11/11 - Osaka Museum of History

Pressing onward on our day of museums tour, we went back to the Osaka Castle area to the Osaka Museum of History.  We had passed by it on the previous day, but it did not fit well on our itinerary.  So here we were again.  The museum actually shares a common atrium with the local Osaka branch of NHK television.  So there were all these TV posters on one side of the atrium, then the more academic posters of the museum on the other.

As is the trend in a few of the attractions we've visited in Japan, the suggested route in the museum takes you straight to the top floor and then you snake your way down through the exhibits.  One of the first signs H looked for was a no photography sign.  Apparently it was fine to take photos in most of the exhibits unless there were true artifacts involved, which would be sensitive to light.

One of the first things we did in the museum was to, well, sit down.  We had been rushing around a lot this day and our feet were pretty tired.  But we also had something to watch as we sat down.  It was a large screening room with a short video on the history of Osaka and the surrounding region.  It was a good summary to familiarize us with the exhibits ahead. 

Also stamp mania was well and alive in the museum.  Each floor had a collection of rubber ink stamps to go to and collect the stampings onto a sheet of a paper.  It must be a great way to get some kids engaged in the museum itself.

The tenth floor on which we started housed the Naniwa Period (ca. 7th Century) exhibit.  There was a partial reconstruction of the Naniwa Palace that once stood literally across from the present-day Osaka Castle and kitty corner to the museum.  The ruins are actually visible when you look out the window from the escalator atrium.  There were life-size models of the entire royal court of the time.  You could walk right through and explore this re-creation.  A map in the exhibit showed the footprint of the original palace grounds were now mostly covered by modern buildings.

On the ninth floor was an exhibit about the middle ages and early modern history of Osaka.  It's sub heading is 'tour the water city'.  Even more so then, maps of the Osaka region reveals how many more rivers were prominent in the region's landscape.  Some places where there were rivers before have almost literally disappeared.  That explains why some place names with the character boat in their name are nowhere close to water in present day Osaka.  There were lots of maps that tickled H's fancy and giant walkthrough exhibits to showcase what life in Osaka was like.

On the eighth floor, we were greeted by the Archaeology Exhibit.  This floor was more for kids you could get hands on and try their hand at being Indiana Jones without the Nazis trying to kill you.  There wasn't much of interest to us, so we went down to the next floor almost immediately.

On the seventh floor, was the early modern and contemporary exhibit.  There is an entire scene recreated from Osaka before WWII when life was buzzing and the city was starting to modernize.  It was a night scene complete with streetside vegetable vendors, giant neon signs, and a local shrine lit up to the nines.

The remaining floors in between were all lecture halls and meant for school field trips to use when they visit.  So we bypassed all those and went straight down to the statutory gift shop.

Again, Japan has impressed us with their professional museums complete with giant reconstructions or detailed diorama miniatures.  For ¥600 (roughly $7 CAD), museums in Japan have been a good bang for your buck.  At a much less impressive local museum like the Museum of Vancouver, you'd be paying $12.  However, if you decide to use the Osaka Unlimited Pass on the same day as your visit to the Osaka Museum of History, then admission is free.  What a bargain!

11/11 - Tenjimbashisuji

Tenjimbashi-suji [天神橋筋], also known as Tenjinbashi-suji is a mouthful of a name.  Also, it's not something you would find in most travel books, except Asian ones perhaps.  Tenjimbashi-suji is not your popular tourist attraction.  It's a very much typical covered shopping arcade in the Kita ward of Osaka.  The Osaka Museum of Housing and Living is situated right in the middle of the shopping arcade and above the subway station that serves the area. 

One of the draws for N about Tenjimbashi was the opportunity to do the Tenjimbashi 2.6km walk.  They say that it's the longest covered shopping arcade in all of the Japan.  So we went north from the museum and subway station.  N's guide said there was a small pharmacy north of the subway station where we could pick up a piece of paper to prove that we were starting the walk.  H really thought we were walking in the wrong direction.  The pedestrian traffic was really thin in this area and there was no obvious sign pointing us to the start of this infamous walk. 

With the help of N's trusty Chinese-language travel guide, she found the extremely non-descript pharmacy that the book mentioned.  H thought to himself that he would never have found the place on his own.  It was a small, small Japanese pharmacy.  There wasn't even anyone at the pharmacist's window when we stepped in.  We had call out "sumimasen" to get the pharmacist to step out from the back.  He apologized Japanese-ly and N asked him about papers for the walk.  He promptly gave us a tiny sheet of paper for the walk.

Our goal then was to walk south 2.6km to find the other non-descript store.  There, we would hand over our tiny sheet of paper in exchange for a certificate proving we had walked the entire 2.6 km.  It's not exactly the same trial as walking the Great Wall, but we'll take it.

