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. 

11/10 - Kaiyukan Aquarium

Since our ride on the Aqua Bus ride at noon, we hadn't eaten a bite.  And now it was around 2-3pm.  So after the Santa Maria, we ran into the Tempozan Marketplace for food.  N had a KFC craving while H wandered into the "Old Osaka" replica area of the food court and grabbed a egg wrap type snack.  It was a quick and somewhat smaller than desired lunch.  H wishes he had gone KFC too because the giant KFC puff pastry looked oh so good and oh so much more filling.

After a very quick lunch, we headed into the Kaiyukan Aquarium [海遊館].  This is advertised as one of the largest aquariums anywhere in the world.  The way this aquarium works is that they send you to the top of the building first and then you snake your way down through the collection of different climate displays and giant tanks.  There were tons of fish, of course.  In the Amazon display, there was a giant arapaima.  I could fit inside the belly of that fish, I think.

A little further down there were the piranhas.  I didn't realize how small these fish were, but they are really eerie to look at.  The whole school of them just float there with their noses pointing to the surface.  They lie their waiting for their next prey to fall in the water.  One can just imagine the frenzy that would ensue if some meat did fall in the tank.  Very unnerving.  Luckily we're on the other side of the glass.

In another window was the Antarctic exhibit complete with penguins.  On land, these penguins careen their pudgy bodies around the surface, but boy do they move like torpedoes once they get in the water.  Case in point below.  Penguin on land looks all sedate and wonders who this yahoo is taking a picture of him.

Then his pal a few metres over is in the water jetting around up and down and every which way possible.  H got lucky with one shot where he could actually get a clear view of the eyes of a darting underwater penguin.

As we descended, there was the one giant tank that was in the middle of our path.  It was the largest of the tanks that went up almost the entire height of the building.  Within this tank was a giant ray that hover hither and fro.  He also had quite a few fish in tow.  Cleaning fish?

There were also a couple of large whale sharks in the giant tank.  I believe the whale shark is their main attraction in this tank.  It was hard to get a good head on shot of the shark.  The best was a shot of the large fish swimming away from the glass.

As we descended beyond the giant tank, we came into a darker area.  This was the perfect set up for all the jellyfish on display in the aquarium.  I think this aquarium probably has way more jellyfish than the Vancouver Aquarium.  The jellyfish are all lit up in their bright colours.  Everyone loves to watch these bright creatures dance around in the dark waters.  It's definitely worth all the space on the memory card to get a good shot.

As we came out of the depths of the aquarium and into more light, there was a section where you could get up close and personal with a few of the aquarium residents.  There was one section with no barriers between you and the penguins.  Obviously, it is verboten to touch the penguins.  However, that was not the case with the baby rays and baby sharks in small shallow tanks near the penguins.  After washing one's hands, you could reach in a feel the bodies of the rays and sharks.  The rays were all squishy feeling like Jello; whereas, the sharks' skin was very coarse and rough to the touch. 

Then last but not least was a little critter that didn't seem to belong in an aquarium.  Actually, I shouldn't say little.  The creature I am talking about is the world's largest species of rodent.  It's known as a capybara.  When I first saw, I was thinking what the heck is that thing?  You get close it and you can tell it has the head of rodent, but it has the giant body.  Now that I think about it, it really resembles a beaver.  So we ended our trip to one of the world's largest aquariums with what looked like a land mammal, but apparently these guys are semi-aquatic.  These must be the South American cousin to our Canadian beavers.

11/10 - Santa Maria

This day was definitely a tourist day.  You can blame the Osaka Unlimited Pass that I keep mentioning.  It has a sheet of coupons for different attractions, some of which are free with the pass.  So why not take advantage of it all. 

After the 1-hour Aqua Bus Liner tour, we walked from Osakajo Pier to Osaka Business Park station to get back onto the subway.  There may have been a JR Osaka Loop station right by the pier, but we would have had to pay extra for JR today.  All the subway rides were unlimited today with the Osaka Unlimited Pass.

In order to get into Osaka Business Park station, we had to go through a shopping mall at the bottom of a large office tower.  As we were looking for some facilities to use inside the mall, we came across a dog cafe.  Literally a cafe designed for dogs to enjoy their treats in style.  They really love their dogs in Japan. 

We finally found the subway entrance after a few minutes search and were on our way to Osaka-ko [大阪港], or Osaka Harbor.  Then we had to speed our way to the harbourfront known as the Tempozan [天保山] Harbor Village.  It was about a 15-20 minute walk from Osaka-ko Station.  Our brisk walk from the station to the harbourfront was through a noticeably newer part of town.  The buildings were not so crowded in together.  The roads were wider.  If you look on a map, the coastline here looks very square and unnatural.  So my guess is that this area is totally built on reclaimed land.

We finally found the harbourfront area where we would spend a few hours at a few of the tourist attractions and shopping centre.  But where was the ticket office for the Santa Maria?

