Japan. Day 4, Osaka
Posted By Mike Gfeller on August 19, 2014
I woke up at 2AM and started writing my blog for Day 2. I updated the schedule so that it would be ready to review with Wolfgang when he awoke. I also sent to John per his request since he would be joining us in Kyoto on Tuesday night and essentially be embedded with us from Wednesday until we leave.
For this hotel I had also included breakfast tickets in the price, and for room and breakfast the total was $147. If you plan ahead and shop for hotels online, Japan will cost you much less than you might suspect. Breakfast was again on a higher floor. I think our room was on 18 and it was higher than that. I have some good pics from our table that I’ll share eventually. While the breakfast at Hiroshima was fine, this was better. The eggs were similarly colored and the sausages still looked like little hot dogs and the bacon wa s the same, but that is where the similarities ended. They had octopus balls (like conch fritters really), which I had been wanting to try, since they are a specialty in Osaka. I was going to make a joke about how much larger the balls were than I expected from an octopus but I’ll let that one go… They had Acai juice. I as going to research this before I posted…May revise later, because honestly I know it is a fruit but that’s about all I know other than the juice tastes like a cross between a plum and a grape. So good. Wolfgang didn’t like his so I drank the glass I had brought for him. I had a cold bowl of Udon soup to finish it all up.
We went back to the room and reviewed the plan for the day. I still had yen (I didn’t want to walk around with a pocket full of cash so only took out a limited amount initially) so I was bound and determined to take cabs around Osaka where possible to save me from hobbling around. The first thing on the agenda was Osaka Castle, located not too far from our hotel. Since we didn’t want to carry our packs all day, I was able to extend checkout by 2 hours for 2080 yen, which moved checkout to 1300. Two asides: I asked about an ATM machine but at each of the hotels I stayed in they didn’t have them. You have to go to the train stations to find them. Very strange. Will have to ask John why that might be. Second, if you want to come to Japan and are not accustomed to military time (24 hour clock), then you need to get accustomed.
The front desk called me a cab (front desk was on 2nd floor?) and the can driver came up to greet us. Another aside, everyone bows. The cab driver bowed and led us to the elevator, held open the door, and we went down to 1 and jumped in the cab. The ride over to the castle cost me 1000 yen, more than worth it to us. The castle itself was quite impressive. It has a long history filled with wars, competition, exactly what you’d expect out of castle history. The documents they have preserved though are hundreds of years old, very impressive indeed. The stones used for the construction came from all over Japan and some are very large. The inside of the castle is not original. It is basically a museum and you can walk up to each of the eight floors or you can take the elevator. We walked up the stairs, though not all at once! We took pictures from the 8th floor as there was a balcony of sorts extending 360 degrees around it. I had one of the towels John gave me today and needed it. You never really escape the heat here. Even when you walk indoors, the A/C isn’t cranked high like you might find in the states, so you go from being really hot to being a little less hot. Every night I would crank the A/C down in the room so I could cool off.
It was now 1215 so we cabbed it back to the hotel, arranged our packs and checked out. We had another cab take us to the aquarium. When we told him where we wanted to go he didn’t understand, despite repeated efforts (definition of insanity?) and pulling up the website. That’s when Wolfgang stepped in. The reason he wanted to come to Japan for a graduation present from high school was because he has been fascinated by their culture for many years. He watches countless YouTube videos and is into anime and manga. He said I wasn’t pronouncing it right and properly pronounced aquarium in Japanese. The cab driver says “Ahhhhh” and off we went. I love my son! He dropped us off at a large complex on the bay, far away enough from our hotel that it cost us $40. Didn’t care. We purchased tickets and in we went.
I can understand my Lean Six training better after having come here. They definitely have an order to things that makes pretty good sense. Most aquariums I have been to in the US allow you free reign. Once you go in you go where you want when you want. Not so here. They have a route that you follow and you can’t really get there another way. So, if you are at point A, and you want to get to Point C, you are going through Point B first. They are all about efficient flow. It works well and I like it. If I come back I want to arrange a visit to a busy Emergency Department and see how they’ve tackled the throughput issues. I should have thought about this before. If we want to see how to do it we should look to the experts, not other US hospitals whose vision is necessarily limited by our very culture on such matters. Anyway, you take a long escalator ride from the second floor to the eight floor and you spiral around various tanks as you gradually descend. This allows you to see the fish located at all levels of the tank. All in all it was a great experience, except for the damned Asian river otters.
