A few days ago, a school friend of mine messaged me to say she was in Japan as well, and was I free to meet. We were in Tokyo at the time, and she was in Osaka, but there was a single day that we were overlapping in Osaka, so we arranged to meet. We headed to Osaka Castle in the morning to meet Georgie, as I had read that the museum there was well worth the trip.
We decided to skip the queue for the elevator to the top of the castle museum and hike up the stairs to the exhibitions on various floors. The items on show were a mixture of samurai armour, model recreations of the castle and pieces of art from various time periods in Japanese history. I have to admit, much as I love a museum, the exhibit was a bit dry. We also skipped the option to dress up as a samurai warrior, so maybe this would have livened things up a bit ..? The views from the top were amazing though, and we got in some good sights of the cherry trees in the park surrounding the castle.
As we were all starving by this point (there were a LOT of stairs in said castle) we headed to the Umeda Sky Building, where I had read about a basement food court that was styled to look like a 1920s street. What we’d forgotten was that a lot of food areas in Japan run on a strict lunch service that usually finishes at about 2 and we arrived at about half past, so pretty much everything was closed. Luckily we were still by Osaka station, so we did an about turn and returned to the food court there. Food places in train stations in Japan are genuinely just as good as eating at street restaurants though, so this wasn’t a problem for us.
Georgie had to head back to her hostel as she was leaving Osaka the next day, so Saf and I made our way to Osaka Aquarium, because I clearly just ain’t happy unless I’m looking at fish. I was actually super excited about the aquarium, and it didn’t disappoint. There was so much to see, from otters (my absolute favourite animal) to sea lions, dolphins, tiny tropical fish, giant river fish, manta rays, sun fish (ugh, the most ridiculous fish to ever exist) and lovely whale sharks. It was one of those places where everywhere you turn there’s something exciting to see.
We’ve done so much walking in the last few days, by about 6pm we always end up flagging. We headed back to Doi in Moriguchi where our air bnb is and decided to eat dinner in. This consisted of microwave bowls of noodles from the 7-eleven on the street below, which were surprisingly okay. Tomorrow we’re heading for Kyoto, so going to try to be up early to avoid the busy touristy times. Let’s see how well that works out for us ..
Claudia Bow 