Osaka - Japan

After about 7 hours on the train and experiencing our first delay on Japanese public transport (I know, we were disgusted as well), we arrived in Osaka late in the evening. On the first day we pretty much got our bearings and wandered around the city, oh and we also went to the gym....but only to get Sumo wrestling tickets (and no we are not participating!). Osaka has the feel of a very modern city and most people dressed quite smart - to be honest I did feel a tad underdressed most of the time, but no point in buying any new clobber though as everything would be way to short and tight. Imagine Rob, The Incredible Hulk springs to mind!

So in an effort to take in some Japanese culture, we visited Osaka castle and got tickets to have a nose at the inside. Sadly the inside was a little disappointing - everything appeared to have been modernised plus everything was written in Japanese so we had no clue what any of the artefacts were, except the obvious ones. The outside of the castle was pretty stunning though and Rob did spend a fair few hours taking photos!

View from the top of the castle

Dotonbori was on the list of places to visit and this place was filled with shops, some small traditional Japanese stores and some of the larger chains. Rob happened to stumble across one particular large store, BIC Camera, where after a few visits he decided to buy yet another camera to add to his collection! Being in the country of technology I guess it was hard to resist - oh and because it was on sale it made it much cheaper than the UK, so it had to be bought as it was such a bargain (apparently)!! The whole area was a really good place to shop, eat and people watch. We also saw some unexpected things like Japanese celebrating St Patricks Day (bit odd), stalls cooking some weird Octopus balls (no, not testicles) and the Glico man (apparently this sign is one of the most photographed things in Osaka which is the home of Glico, a Japanese confectionary firm).  I didn't really care about the man I just wanted to taste the sweets!

The Glico Man

Rob is Mr Glico!

Moss covered Buddha

St Patrick's day celebrations

Dotonbori illuminations

In some restaurants this is how you select what you're going to eat
plastic mock ups and you have no idea what most of it is - apart from eggs!

On one of the nights we took a visit up the Umeda Sky Building to get some night time views over the city - was quite nice, but the building was actually more interesting than the view really.

Umeda Sky Building

View from the top of the Umeda Sky building

Floating escalators - pretty cool!

Funky - the inside of the floating escalator tunnels

We spent our last day watching the big ole sumos wrestle it out. We decided to see the sumo in Japanese style and bought 2 tickets for a box seat, which actually meant sitting in a very small square area, taking off your shoes and making yourself (un)comfortable on a cushion for about 10 hours!  The box was supposed to fit 4 people, well 4 munchkins maybe, but the last time I checked neither of us came from the 'merry old land of Oz' - thankfully no one else joined us in the box seat so we could watch the wrestling in semi comfort.

Anyway, back to the sumo. Well as you'd expect some of the sumos were massive and the 'six pack' takes on a whole new meaning!  The wrestling was a little bit dull to be honest, there was always a massive build up and the match only lasted a few seconds - a bit disappointing.  We did get to chat to our Japanese box seat neighbours though which was interesting as they translated what the crowd were shouting and gave us the run down on the wrestlers! It was certainly an interesting experience - not one we would do again, but worth it nonetheless.

So that was our Osaka. Bring on the next city, Kyoto, which everyone has told us is lovely and very traditional - so lets find out ....