We made our back through the busier sections of Tenjimbashi-suji.  The other thing the shopping arcade is well-known for is the little food stands and restaurants along the way.  Speaking of restaurants, we were pretty hungry by this time.  Our McDonald's breakfast had long been digested and we were looking for sustenance again.  No better place than Tenjimbashi then.

We went into a restaurant called Jiyuken [自由軒].  Jiyuken is a restaurant chain whose specialty is their Japanese Curry Rice with a fresh uncooked egg on top.  Japanese curry is not hot by Indian nor Southeast Asian standards and seems more on the savoury side, but this one left us with a strange feeling.  Whatever the flavour it was meant to be, it seemed to be too strong for both of us.  No regrets in trying, though.

Even though the food wasn't particularly to our liking, the staff were quite friendly and interested in where we were from.  We had to go through the whole we are from Canada, but are Chinese in heritage spiel.  Especially for H, since he is born in Canada, that can be an interesting point in conversation.  N was very excited that she could carry out much of this conversation in Japanese.  Kudos to N.  H helped at one point in figuring out a fave Canadian artist for one of the staff.  He liked Sarah McLachlan.

We continued down the rest of Tenjimbashi-suji.  There were a lot of other food options to snack upon.  There was the ¥130 kyabetuyaki [キヤベツ焼] stall.  Kyabetuyaki appears to be a fried egg and fried noodle combo dish.  However, when we arrived at that stall, there was a TV crew occupying the whole food stand.  There was no way that we would bust in on a Japanese TV shoot.

Further down was a mini okonomiyaki [お好み焼き] stall that sold their food for ¥120.  Whoever said Japan was expensive to travel through?  No TV crew around, so it was safe to queue up and buy ourselves one to try.  Mmm...quite savoury and tasty.

Next on the foodie crawl was the mini potato croquette stall.  This one was in a small industrial style kiosk.  Easily missed if it were not for the obvious line up queuing up to partake in croquettes.  We really enjoyed this croquette.  We're very glad restaurants like Hi-Genki in Burnaby make croquettes locally that we can enjoy at any time.

We neared the end of the 2.6km walk and the level of activity really died down at this end too.  Thanks to N, she spotted which store was the end point of the walk.  We went in, handed over our papers, then he went to the back and printed out two certificates to prove that we had finished the infamous 2.6km Tenjimbashi-suji walk.

Okay, my feet are killing me now.  Where's the subway so I can sit for a while?

[all photos courtesy of N and her camera]

11/11 - Osaka Museum of Housing and Living

So continued our tour of museums in Osaka on the backs of our Osaka Unlimited Passes and the accompanying coupons.  We up and over to the north-central part of the city.  Just above Tenjinbashisuji 6-chome [天神橋筋 6 -丁目] subway station, there is a municipal office building.  It was the most unassuming building, but it houses a museum on it's top three stories.  [By the way, that must be one of the strangest subway station names, I have ever seen - H]

We took the elevator directly up to the top of the museum and gained admission with our coupons.  We rounded the corner just beyond the entrance and was instantly greeted with the faux sky canopy above a total re-creation of an Osaka street scene of the early 20th century.  On this top floor, we were level with the rooftops of the re-created buildings with the "indoor sun" shining brightly over the township below.  It all obviously looks quite staged from this perspective.

Down a set of stairs and we were right down at street level.  The museum wasn't all that busy because it's not a large attraction.  However, I would say that the whole street scene experience was very well done.  There are no vendors or actors in the street, but the stores and homes that line the street are very detailed and full of little nooks and corners to explore on your own.

The main street was relatively wide and open.  The indoor sun shone brightly from the floodlights above and filled the street with a natural glow.  All the homes and storefronts were illuminated by the "sun".  In one storefront, there was a whole shelf of small trinkets or toys.  In another, there were the drawers for traditional medicinal ingredients.  It reminded me of what traditional Chinese medicine shops are like, except I couldn't figure out what the labels said.  Actually, I don't know what half the labels in a Chinese medicine shop say anyway.

All the homes and shops in the middle of the exhibit were fully built with rooms in the back.  When you reach the back of the buildings, you reach a small alley in the back.  The alley was much narrower and you could even stumble across a little shrine in one of the corners if you took the time to explore.  Again, the detail of each room was much appreciated.  Careful exploration certainly paid off with pleasant surprises.

While exploring the back alley, the "weather" began to change.  The sky darkened and the sound of the wind picked up.  Pretty soon, the sound of rain pelting the rooftops was echoing throughout the street scene.  Then lightning and thunder rolled on through.  The storm went as quickly as it came and the sun started to shine again.  Rain drops could be heard dripping from the tiles above to the ground below.  Thankfully, the museum didn't go for the full 4D effect with water.

