Osaka

Day 22 – Osaka

Osaka

Thursday, 26 April 2012

Early start to a full day of sightseeing.

We both slept well on the floor. It was good to have our window open during the night and it wasn’t too noisy.

Breakfast at 8.00am in a private room was Japanese set menu. It included 3 little dried fish which we grilled, miso soup, bottomless rice, home-made tofu with shrimps, and of course a selection of pickles and and huge pot of brown tea.

We were on a way by 9ish. Took a wrong turn to the subway which led us to some interesting sights including many shrines and an over the top love hotel! Found our way to another subway station and bought an all day excursion ticket at 800 yen each. First stop Tanimachi 4-chome for Osaka castle. The castle park area is a lovely green belt in the city and seems the perfect place for families to come on the weekend. A Japanese gentleman introduced himself to us as a volunteer guide to the castle. We certainly benefited from his expertise and company. He was a retired businessman who used to sell underwear. He spoke of the difficulty of living away from home for ten years in Tokyo and how he is currently planning a trip to Hokkaido with his wife during summer when Osaka is very humid. He spoke very good English and was informative about the re-construction of the castle and the controversy around the fact that the castle museum is not made of wood. The castle is not original but has been rebuilt several times due to fire. He left us to go into the castle museum on our own at a cost of 600 yen each. It was a little disappointing because it is not original or a purist reconstruction in the sense that Kanazawa castle is.

We had a snack of octopus balls (8 for 400 yen) at one of the stalls in the castle grounds and a green tea ice-cream. lots of school groups including a mainstreamed child with high needs in a stroller being taken around the castle with two carers.

Next stop the Osaka Museum of History. We should have bought a dual ticket for the two museums – instead it cost us 600 yen each. The museum was good to see mainly for the location and the architecture of the building. It is built over the remains of the Nara period Naniwa Palace and and has excellent views of Osaka castle. The museum itself has a range of exhibits, including life size mannequins in period court dress, videos and miniature recreations of Maniwa street scenes with excellent attention to detail.

Next we took the subway to Tenjimbasisuji 6-chome for the Museum of Oriental Ceramics. it was very confusing getting out of the station and it took us quite a while of retracing our footsteps to find the right exit. We chose to visit the museum mostly for its location on an island between two rivers the Dojimagawa and the Tosaboridgawa. The museum itself is housed in a pretty ordinary looking brick building and dominated by an exhibition of 300 years of Meissen porcelain and very small collections of Chinese, Korean and Japanese ceramics. The pieces themselves were excellent but it was disappointing that no photos were allowed. I would have liked to buy an example of Meissen pottery but as Anthony said why come to Japan to buy it when we should go to the source, Meissen in Germany. I liked the blue onion design! We experienced the porcelain instead by partaking of afternoon tea of coffee and apple tart for Anthony and English tea and cheesecake for me in the museum cafe. Disappointing afternoon tea as no teapot and additional cups of tea. The waitress even cleared Anthony’s milk/ cream just after we had started.

Back by subway to Kintetsu-Nippombashi and walking around the Namba area. Found the ceramics store we had seen yesterday but it seemed to be a wholesaler and not open to the public. Explored the Takashimaya Department store and made a few small purchases. They had a wonderful homewares section with beautiful Japanese ceramics but decided that ceramics is really too heavy to carry home, given our other purchases, and I couldn’t decide on one favourite piece to purchase. One last fling in the food hall for some more free samples. Anthony was wired up after 3 lots of nespresso from a demonstrator practicing her English!

Dinner was yakitori (skewers) at a small bar. I had one Kitari beer whilst Anthony had two. Our very flavorsome yakitori included: potato wrapped in bacon; spinach wrapped with beef; scallops; asparagus; BBQd tofu; baby sardines with minced dykon; and plain chicken skewers (white meat rather than the gizzards and other parts that were also available).

Back at our hotel I had a bath in the women’s public bath in the basement level. It was very small (about half the size of our room) so hard to be there with other people. But lots of lovely hot water and products to try.

	Breakfast at Hotel Yamatoya [Map]		Interesting building – a love hotel [Map]
	Outer moat of Osaka Castle [Map]		Last of the cherry blossoms at Osaka castle [Map]
	Now it’s azalea time [Map]		The largest stone used in Osaka castle [Map]
	The inner keep tower of Osaka castle – Osaka castl [Map]		Japanese garden at Osaka castle [Map]
	Our volunteer guide [Map]		Views of gardens and city from the observation dec [Map]
	Octopus balls – an Osaka icon [Map]		Osaka Museum of History [Map]
	miniature recreations of Naniwa [Map]		Museum of Oriental Ceramics [Map]