Ōsaka (大阪)

Having pulled an all nighter the previous day, after which I got about three hours of bad sleep on the plane, falling asleep last night proved to present zero difficulties. Though I can't say the same about getting up in the morning, and the temperature wasn't exactly helping. For those of you which know me, I'm good at complaining about cold temperatures, and I didn't expect that coming to a costal city in spring would be this cold.

Arriving at Osaka station, we were greeted by a somewhat spaceship looking train station, which didn't get to have any of its trains on the ground floor. They either had to be underground, or they had to be on the third floor. Quite a bit above the station also came a big rain cover, fancily wavy. Looking at the style of the station, and the amount of space between the trains and the roof, perhaps they were planning ahead for when they had to start docking spaceships in there.

Walking south of Osaka stain, I came through a network of streets. To make a point, these varied from narrow single lane one way streets, to six lane one way streets. And in the side streets there are an infinite supply of shops, each one having a slightly different specialisation. Though the most surprising corner was probably running into six golf shops in a row, with no golf course anywhere to be seen. I guess playing golf and buying supplies for it are two different things, best kept far apart.

As the day went along, the visibility kept on improving until we could see all the way to the statue of liberty! Which showed to me an important fact about the world: while the globe may be round, we live on the inside of the globe, not the outside as I had come to believe. This was proven by how high up the statue seemed to start. As I look out at the stars from my hotel room, I keep on trying to find a star group matching the capital cities of Australia.

Escalators also get to be special in Osaka. While we are in a country where we drive on the left, and we walk on the left, at escalators, we keep to the right. Even if the little pictogram at the beginning of the escalator telling you to hold on to the rail, depicts them holding it on the left hand side. I guess every place needs to have it's weird little surprises.

All in all, an exciting enough a day. :-)


(P.S. I know the picture involved Photoshop, but I swear Washinoko was there! Night time, and lack of tripod unfortunately mixed to either terribly motion blurred pictures, or a very narrow depth of field.)