The Osaka Days & Nara

20 May:

Quick 40min journey from Kyoto to Osaka , dropping us at shin-Osaka station, catch another train and walk through endless underground mall's until our exit.

Drop things at the hotel and decide to start right with the castle, grab a taxi and pass by the castle gardens, see the martial arts dojo having a Kendo class, the screams are always a dead giveaway of a sport such as kendo, but to be honest from even watching table tennis, a Japanese player would scream after every strike.

Castle is all great from the outside, M is still feeling a bit sick so he sits while I queue for a few good minutes until we get the ticket.

We go inside and through top to bottom. All inside is modern and tells the story of the 3 main rulers of this castle, some stories are told in tiny mirror holograms, others just in texts and TVs, some maps and pictures display the main battles of the castle and how it looked before and after each ruler, sekigahara and summer wars appear as references in my mind from some old anime I believe.

The view from the top is worth the ticket itself, the rest of is mostly explanation and pictures, not really artefacts.

We climb down the castle pretty quickly and decide to also see the museum of history of Osaka, which is just 2 min walk from the castle.

It's pretty normal, but located on 7 to 10th floor of a broadcasting building Which has an amazing view towards the castle, I enjoy taking pictures and a bit more of history of Osaka , a lot about it's development and a tiny reference to war, but probably not as much as they know they didn't win that war, so why tell about failure.

We grab a snack at the museum cafe exit and grab a taxi back to the hotel. M decided to rest a bit more, I set my sights just walking straight away from the hotel towards the central area and find too many shops selling branded clothing items. Makes me wonder if anyone actually cares about exclusivity of such thing as Hermes if you can find them in every colour here.

I pass by Glico running man and see everyone doing the pose... I grab a few takoyakis , as hot as they should be. Grab a drink from a vending machine and stand in a corner for a few minutes waiting for the takoyaki to chill...

M wakes up and says we should go grab some food, I say that's what Osaka is for. We head to Dotonbori and grab a few bites from here and there , he has a sake with the wooden box and I have a beer , we carry on for a bit until it's time to go home and get ready for tomorrow, Nara day.

21 May:

The Nara day starts with getting the right train which is always a bit harder when there's 4 or 5 different types of express that either go to nara or pass 10 stops ahead of it.

We managed to get to almost the right spot, we walk for a bit until the real Nara station and start entering shrines after shrine. The path leads us to the main attraction, the hundreds of deer roaming around gently, every cracker costs 200 yen, which is about 1 pound so M takes the opportunity to get his pictures done, petting and feeding the deers who after a while start to horde upon his crackers.

They are indeed gentle, but some people do get so much attention they run away a bit scared, nothing to be scared of, the deers even bow from time to time, as it's a learned behaviour to get the snack.

We head towards the biggest temple, hosting the Buddha size of a 5 story building, 15 meters, again showing the devotion and magnificence of some to build such a giant sculpture, but also the opposite side of it, the amount of bronze and wealth used on a statue, and surrounding temples to justify a humble faith.

After this temple, M decides to head back and rest a bit more, I wan't to go at least see one more temple, which has a few thousand stone lamps on it's way. It's still full of deer, and the stone lamps are alluring by themsleves, the deers in between make it even better.

After the temple, I head back to the station, through the old Nara shopping street, see a monk on my way that makes the picture worth a thousand words, take the opportunity and call it a day.

At the station, I notice an illustrator selling himself quite inexpensively, and his art of deer, dogs and other creatures, makes me wonder if he can draw my dog, I ask him, he says 40 min, I ask for a medium size, I go and wait in a cafe nearby, practice my Japanese, study some Kanji. I come back, he drew Large, but it's a wonderful picture. Will make a great custom present.

I take the train back, drop off things at the hotel, and it's time for the Food Tour that M booked. He is still not feeling like he can have any food, we meet up a group of mostly australian/american people, they are as stereotypical as you can imagine, but alas, we begin the tour, heading to a place that reminds me of the Lisbon Time out Market, sit on a table in the middle, and ask from any cuisine of Osaka or Japan, or even Italian, and they will bring it. We sit at an okOnomiyaki table, but are served sushi, drinks and other niceties, like kushikatsu. M only has plain rice, I have his portion, and also his portion of drinks, which lightens me up for better humour.

We finish the plates of this place, and head to the next one, passing by the least famous shopping streets, heading to a sake parlour, i still get two portions, as M is being cautious.

We pass through a few more alleys into a hotel, what used to be a hotel, 5 or more floors worth of tiny bars, in each hotel room, we jump into one of the first ones, all snacks are free, and we start mentioning it's birthday for 2 of the group people, so we get a round of shots as well. A japanese young couple was having a date, i asked the guy humbly about it, and paid them two drinks, as my humour was up thanks to sake and previous drinks.

Done with this place, we pass by a temple in the middle of this party district, being a bit over the limit, we do silly errors, like clap in front of the buddhist temple, even though it was a shinto one. We bathe the statues with the water, as it's supposed to, they are covered in moss for that reason.

We still not done with the night apparently, we head to the last place, a very much example of a street food, a guy renting the smallest shed possible, in middle of all corners you can imagine, barely a sign, but we manage to squeeze in, there are a few more Japanese people there, not all the tourists fit, so M sits a bit on the outside, I enjoy more chicken skewers and drinks... humour is all time high.

The tour guide, says it's time to go, we do, someone mentions karaoke, we definitely say no, and walk slowly to our hotel, it was a good night.

22 May:

Next day, Bike Tour, we taxi to the place that has the same name and logo of our Kyoto Bike tour. We see the same tour guide, well, there's definitely a shortage of tour guides on bikes in this country. His name is Matthew.

We carry on with the tour, Osaka Castle, Shinsekai, temples and other areas, not all as pretty as Kyoto, but again, Osaka is more about food than temples. The stories he tells are still worth it. We have a nice Curry in a restaurant run by a family, they even have a tiny manga library for you to peruse while we eat.

So we end earlier than expected. We decide to return to Shinsekai for some dinner, some of the fried weird skewers, unfortunately, the story goes, you can't double dip, but the sauce is no longer shared, so the story does not apply, thanks covid, we stay in the area for a simple arcade of shooting gallery, it's almost pointless as 500 Yen and the only thing you can win is some gum, or 5% off some local restaurants.

Tomorrow we venture to Himeji and Kobe, and beyond