Thursday brought about a change of location. After a couple hour walk around Shibuya we headed to Tokyo station for a 3 hour train ride to Osaka. The weather wasn't great, so it was a perfect time to sit back and relax on the train.
Train travel in Japan is super cool because you get to ride on the Shinkansen or "bullet trains". The Shinkansen can reach speeds up to 300 km/hr. It scares the crap out of you when you are standing on the platform waiting for your train to arrive and a none stop Shinkansen goes flying through the station.
One thing that is remarkable about this country is how prompt and efficient everything is. The trains leave the station the second the clock ticks to the scheduled departure time, there is no room for tardiness. The same goes for buses, the Westin Osaka runs a shuttle bus between the hotel and Osaka station, it too departs to the second. It is actually quite amazing to watch in action. The driver stands outside the bus by the door waiting for passengers, he periodically checks his watch, with one minute to go before departure he gets into his seat and prepares to leave when the clock strikes the departure time.
The Shinkansen arrives at Tokyo Station
Right next to our hotel in Osaka is a super funky building called the Umeda Sky Building. The basic structure is two parallel towers joined at the top about 39 floors up. The portion that connects the two towers in the middle is a circular doughnut shaped structure that has an open air observatory on the top. To access the observatory you take a glass elevator until about the 34th floor, from there you take an exposed glassed in escalator that runs outside from one tower to the next! As the Eye Witness guide book says "not for those who suffer from vertigo or fear of being in high places in earthquake prone regions". Once you get on the rooftop in the open air it is spectacular. We went up at nighttime and really got a great feel for the enormity of Osaka (roughly 12 Million in the greater Osaka area and over 20 Million in the the region.
Young Japanese couple in the glass enclosed escalator connecting the towers of the Umeda Sky Building
View of another funky building in Osaka
The view from below: In the top right of this picture you can see the circular structure at the top of the building, the long piece in the middle of the circle running from 6 o'clock to 12 o'clock is the the escalator. I will get some other pics of the building before we leave Osaka.
On Friday morning we caught an early train for a day trip to Himeji, a small city of 750,ooo about 40 mins from Shin-Osaka station. The highlight of Himeji is the fantastic Himeji Castle. The Castle, a Unesco world heritage site, strikes a fearsome pose in its position perched high above the city. The Castle was built in 1580.
You must remove your shoes before entering the castle and carry them in a plastic bag
On the look out for "The Frog in the Well"
Just a few people at the castle today.....
Dolphin like motifs on the roof are believed to project the castle from fire
Every tile at Himeji has the family coat of arms of every Lord that worked on, or fixed the castle
Koko-en Garden - an Edo style garden
Bronwyn in the bamboo grove
Fintan in the bamboo grove
Young dudes on way home from school
This dude was intense, he was ready to launch when the light changed
Fintan doing what all of the young Japanese girls do for pictures, show the peace sign
Just call me Chicken
We wanted to try a traditional style of Japanese BBQ chicken restaurant called a Yakotori for dinner. The staff at the Westin recommended that we got to a place called Boncho near Osaka station. The fact that none of the staff at Boncho spoke any english should have been a clear warning for us to politely excuse ourselves and go elsewhere. However, we stayed and after some struggles we manage to get our drink order in, then came the fun of ordering food. After several minutes we landed on chicken.... both parties seemed to agree with what a chicken was. The waiter then asked us what part of the chicken do we want? By "asked" I mean he grabbed parts of his body to see which part we wanted. First was the throat and then next the hip..... STOP! I looked over at Stacey and was going to grab her breast, but then I remembered I have some of my own, so I gave one a good grab. "aaaaaah Breast! Hai!!" Well, now that the food order was in we felt pretty confident it would be ok. Um, it would have been great IF we were into partially cooked chicken!!! Nothing like raw "breast" on a stick..... We politely paid our bill and headed back to the hotel exhausted and hungry. We ordered up room service for the kids, I scarfed down a yogurt and we called it a day.....
We are off to an amazing looking place tomorrow called Nara.
