It’s official: today I’m switching to gum shoes. On the return trip from Koyasan, we had to switch trains in Osaka, so we decided to spend the whole day there. We woke up at 5:30 for the morning prayers in the monastary, ate breakfast (tofu and pickled vegetables, yum) and checked out by 8. So we got to Osaka around 10.
We arrived in the Namba section of Osaka, which is kind of a giant mall. We walked around there for a while until lunchtime. We wanted to try Okonomiyaki, which is an Osaka specialty – a bunch of crap fried into a “pancake” and served with mayo and barbeque sauce. The place we went cooks them up for you on a griddle in the middle of your table (photo below). It was fun, but I defintly felt pretty gross after eating it. Especially in contrast to the healthy food we ate in Koyasan.
So after lunch, we started a long walk over to Osaka castle. We knew it would be a long walk, which was ok because it was a beautiful day; however, we got a little bit lost, which added on a little bit more walking and kind of damaged morale a bit. By the time we got to the castle (about 2:15), my feet were killing me. Poor Jay was carrying our backpack the whole way and didn’t complain nearly as much as I did.
Still, we soldiered on. We walked most of the way around the castle and went in to see the view from the top. (sorry, no iPhone photos… I used the real camera.) Since we could barely walk after that, we took the subway back to Shin Osaka station, just barely hitting the beginning of rush hour. We took the bullet train back to Kyoto, had dinner at the Isetan department store, with a great view of Kyoto, and took a cab back home.
Osaka seems like a great city. The upscale shopping street and financial districts both reminded me of Chicago, although the Namba area seemed uniquely Japanese.
Today we are doing the Philosopher’s walk in Kyoto, and maybe going out for a nice dinne after.
