We awoke to the sound of rain in the morning, and that was to be the soundtrack to the day. We had planned on going to Umeda to the observatory (high lookout, rather than astronomy thingy), but with the rain beating down we thought against it. Instead, we decided to do the equally daft thing of visiting Osaka castle.
We went to the Family Mart around the corner from the hotel first to get us some umbrellas, then down into the subway where we bought a day pass. (Osaka's subway is more expensive than Tokyo's). We went one station before jumping off at Tennoji, so we could grab some coffee and breakfast from Tully's. It wasn't quite open yet, (it was only 8.30), so we went and made use of the facilities, before the doors opened and we sat down. The cappucino was a good strength, better than the horrid drip-filter coffee I had in the lobby of the hotel.
Once we were all caffeined up, we headed outside to Abeno station which runs parallel with the street next to the mall. It was rainy and cold, so the only thing we could do was to keep moving, all the while the wind blowing rain onto our feet. We arrived at a subway station on the southwest side of the castle. As there wasn't that great information, I didn't know where the entrance was, so we didn't know which side to invade from. We ended up just following the signs, which took us up the western side of the walls and moat, to the bridge, then we headed south again, before making a turn east. By now the coffee and tea had effected everyone, so after a quick pit-stop, we went inside the gates. I wasn't sure what to expect, as when we went to Nijo Castle in Kyoto last year, before you even got inside you had to pay. After going inside the walls, we looked at the souvenir shops, before deciding to grab some lunch at the restaurant things there. As with most places here, they didn't try to capitalise heaps on captive audiences. I got a big lunch set of rice, pork, salad, miso soup & daikon radish pickles for 1000Y and a large medium beer for 350Y.
Once we were less grumbly (It was still cold and rainy), we made our assault on the tower. We're not the first to do so apparently, as it has been burnt down and rebuilt a couple of times. To get into the actually tower which was the residence is 600Y, but rather than being like the main residence inside Nijo castle where they've kept it the same as it was, this one is a museum with paintings, artifacts and screens with little scenes being displayed semi-holographicly (Think "Help me Obi-wan, You're my only hope"), but once we had walked the 6 levels or so and seen all the stuff, we had to formulate another plan.
One of the sisters at the meeting had told us Honmachi was the place to go for food and clothes, so on here advice, this is where we went next. The "mall" we came out of was nestled under the expressway pilons, with two narrow corridors populated by small shops and eateries. We must have differing ideas about what makes for good shopping, because the clothes shops were small little places run by great-grandmothers, with clothes that smelt as old and dusty as they were. The eating places were smokey, pokey little udon joints, which we could have found anywhere in town. We left that mall for a street that looked more promisiing, and as we made our way down, it was a little better. Still not much varience from a lot of the places we had visited in Osaka so far, but better than smelling of mothballs.
We walked some way down this before we started getting hungry again, as it had been about 4 hours since our last meal, and we had done a bit of walking since. It got to the stage of being hungry where you can't think properly, so we decided to stumble into Shakey's. A lot of places in Japan can be deceptive, because the opening was fairly narrow, but once up the stairs, it opened out to a whole level. We got a table for 6 in the non-smoking section, which was seperated from the smoking section by a few walls and about 10 metres distance, meaning we could at least enjoy a meal without some douchebag smoking near us.
Shakey's is an all-you-can-eat chain. You pay 990Y and you can have all the pizza, pasta, salad and vegetables you want. And for another 500Y you can get an all you can drink for 60mins. This isn't just soft-drink, but also tap beer, wine, chu-hai, sours, and I think they may have had basic spirit mixers as well, though I just stuck to the beer. I ate a decent amount of pizza, but not enough to make myself sick. Really though, the pizza was free, because I drank 3 glasses of beer, which at most places are about 4-500Y each anyway. We stayed for a little longer than the 60mins just because we had a place to sit, and we had to wait for the food and beer to go down. It was now around 8pm, so we were all getting tired, after spending the day walking around, so we headed back to our hotel, where Dean, Paul, Zoe and I played a game of golf (cards), but it ended up getting late, so we turned in for the night.
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