Osaka-jo and its surrounding park were really nice. We took our time walking and once we got to the main park in front of the castle, we got to see a glimpse of Osaka-life happening around us. There were some school children running around and playing games, while some were sketching in their drawing pads. A lot of elderly people were out hanging out in the park too, as well as couples out on picnics with their children. It was enjoyable just to see the kinds of interactions going on.
We went inside the Osaka-jo, which was modernized into a history museum of the castle. There were some great displays of painted screens depicting Osaka life, and some well preserved artifacts like clothes and samurai armor from the 16th century. What was really cool were these viewing boxes that projected holographic scenes of the castle's creator, Hideyoshi Toyotomi, from his birth to his death. The view from the top of the castle was nice too, but Osaka does not have a prominent skyline.
National Bunraku Theater
Next, we took the metro to find the National Bunraku Theater in hopes of seeing a traditional Japanese puppet show. It took us a while to find it. Wendy can read some of the Kanji Japanese characters, since those are Chinese characters. So when she saw the character(s) for "show" on a poster (as in "puppet show"), we thought we had found it, only it turned out to be an "adult show"! The poster of a woman with no clothes on tipped us off that this was not the National Bunraku Theater :P But we eventually made it. Unfortunately, the puppet show turned out to be about USD$60 and 4-hours long. If we had more time, and more money to spare, it might have checked it out.
So, instead, we headed over to Den Den town, a neighborhood full of electronics/gadgets store. We walked into a store that had about 5 levels of electronics, ranging from digital cameras, to hair dryers, to massage chairs (see below). It was like Best Buy, but on crack x 100. Zany circus music was playing on the speakers overhead, probably 10secs long, looped. I'm not kidding. I don't know how the salespeople take it. I guess it's white noise to them. We ended up relaxing on some massage chairs, since we had a such a long day of walking around. The chairs we sat in costed as much as a small car! Funny too, because there were signs all over the chairs that apparently said "no sleeping". There were more shops, but we didn't have any time to see them.
After that, we finally met up with Tats and had Korean BBQ. According to my guidebook, Osaka had the largest amount of Koreans in Japan; there is even a Korea Town in the Tsuruhashi neighborhood. We didn't actually have K-BBQ there, but the place we went to (near the JR Loop Line station) was very good. The beef was so tender! I tried corn tea as well, which tasted....like corn.
Tats didn't let us leave Osaka yet without karaoking! He was such a fun host. We ended up karaoking for 3 hours! We sang mostly English songs (Wendy sang one Chinese song), but we couldn't manage to get Tats to sing a Japanese song. Darn. He kept calling up plenty of orders of sake though. Most memorable were: Tats: "It's My Life" (Bon Jovi), everyone: "Bad Romance" (Lady GaGa), Rick and me: "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" (Starship), and the grand finale by everyone: "Living on a Prayer" (Bon Jovi - we all pretty much wrecked our vocal chords screaming on that last one).
Me, Dan, Wendy, Rick, and Tats
We karaoked so late that we had to run for our last train back to Kyoto. Most of us were pretty tipsy, but we got onto our train. Little did we know though, that even if you catch the last train, it will not get you to your final destination. It will only get you to as far as it goes by closing time (1AM). We hadn't reached Kyoto at all when the trains stopped running. We got kicked off in a small town somewhere between Osaka and Kyoto and ended up taking a taxi ride back. Pretty expensive...it came out to almost ¥12,000, so each of us had to eat ¥3,000 (USD$35!). It was well worth it though.
Thank you, Osaka!
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