The Santa Maria is a motorized replica of the actual Santa Maria that Christopher Columbus used during his voyages.  Now it's here in Osaka to cater to the tourists and help them to explore Osaka's busy harbour.

We had found the Santa Maria's berth and asked where we could get our tickets.  The attendant sent us back indoors and up to the second floor.  We exchanged our Osaka Unlimited Pass' coupon for an actual admission ticket and we were good to go.  We lined up with only a minute to spare and we were soon boarding the replica sailboat.

The 45 minute boat ride would take us on a loop of Osaka Harbour.  At the beginning, we would pass right by the 112.5m tall Tempozan Giant Ferris Wheel.  Before the completion of the London Eye, this was the tallest ferris wheel in the world.  As H looked carefully at the ferris wheel from the boat, he spotted a special rider on one of the cars.  See if you can tell from the photo. 

Further down, we passed under the very large Hanshin Expressway Osaka Harbor Bridge.  It reminded me of a bridge in Shanghai that I have seen in photos. 

Just on the other side of the harbour, we could see Universal Studios Japan.  We were just there the day before.  Seeing the park from the harbour, you could tell that we were looking at the back of a lot of the buildings.  But these weren't real buildings, but only a facade.  So on this side, we could see the empty backing for what it was.  The day before on the other side, it looked like a real American skyline.  It didn't look so impressive on this side, but it was an interesting look behind the scenes.

At least from the water, I could get a better view of the Hollywood Dream roller coaster.  You could even hear the screams from this far out.  That was kind of fun.

We turned around and headed past the Tempozan Harbour Village and then rounded the edge of Tempozan.  We could see a whole new area of Osaka, Port Town.  There were new shiny towers jutting up into the sky and some fancy buildings down closer near the water.  One of the smaller buildings was a large glass dome, which I found out was the Osaka Maritime Museum.  This area is just chalk full of tourist attractions.

Even further down from Port Town was Osaka's only Ikea.  It was huge, like most Ikeas, and in the middle of nowhere, also like most Ikeas.  But there was no mistaking the characteristic blue and yellow colours of this Swedish furniture giant.

After spending most of the ride up top in order to take photos, it was getting really windy.  Ominous clouds were also rolling in over the city at this point.  We were hoping that it wouldn't rain too badly.  At this point, we decided to explore the rest of the ship. 

Hey!  Look!  It's Chris!  Christopher Columbus, that is.  Hm...I wonder if he knows his way around Osaka Harbour.  He seems to be pointed off towards the port side of the boat.  I think we should steer the ship starboard, though.

11/10 - Aqua Bus

We headed north of Osaka Castle towards the Okawa River.  Along the way, we passed by the large Osaka Hall.  It looks like there were some large touring buses and trucks for a Japanese band or something.  I didn't recognize the name, but it looked like there would be a big concert in the hall soon.

When we arrived at the Aqua Bus Liner's ticket office, we discovered we had just missed the previous boat by 15 minutes and would have to wait 45 minutes.  It's hard to time everything perfectly, but the wait wasn't that bad.  We walked back up from the pier to the plaza just outside the Osaka Hall. It looked like a large school group was gathering in the plaza.  A teacher was giving them instructions.  It turns out that this large group had a private booking of the Aqua Bus.  We watched them board two Aqua Bus Liners.  We could also see that they all had bento boxes stacked on the tables too.  Lucky group.  They had lunch included with their ride.

Our boat finally arrived on time.  We boarded and took our seats; however, there was some confusion about the seating and we ended up moving so that a quartet of Japanese tourists could sit together.  We weren't complaining, though.  We got our table all to ourselves after moving.

Shortly after leaving the pier, the boat started to demonstrate the hydraulic system that lowered the top of the boat in order to slip under the very low bridges over the Okawa River.  N took a video of the whole demonstration.

You could see some of Osaka's river front life as we went up the river.  As we got closer to Nakanoshima, an island in the middle of the Okawa River, you could see some people walking through the park or sitting and enjoying lunch.  Also, Nakanoshima is famous for the older European style buildings that dot the island.  The Osaka Civic Center probably being one of the most famous. We saw that as we arrived at the Yodoyabashi Pier.

After so much walking for over a week, it was nice to have a tourist experience where we could sit for an hour.  Because it was close to lunch, H was feeling peckish from all the walking.  So we ordered some snacks.  The biscuit they had was pretty good, but a little on the pricey side.  That's what happens when you're on a tourist boat.  Actually, N ended up sleeping for most of the ride because she was so tired.  My feet were just happy not to have my full weight on them for 60 minutes. 

Pretty soon, we had completed our loop around the Okawa River (marked in red above) and disembarked at Osakajo Pier where we had started.  It was a nice, relaxing way to see the city, but we didn't really see that much.  You could see some of the taller buildings that were near the water and you could see Osaka Castle, which we had just been to.  Otherwise, not much to see.  However, it was definitely a welcome rest for our feet on Day 9.  Plus, the 10% discount from the Osaka Unlimited Pass didn't hurt.  Now, we had to rush off to the harbour front to catch another boat - the Santa Maria.