After finding some replica toilets, which were fortunately never used as toilets, night started to fall.  The sky turned a royal purple for the sunset, then an almost complete darkness for night.  The sounds of crickets and owls now took over the soundscape.  Even a tiny moon made it's way across the ceiling above.  We made our way back through another building to the main street.  All the shops and homes were now lit from within.  It was an old-time Osaka night scene.

We exited the exhibit and made our way to the next floor.  By now, you should expect there to be lots of dioramas and miniatures in a Japanese museum.  This floor was all dioramas and miniatures.  The delicate and detailed displays showed scenes to the beginning of Modern Japanese history.  The scene of tightly packed buildings with a large boulevard running down the middle was typical of early urban modernization.

There were also scenes of various activities that happened in Osaka.  One was a moving miniature display of life in Shinsaibashi [心齋橋] in the early day.  Another was another moving miniature of a festival that took place on the river.  If you like miniatures, you will love this part of the museum.

The regular price of admission to the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living is ¥600, but we got in for free with our Osaka Unlimited Pass.  But even at ¥600, I think this museum would have been well worth the small admission fee.  We were very happy that we visited this museum.  It would have been very easy to overlook this small attraction.

11/11 - Modern Transportation Museum

H being the transit geek that he is, the Modern Transportation Museum was high on his list of places to visit.  Fortunately for us, we still had another day on our Osaka Unlimited Pass and it included 20% off of admission to the Transport Museum.

From the guesthouse of the Taiwanese lady, we hopped onto the Chuo Line [中央] at Hommachi [本町]Station and rode the subway to Bentencho [弁天町]Station.  A very quick ride at ¥230.

Originally, we thought that breakfast was included in our accommodation at the guesthouse, but we found out that it wasn't the lady at the guesthouse explained that it cost extra to have food included.  This differed from what N's travel book and the website had suggested.  N said that it was probably because she hadn't looked at the website for a few months.  We weren't originally expecting to stay at the guesthouse; it was a last-minute addition to our itinerary.

So without breakfast in our tummies, we promptly stepped into a McDonald's right by Bentencho [弁天町] Station.  It was still fairly early in the morning and there were a lot of teens in their school unis taking in breakfast before heading to class.  McDonald's in Japan has such a dizzying array of choices for their meals.  H had a Salad Marinade McMuffin with Cafe au Lait (H loves Japanese McD's cafe au lait).  N had a regular Sausage McMuffin with juice in a Tamagotchi cup.

After a quick bite, we were first in line for the museum this rainy rainy day.  There was a lot on display at the Modern Transportation Museum. The museum is divided into many rooms that are all to the left of the main hallway.  The rooms are more like sections because there are no doorways to go through.

The museum starts oddly enough with a section about the technology of tomorrow.  There is a large magnetic levitation prototype on display and some smaller models of the Shinkansen [新幹線], Japan's famous bullet train.  Then after visiting the future, you step back into the past to the birth and growth of the railway in Japan. No shortage of dioramas here.

Then you come across an interactive section where you can control some of the models on display.  They obviously made the place accessible to preschoolers because there was a section in the middle of the interactive models where little kids could sneak in and pop there heads up in a bubble.  We totally lucked out because a preschool was on a field trip to the museum.  The kids made for some fun candids.

In another section, they focused on the current "rolling stock" or trains of the Kansai region.  They had displays for each major railway company operating in the area.  There was a lot to look at, but not everything was in English.  I'm sure H would have spent a whole here if he could.

Along the back of the sections, there was a life-size mock-up of a Shinkansen train complete with a drivers' cabin.  You could try your hand at operating a train or take your chances as "rail kill" in front of the bullet train.

All the way at the very end of the museum, just past the one section on non-train transportation, there was the giant Model Train Panorama Room.  Did I say the Japanese love their dioramas and miniatures.  This was a large miniature world of rail just behind a large number of windows.  It was impressive.  We were lucky we beat the kids into the room; otherwise, we would have had to fight for spots along the glass and with their fingerprints all over the place.  This is one of those places that H wishes he had an ultra wide angle lens for his camera.

After wandering around some of the other exhibits and the actual trains parked outside the museum, H had to visit the gift shop.  After deliberating on what souvenir to purchase, he finally settled on two small model trains.  One was a maroon Hankyu [阪急] train like one we had ridden on our way to Arima Onsen [有馬温泉].  The other was the Narita Express, which we had ridden back in 2006 to get us from the Narita Airport to Shinjuku [新宿]in Tokyo.  Soon enough, it was time to get going again.  Next station: the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living.

11/10 - Rainy Evening in Osaka

Once we were done with the Kaiyukan [海遊館]Aquarium, it was simply pouring outside.  The rain was very heavy.  A few rain savvy high school kids in unis had just been running around outside and just came in to dry off.  A few couples wandered into the bookstore complete with umbrella.  It did not look promising out there.  After exploring every nook and cranny of the souvenir shop, it was still raining.  Plus, it was very dark outside now.  We needed to get moving and not waste time. 

