Osaka: Day 32

Once a year Osaka had this flea market inside the grounds of Shitennoji, a huge temple. I forgot the exact reason, but we went to the flea market since today was the first day.

This is the outside wall of the temple.
After walking around the flea market for a while I noticed a guy with a table full of old manual SLRs. I was immediately interested and started looking at some of them. He had a few Canons, which I was paying more attention to because I am a Canon kind of guy. The guy noticed me and asked me in Japanese where I was from, I answered that I was from America and then we started this long conversation about what state I lived in (apparently he had been to Atlanta once) and what University I went too. He asked me if UGA was an elite University and I told him that it was really good and he smiled and told me good job. I also told him that my major is Japanese but since I just finished my first year I am still bad at Japanese, so I was sorry for that. He and his buddy immediately protested, saying that my Japanese was good. All and all it was a funny conversation because I struggle with some stuff, but I am can say my Japanese is bad really well, so people always disagree.

Anyway, I ended up haggling with him a bit and buying a Canon FT QL, which is a 35mm Manual SLR from 1966. I think it is really pretty and it is in good condition. I can’t wait to put some film in there and play around with it. I don’t have any pictures of it yet, but I will put one up when I get the chance.

The flea market.


The monks.


After the flea market we were pretty tired from walking around in the sun with the crazy humidity, so we went back to the hostel and napped. I also looked up my camera and found the manual for it and stuff. After our nap we went to meet my friend Tetsuya at Osaka station. We saw a funny sign while we were waiting for out train.

Hehe.
We met up with Tetsuya and he took us to Namba, which is a very famous part of Osaka. It was really cool a night.




That Glico billboard is really famous, apparently.


We decided to eat Osaka style Okonomiyaki. We eventually found a good-looking restaurant and went in. The picture above is the food we got. Basically it was shrimp and some vegetables cooked inside a big egg pancake with cheese, sauce, and dried fish on top. It was very, very good.

Tetsuya enjoying his Okonomiyaki.

This puppet is really famous and stands outside a restaurant. The place is said to be a symbol of Osaka but since everyone comes to see the puppet but no one eats at the restaurant the place is going bankrupt. Ironic eh? The puppet is going to be auctioned off and is estimated to bring millions.

Tetsuya bought us some takoyaki from this shop that was on TV a lot. It was really nice of him to treat us to takoyaki, I really appreciated it and thanked him profusely. We went to this big store that had its own Ferris wheel. Apparently it was the original store of this big chain that is all over Japan. He guessed that it was kind of like the Japanese version of Walmart, but cooler and less oppressive. In the store they had these ab machines that were supposedly like riding a horse and if you sat straight on the machine it tones your abs. We played with it a little bit.

Tetsuya on the ab machine.

Erin thought it was hilarious.
While we were in the store I found a cheap takoyaki maker and decided to buy it so I could make takoyaki at home. It is pretty small so it fits in my luggage. I can’t wait to make takoyaki for my family and friends.

We parted ways soon after we left the store since it was pretty late at night. It was really good to get to see Tetsuya again. He is a good friend.

When we got to the hostel we checked all of our stuff online and I chatted with my dad a little bit. We also met a guy from Hawaii who we talked to for a while. His name was Eddie. After that we went to bed since we’re going back to Tokyo tomorrow. Our trip is pretty much over which is crazy to think about. Only 5 days left in Japan.

Osaka: Day 31

Something very scary happened this morning. Though it was scary to me only I think, unless you own a dSLR you probably wouldn’t know how I felt, but maybe you would. Anyway, when I took my camera out of its bag today it was completely fogged over, inside and out. I took the lens off and it even had fog on the focusing mirror. All of that moisture in the lens and camera and it being an electronic device really scared me. Here is what it looked like, picture wise, though this was later when it was starting to dry.

I freaked out a little bit because I didn’t know what to do or if it would be okay, but everything turned out fine. About 3 hours later it was completely dry and clear again.

Picture of it cleared up.

I guess that brings up a good point about the climate of Osaka. It is really, really humid. Being from Georgia one wouldn’t that that it could get worse than 90 or 95% humidity, but boy was I wrong. Osaka’s humidity is a different animal. You step outside for even a minute and you are sweating. The people of Osaka carry around towels during this time of the year to wipe the sweat off of their faces, that is how bad it is.

Our first destination was Osaka-jo, or Osaka Castle. Basically it is a huge castle that Osaka is famous for. We took the loop line to the castle’s park. The park is huge and surrounds the different walls of the castle with bridges over the moats. The park is free to enter, the castle, however is not.

One of the outer walls with a moat.


Our first view of the castle.

Bridge and castle.

We crossed the bridge into the actual castle grounds. For some reason I really like huge, old, stone walls. I don’t know why. Some of the walls made me think about these guys who lived on my hall in Rutherford last year. They are really goofy, fun guys and they like to climb stuff. One day they climbed up the outside of the parking deck (though this was the year before). They got in trouble, but not that much. Anyway, I think they would have loved these walls.

See? They are totally climbable; they would have gotten in trouble.

Our first view of the entire castle. Too bad the weather wasn’t better, I would have liked some blue sky.

Composed a little differently.

Don’t you just want to climb the walls? If you look closely, near the bottom of the wall on the left side there is a person standing there. That should give you some scale as to how big the castle is.


We went into the castle and found out that it had been renovated in the 90s and turned into a museum. I mean, it kind of killed the whole old castle aspect that the Matsuyama castle had, but it was still cool in its own right. The museum was all about the war in which Tokugawa and his armies stormed and then eventually took Osaka-jo. The coolest part was that you could go to the top and see all of Osaka from the castle.



They had the fish things too, though this castle’s were gold.




We left the castle and then saw a gaijin pidgin. It was a white pidgin, is what I was getting at, so it was kind of like me.

Cool view of the “crystal tower”.

Weird bug.

We also found this cool fountain on our way to the train station. We sat and watched it for a while.

We decided that our next destination should be the aquarium since it was supposed to be really neat, so we started in that direction. Near the station I noticed a Mos Burger out of the corner of our eye.

It was a red Mos Burger so I didn’t see it at first. Sneaky Mos Burger, very sneaky. Naturally we had to eat there.


We made it to the aquarium. It was 20 bucks to get in, which wasn’t so bad considering that it was really cool.


They even had their own waterfall.

AND PENGUINS!

There were also baby penguins.

I tried for a while to get a good shot of one jumping into and out of the water. This was one of the better ones I got.

This aquarium was another example of something we had noticed at the Ueno Zoo. All of the animals were really active. We decided that either Japan gives their animals some kind of crack to make them active or America sedates its animals. I think it is the latter, personally.

I have eaten one of those, teehee. They are kind of chewy.

A weird fish.

Herro!

Shark and its friends.


This is why my pictures look weird; I was shooting through a couple feet of acrylic.

We left the aquarium at about 6pm and since it was so late we headed back to the hostel since it was almost dinner-time. Our original plan was to go to the Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki restaurant near our hostel, but when we got there we found out that it was really expensive. We decided to go to the Sushi place across the street from our hostel, it wasn’t a kaitenzushi so we had to figure out how it worked, but it ended up being delicious. Some of their stuff was cheaper than kaitenzushi, which was nice.

After dinner we just hung out in the hostel. I checked some stuff online and then I think we went to bed earlier than usual since we were wiped.