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.
No comments:
Post a Comment