Adrian is our second guest blog-writer, covering our last day in Osaka (thanks Adrian!) :)
Today began with that most blessed but rarest of things - a bit of a lie in! We treated ourselves to 8 AM alarms and I think everyone was a little better off for it, the past few days had been non-stop action and even just a few minutes extra shut eye felt like it made a big difference.
Once we made it out of the sack, as soon as we'd defrosted and consumed some tasty bread from the freezer (Osaka's hotel supplied breakfast was disappointingly basic), we headed out the door and down to our local metro station Shinsaibashi headed for today's first stop, Osaka Aquarium.
Osaka Aquarium (aka 'Kaiyukan') bills itself as the world's largest aquarium, although the internet seems to disagree (Wikipedia puts it at 12th, maybe Kaiyukan haven't updated their website in a while). I think we can safely agree on two things about it though, it is indeed very large, and it is indeed very, very good. We spent the best part of three hours here, wandering through the various oceans that are found around the ring of fire (including the Tasman Sea and even Cook Strait!) and marvelling at the seals, the penguins, so many fish, the dolphins and then we spent ages just soaking up the sights of the epic main tank (7.5 million litres!), where a vast collection of fish, rays of all sizes and wonderfully graceful whale sharks peacefully coexist. Even the jellyfish were beautiful.
Despite all the ethical concerns aquaria present - these animals would have more freedom in the ocean after all, and shouldn't their lives serve some higher purpose than entertaining us? - we loved our time gazing at these beautiful creatures who are clearly well cared for, learned a few things along the way, and left with a deeper and more abiding love for the oceans and all they contain.
After we surfaced, it was time to hook us some lunch, so we cast our net across what Apple Maps suggested and moored up at the place nearby with the best Trip Advisor review score, a local Japanese udon noodle restaurant named Chikko-men-kobo. Next time you are in the neighbourhood you simply must go! It was a simple single room open kitchen type place where you order and pay at a machine up front, get a ticket and wait for your number to be called, but all of our meals were beyond excellent and coming in around $12 NZD a plate excellent value too. Leo's Japanese lessons at school helped out as he was the only one who knew when they called our numbers, and Adrian, who was still fighting off a cold, had the dish of the day, the "Medicine Curry" which perked him right back up, it was gorgeous!
Fuel on board, back on the metro for stop number two - Osaka-jo, or in English, Osaka Castle. One of Japan's most famous landmarks, set in 2 square kiloometres of beautiful gardens smack in the middle of Osaka, this castle played a major part in the unification of Japan under - you guessed it - Adrian's favourite samurai, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Story here goes that in 1597, a regional leader Toyotomi Hideyoshi built Osaka castle to both be impregnable and also outdo a local rival Nobunaga's castle in every way. Then he died and passed Osaka-jo on to his son Toyotomi Hideyori. A few years passed, Tokugawa Ieyasu started establishing himself as an overall leader, and laid seige - you can't be Shogun if some other samurai is larging it up in an impregnable castle after all. Hideyori's forces outlasted the seige despite being outnumbered two to one, but as he left Tokugawa filled in the outer moat to weaken the castle's main defence.
A year or so later Hideyori started digging out the moat again, Tokugawa caught wind of it and said "not on my watch sunshine" (but in Japanese, obviously), laid seige again, this time winning overwhelmingly, burning the place to the ground and executing or forcing the ritual suicide of every last member of the Toyotomi line. Man, woman and child. Game over. There's a lesson there for us all. Don't dig out your recently filled in moat, it really annoys folks. Anyway, Tokugawa Ieyasu set up his heir Tokugawa Hiedtoyi in the ruins, and Hidetoyi rebuilt even stronger again, and Osaka-jo became one of the Shogunate's key castles for the duration.
The stone walls Hidetoyi rebuilt in 1620 are still there today, and truly massive they are too. Of course, this being Japan, the rest of it has burnt down multiple times since, including the obligatory two times caused by lightning strike. This version of Osaka-jo's main tower was built in 1995, repairing the destruction the American bombing had wrought in 1945. Consequently from the outside Osaka-jo looks just like it always did, but inside it feels just like any other modern-ish museum. So we enjoyed our time exploring the exhibits, but the wow factor was mostly experienced from the outside. Great to visit and view such a key site in Japanese history, but the whole experience I'd say was not as impactful as Nijo castle had been just a few days earllier in Kyoto. You can't beat authentic interiors.
As you'd imagine, castle comparison is hungry work, so from Osako-jo we headed back to Dotonbori for a tasty meal at Creo-ru. We had two local delicacies, first takoyaki (ball-shaped snacks made of a wheat flour-based batter and cooked in a special molded pan, typically filled with minced octopus, tempura scraps, pickled ginger, and green onion) and then okonomiyaki (savoury pancake dish consisting of wheat flour batter and cabbage, meat, and seafood, cooked on a "teppan" - a flat griddle - with toppings include okonomiyaki sauce (made with Worcestershire sauce), aonori (dried seaweed flakes), katsuobushi (bonito flakes), Japanese mayonnaise, and pickled ginger). Tasty as!
From there, we waddled back to the metro yet again nipped across town to Nagai Park, the location of another Team Lab art insallation at Osaka's Botanic Gardens. It was stunning. Six separate areas of the garden were lit up in various ways, some interactively, and the drizzle held off long enough for us all to wander with ease from sight to sight, enjoying the calm and the serenity of art and nature combined in twilight. A couple of highlights for us were the egg forest, where Eleanor and Leo could drape themselves over lit up eggs larger than they were, and the field of lanterns on the lake. It was a beautiful and relaxing way to end our day's adventure.
Well, end it for the kids at least. We got back to the hotel, tucked the rugrats into bed, and then Jo and Adrian headed out for a cheeky wee date night. It's occurred to us that now the kids are in fact teenagers, or thereabouts, we can leave them in a nice safe hotel room with a locked door in a nice safe country without feeling guilty, so we did exactly that. I rather suspect they enjoy the parent free time as much as we do!
The fabulous cocktail bar we'd read about on Google needed reservations (reservations to go to a bar! that's new) so we didn't go there, but instead found a charming little izakaya named "Base Camp" a couple of blocks back from Dotonbori. Izakaya are tiny little places, usually only enough room for 15 or 20 punters, but they tend to have wonderfully friendly staff and patrons, funky interiors, and are a lovely place to have a glass of wine or two and reflect on what, thus far, is truly the most amazing holiday we could have imagined. And we're nowhere near done yet!
- Adrian
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