it was time to go home.
I went to dinner at an awesome place called Yakiniku Rokko. They had the friendliest staff who also spoke English fluently. They gave me a book with all these useful Japanese phrases so I could learn stuff whilst I ate.
This was the second time I went, the first time being the third or fourth night. Their restaurant was an all-you-can-eat yakiniku joint. I got the all you can eat/drink menu which was around 4000 yen.
They give you platters with all the different meats, letting you try one at a time, then you can order a whole plate of whichever one you want more of. Since I already came once, I just ordered the ones I liked most. All together there was about 20 different cuts of beef, pork and a little chicken. Plus sides, salads and ice cream.
When it came to drinks I drank a lot. My favourite was probably the cassis and orange juice. The chuhi was nice too. Did not expect shoyu to be so strong.
After a while the waitress came to give me some green tea to calm me down.
I wonder why.
Well that about wraps up the last interesting night I had. I ended up spewing in the restaurant rubbish bin in front of 10 people, thank god it was a small restaurant. Next day I came back to apologise and they were very nice about it, even gave me a bag of tea for being so retarded.
The last day of my trip, I didn't really do much, spent a few hours at a netcafe, roamed the streets, ate more awesome food. Starting to miss Osaka already. Definitely worth the time and money to go for a few weeks, except for the 24 hour travel time it takes to get there, that was nightmarish to say the least. I will be going to Japan again next year, so if anyone wants to come along, send me a message.
Thanks for reading, if anymore exciting things happen, I will post it here.
