Well, today is first day back in work since my long weekend trip to Osaka.
Osaka is Japan’s largest city, and to be quite frank, it’s fricking ugly! Havings said that the people here are much more friendly than in Tokyo, something they are well know for. Yuko and I were at one stage checking a map to see where to go, and a local came up to see if we needed any help.

Osaka is well know for it’s love of food. The thing is, this doesn’t equate to terribly expensive, fancy food. It just means there are LOADS of places selling, good, cheap, down to earth food. One aspect of Osaka I was shocked about was the huge amount of homeless people.

On Saturday, first up was a quick visit to HEP 5 shopping centre, which has a rather cool Ferris wheel on top of the building.

We then visited Shitennoji, and the other shrines in the area. We were a little disappointed in Shitennoji, but the gardens there were pretty good, if small. In the evening, we explored around Namba and the other entertainment areas, before heading off for some karaoke with a friend. It was quite impressive to see all the teenageers with their amateur bands playing in the streets. Apparently, Harajuku used to be like this, but these days, they just CosPlay there now.

Sunday, after some Okonomiyaki for lunch, we ventured over to Osaka-jo (Osaka Castle) and it’s park. First we walked through park, past some more kids playing music in amateur bands. There was when I had a most annoying incident. We were quietly walking along, myself, Yuko and our friend, as we approached a mother, two kids and their dog on the lead. As we got closer, the dog was closest to me.
At which point the mother said to her kid… “Ki o tsukete, gaikoku…” (which translates as Take care, foreign…). She never got to finish the sentence (gaikokujin, foreigner), as I had already shot her an angry glance, and I think she realised that I understood what she was saying.

I found it quite ironic though that this incident occured while walking to Osaka International Peace Centre, which is quite unlike the muesum in Yasukuni Jinji. The second floor (UK first floor), had exhibits about the 8 major bombings of Osaka during WW2. During those bombings, the population of Osaka was halved!!! Some of the witness accounts were heartbreaking to read. This floor is then balanced by another exbitiontion on the first floor (ground floor), which documented about the atrocities carried out by Japan in China, Korea, and the rest of South East Asia. There was an interesting section on school book texts from other countries, which I presume were a recent addition to the collection. This floor also had stuff from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was also some stuff from Auswitz, just to show some other horrible aspects of WW2 we should never forget.
Although heavy going, it was a very good musuem, that sought balance between what Japan did wrong, together with the suffering Japanese civilians during the bombings of the mainland. I would hope a lot of Japanese go there to visit, as it is far more educational that the stuff in the Yasukuni’s Museum (which effectively ends up blaming everyone except Japan for what happened in WW2).

Next up was the actual Osaka-jo building. This was a disappointment for all of use. The outside is very impressive, and very ‘Japanese’. Then you get inside. Ohhh, where’s all the tradtional tatami rooms etc etc. Ohh no, it’s gone all theme park inside. Basically, the inside of the castle has been turned into a modern museum building. A real disappointment, because there wasn’t even many actual historic atricles in the museum either.

After this, we heading off, and took the tram line down to Sumiyoshi Taisha, which was a fantastic place. A very old Shinto shine, kept in very good condition. The day was finished with a visit to the izakaya.

Monday was spent doing some gift shopping for family (this is Japan, and if you anyway on a trip, you simply must buy gifts!!), and stopping off somewhere for a foot massage.

A pretty interesting weekend, and we would certainly like to go back to Osaka again for a couple of days. As a tourist spot though, I would say unlike Tokyo where you need a long time to visit everything, Osaka can be pretty much done in 2-3 days.