We got off the Bullet train and walked for about 5 minutes to our Hotel the Monterey Grasmere again the Hotel started on the 20th floor and on the reception floor was a full size replica 15th Century English Village church built into an atrium space to enable the Japanese to have Church weddings and then use the reception banquet rooms in the Hotel.
We got to our rooms and the view of the Nanba area of Osaka was fantastic, we hit the shopping district and went walkabout, again the covered walkway streets were a hit with me and where we were staying we were near the heart of the market and shopping historical districts of Osaka. That evening the windows of our Hotel room fogged over and kitten wanted to take a video of the night scenery of the city, she wasn’t to be stopped by a little window condensation, she opened the Hotel window the entire 10 centimetres it opened and squeezed her hand out through the narrow gap with her TZ1 camera in her hand set for video capture and swung her hand out taking the scene of Osaka at night, her hand was out for a few minutes and came in deadly white, we were on the 31st Floor and it was 5 degrees outside and then add in wind chill, it was damned cold, l was worried she would get so cold her hand would drop her camera 31 floors to its total destruction on the roadway below us.
We went out at night in search of Osaka Octopus Balls for kitten, these are small fried little balls of diced octopus meat mixed in with vegetables and batter cooked in iron trays over gas flame and turned around within the tray using metal skewers till cooked into a neat little batter ball. We walked Doutonbori Monday night at 9pm anywhere else in the world wouldn’t have as many people out and about unless you were somewhere like Shanghai, neon advertising lighting, lit the streetscape, kitten waited in line for her Octopus balls with ponzu (citrus soy sauce) & mayonaise for about 15 minutes, gave me some time to shoot some streetscape video clips, we munched on the balls and kept on our tour of the night life. We entered a little izakaya bar near the Hotel and had some vodka and fruit drinks in 7 oz glasses and ordered some jelly fish to nibble on, then some chicken meat wrapped around a cherry tomato and cheese and dipped in bread crumbs and fried, some deep fried octopus and then kitten had a parfait in a tall glass. The bar only occupied a small ground space but was 4 stories tall and had seating for say 12 people per floor with a little bar on each floor and meals were supplied to all floors from a central kitchen via a dumbwaiter, the bar waitress on the ground floor controlled the music for the bar and the entry of new people, she had a seating plan for the 4 floors and moved her little counters about showing how full the place was and refused entry to people when there wasn’t space to fit them in.
Next day we did a shopping trip looking for kittens’ electronic dictionary device, we found a Sharp and Casio and l remembered when kitten was thinking of buying one last year she has decided the Casio was the better option. I reminded kitten of this and she grabbed some Sharp and Casio sales catalogues all written in Japanese and went through the specs and agreed the Casio was the better toy, l mean buy. Unfortunately the Casio latest model was selling for close to $600 and kitten didn’t want to buy one at that price. I went looking for a Panasonic TZ 7, found them but the Japanese domestic model operating software is only in Japanese, which l can’t read, they were selling new $256 and a shop demo model could be bought for $180 with full 12 month warranty and a second hand one with 1 month warranty for $140, so l was toyless too.
Then l looked for a new set of stereo head phones for the iPod, it settled down to either a Shure or a Bose both about $150 to $200 but l thought after having a good listen to both the qualitative difference to upgrade from my current Sennheiser portable headphone set the expenditure on new headsets wasn’t justified either.
As we wandered back to the Hotel we went into the Osaka kitchen goods market district, Douguyasuji, & kitten satisfied her needs for tea pots, Japanese rice bowls, green tea cups, and porcelain rests for her Japanese chopsticks and l managed to cheer myself buying large and small Kyosera ceramic cook knives and a ceramic knife sharpener. The last ceramic cook’s knife l had, l paid $156 for it and it was broken in half by kitten slicing some cheddar cheese, l bought the two knives and the sharpener for under $100 in total. If you read the Japanese instructions on the packaging which of course kitten can and did, if you live in Japan and if you can’t sharpen your ceramic knife yourself you can return the knife to the factory and they will not only sharpen it for you but will pay for the knife to be mailed back to you. Each new knife also includes a ticket for one free sharpening.
The following day we went by subway to the Osaka Kaiyukan Aquarium, we were walking from the railway station to the Aquarium when we stopped off to have breakfast at McDonalds, as we hadn’t had breakfast at the hotel, as it was now past 11am, the breakfast menu had ceased to be available, so l opted for the Texas burger and kitten settled on a chicken burger, we both had fries, l got to say McDonalds burgers are crap anywhere you buy them in the world and their hamburger buns are like cardboard to eat, however their fries are always good.
The Aquarium was overrun with families with kids, it was definitely not the place to be in during school holiday period, however the Aquarium itself was fantastic and must be on anyone top list of places to go to in Osaka. The main Ocean tank has 2 whale sharks, both being over 12 feet long and 3 feet wide and they swim around the tank accompanied by their minions of smaller fishes, they have large tiger sharks, mantra rays 8 feet across, hammer head sharks, large groupers just endless species of fish and sharks swimming together in an ocean viewable from all sorts of heights and angles within the building, plus along the way they have exhibits of seals, otters, penguins, tropical reef fish, Amazonian giants, tiny jelly fish, giant 3 foot Bering strait crabs, l know they were as we had eaten some in Tokyo with kitten the previous week.
After many pictures and video clips at the Aquarium including divers hand feeding the shovel nose sharks at the bottom of the tank and cleaning the tank bottom with giant size suction hoses we headed out of the Aquarium and we then walked back to the Ferris wheel. Before taking the Ferris wheel trip we refreshed ourselves, kitten had waffles and coffee and l just had a coffee. The trip on the Ferris wheel took about 15 minutes and cost $7 each and gave great views of Osaka harbour area and out to the Setonaikai Sea, but in my opinion l would rather pay to go around the Aquarium again than do the Ferris Wheel trip.
Later in the morning we did some more shopping for electronics at Denden town, the electrical store area of Osaka which wasn’t successful for either of us but l did manage to come across a great model shop of world war 2 planes and high performance sports cars all for sale starting from a few hundred dollars upwards to the thousands of dollars, so again more photos taken through the shop windows before heading off back to the hotel for our final night in Osaka.
Kitten and l both agreed the accommodation and location in Osaka was great and on any future trip to Japan we would seriously consider Osaka as an alternative base for travel in Japan to say Tokyo and on the plus side it made kitten frugal heart happy knowing that Osaka accommodation costs were cheaper than the ones in Tokyo but the quality was higher.
We checked out at 11am next morning and we caught the 11:40am Bullet train back to Tokyo, this time kitten had done the seat reservation thing early in the morning and we were in a non smoking carriage seated together. Again we took some video footage of the Japanese countryside whizzing by at 200kph plus and kitten managed to grab some video and photos of Mt Fuji covered in snow and cloud, given the weather conditions the effort taken from standing behind a railway carriage door in a fast moving Bullet train once again proved the great performance features of the Panasonic TZ 5 camera. While kitten was away filming an older Japanese gentleman travelling with his wife seated across the aisle from us, struck up a conversation in English enquiring was l from Australia, that he had visited Australia and been to Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Mount Barker in SA and they were travelling from Osaka where they lived to visit their son who lived in Tokyo. He enquired was it my first trip to Japan, where we had been and was l enjoying myself. We shook hands and wished one another pleasant time when we departed company at the Tokyo railway station.
Pokamartil
January 5, 2012
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