We ran to the Tempozan [天保山]Marketplace by island hopping from dry patch to dry patch before bursting into the shopping centre's doors.  There were quite a few tourists milling about in the Marketplace.  We wandered around to the few shops that were still open.  There was a manga/anime store with toys and collectibles, there was a Crocs store complete with collectible Japanese baseball team buttons for your Crocs. 

Then there was also the Ninja Land "tourist trap".  The young guy manning the door to the place was doing the best to draw people in.  There was a foreign couple with their young son passing by.  The ninja dude did his best to get them through his door.  He may have had poor broken English, but he was not shy.  There was a group of young girls he walked pass and they were obviously laughing at the ninja guy.  I admired him for putting himself out there and just doing his best to bring customers into the shop. 

By this time, N and H were really in a foul mood because of the weather.  Our original plan was to go up the 112.5m (yes, the 0.5m is apparently important) Giant Tempozan Ferris Wheel.  It was still dumping giant globules of rain onto the ground outside.  In the end, we bit the bullet and decided to take the ride even though it was a torrential downpour.  We didn't really want to waste our 10% off coupon with our Osaka Unlimited Pass for the ride because we wouldn't be coming back this way.

Apparently, there were 2 cars that are all-clear cabins with glass floors and all.  H did not know about this and just went for one of the regular cars on the Ferris Wheel.  This did not help the foul mood already in the air.  As the car ascended up the wheel, one could feel the wind blowing and the rain was pelting onto the side of the ferris wheel car.  Even though it was rainy, the weather helped to add the dramatic feel of some photos.

Even though it was very dark and cloudy out, the rain did not totally obscure some of the close in night views of the harbour.  You could forget about seeing far off Kobe [神戸]and Mt. Rokko [六甲山], but the views of the nearby Osaka Harbour Bridge and the Kaiyukan Aquarium were in plain view.  Occasionally, the wind would cooperate and be still enough for H to get some somewhat clear low-light shots.

Since it was so cold and rainy this night, it was not that pleasant to feel some of the wind outside wind its way into the cabin and chill our already chilly toes.  At least there were some people enjoying this ride 112.5m in the air on this rainy night.  There was the couple in the car behind us.  Fortunately, they had our backs to us and offered a nice candid and romantic contrast to the wet, dark night.

The ride was over quicker than we had expected and we still had some time left in the evening.  We went back to use facilities in the Marketplace, then decided to head down a few train stops over to the World Trade Centre (WTC) CosmoTower.  Why not?  Entry to the CosmoTower was free with our Unlimited Pass.  We boarded back onto the subway for one stop to Cosmosquare [コスモスクエア], where we had to transfer to the Nanko Port Town Line [ニユートウム].  The Nanko Port Town Line is a smaller train which felt like the size and shape of the old square SkyTrain cars in Vancouver or the RT in Scarborough.  It was only 4 cars long just like the old SkyTrains in Vancouver too.  We took that for only one stop to the Trade Center-mae [トレード センター 前]station.

It was really hard to figure out how to get to the WTC CosmoTower from the train station.  We literally got out of the station and crossed to the other side of the street via a pedestrian overpass.  Then we walked for about a block within a large shopping centre/office tower lobby.  Then we had to cross back over the same street via another pedestrian overpass to get to the WTC CosmoTower.  Don't you think they could have had a more direct path from the station?

After all that roundabout walking we finally made our way to the observation deck at the top of the WTC CosmoTower.  It was really quiet up there.  This out of the way tower took a lot of work to get to, so I'm not surprised that not more people were here.  We took a few shots from atop the tower.  We could easily make out the Tempozan Ferris Wheel, which we were on not too long ago.

Wow.  We were further away than I thought we were.  It may have only been two train stops, but the ferris wheel looked pretty tiny from this vantage point.  Then there were all the apartment buildings below the tower.  It was obvious this was a newer part of town.  From the maps of the harbour area, one could also see that all of these new buildings sat on reclaimed land with uber straight coastlines.

Well, that was enough running around for the day and night.  We were really hungry and grabbed a quick bite in a restaurant directly below in the shopping mall in the tower.  It was sort of a fast food restaurant that served fried Japanese dishes like tonkatsu, but you could help yourself to an unlimited amount of side dishes and rice.  There was a noisy, somewhat drunk trio of men in the restaurant.  H wasn't feeling all that agreeable and was easily annoyed by the trio.  N thought it was good to see three men just having a good time.

With dinner in our tummies, we headed back to the Taiwanese guest house.  It was a dizzying day with lots of vistas from literally land, sea, and air.