In the US, when you have people crowded around the exhibit, people rotate in and out quickly to get a picture and then let someone else in. Not so here. The people up front seemingly pitched a tent. I waited 10 minutes in the #2 slot to no avail. They were not concerned. They waited and it was their turn however long they wanted to take. This was consistent across all exhibits too, so it wasn’t isolated to a couple individuals. Give me more credit than that! So we had to take opportunities to get to the glass where we could. Wolfgang was reluctant at first but he became more adept as the tour went on. Plus, there were tons of Japanese kids. They are small and very quick so we had to be on our toes. We were able to team up and successfully block them from reaching the front of the porpoise exhibit ahead of us. Oh come on, I am just kidding…sort of. We walked out of the aquarium around 1500 and walked about .25 miles to find a cab. During that time a very strange thing happened. A butterfly apparently thought my fluorescent yellow ball cap was a flower and so was flying around me landing on my bill. We laughed about it a little and then I thought we should be filming this. I pulled out my iPhone and handed it to Wolf and he proceeded to film several seconds of the butterfly interacting with my cap. Will post when I get home.
We got in the cab and I told the cab driver we wanted to go to the Osaka JR station. Now, those who know me best will tell you I have a compass in my head. Always have. So in the few cab rides we took and looking at the maps I had a decent feel for the general layout of Osaka. The cab driver appeared to be taking us downtown. During the cab ride the first day from the station to Hotel Monterey #1, I saw a large building downtown called Osaka Station. Reading about it later I found out this was a central point for rail, subway, and buses in Osaka, but NOT Shinkansen. Having spent less than 24 hours in Osaka and having been driven across the city only twice, I was nonetheless convinced we were indeed being taken to the Osaka JR station but at Osaka Station, not the Shinkansen station. I had to act and quickly. I questioned rather loudly “Osaka Shinkansen yes?” He tilted his head and said “Shinkansen?” I said yes and he said something along the lines of “Ohhhhh”, switched lanes, and we were off to the Shinkansen station. Crisis averted. By the way, the one city that throws me off is Pittsburgh. Every road will lead right to where it started if you stay on it long enough, but that is another story.
Now, if you recall, we had several hours of prior experience navigating the Shin-Osaka station. Let me give you a reference point. These stations are huge. Think double the size of the Dallas Galleria and that might come close. They have taxi areas, malls, various trains, Shinkansen, buses, and escalators going every which way. Even so, I had this. We went to the ticketing for Shinkansen and I said I wanted two reserved tickets to Kyoto. He said the next available was at 1540. It was 1534. He looked at us as if to say “do you think you can get there?”. I said yes and he handed me the two tickets. We saw it was on track 25 so we headed that direction. It was car 13 and we were at the location for car 3 when we popped up from the escalator. It was 1537. I told Wolfgang we needed to hurry and we jogged along the platform and got to 13 precisely when the train pulled in, I kid you not. 3 minutes later we were bound for Kyoto with reserved seats. Osaka Aquarium to being aboard reserved seats to Kyoto in less than an hour…not bad. Train karma was giving back.
The ride to Kyoto was 15 minutes. We had reserved a hotel across the street from the station so we saw the hotel as we pulled in. We exited the station and walked across the street and checked into our hotel for three days. The clerk told me to wait one second and he disappeared for 5 minutes. When he reappeared, he had our bags that had been shipped from Tokyo. I hadn’t even mentioned them to him. They took our bags up and we were reunited with all our stuff for the first time in three days.
We walked across the street to the mall at the station for dinner. I posted a picture of this on Facebook. The restaurants all have pictures of their food or plastic replicas along with prices in yen so you can walk by and decide whether or not you want to eat there. Wolfgang and I walked past about 20 restaurants and decided upon one that had breaded pork filet and tenderloin, along with 5 side dishes. I devoured my meal. Wolf ate his pork but oddly nothing else. He was full. He fell asleep at the table. I woke him up, we paid, and walked over to 7-11 just a little bit further down the outside of the station. I bought a six-pack of Asahi and we bought Wolf 3 Pepsi’s. We brought them back to the room and put them in the frig. I drank one of the beers and Wolf drank one of the Pepsi’s. I fell asleep when Wolf was still watching YouTube, around 9P. It was a good Day 4.
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