Day 5: Ryokan Tour and Osaka

Here is a video I took my last morning at the ryokan before I left. If you were clever and went to my youtube channel, you could have seen it several days ago. ^_^

After leaving my ryokan, I hurried to make it to Tokyo station before rush hour. After searching for quite a while I discovered the place where you could store your luggage. Unfortunately, it wasn't open yet. So I stored half my luggage in a coin locker instead. ¥600/day was worth it to me to not have to lug all of that stuff around.
After that, I took the shinkansen to Osaka. I didn't realise, or remember, that the JR pass is only valid for some of the shinkansen, so I had just made myself comfy when the nice lady came to check my ticket and informed me of this. So I had to change in Yokohama which was not a big deal, mostly because Japanese people are very nice and even when you mess up they don't talk down to you or give you attitude, they simply tell you what you did wrong, and then usually tell you what you need to do to fix it. I appreciate that about Japan.
After switching to a shinkansen that I was allowed to ride on, I had to find a seat. All of the window seats were taken, I'm pretty sure that was because, as I found out later, the window seats all had power outlets near the floor. Also, Japanese people don't like to sit next to each other if they can help it. I chose an aisle seat in a row of three because the nice Japanese man sitting by the window was typing on his laptop so I figured me writing blog posts wouldn't disturb him as much as someone who was sleeping. He got off before Osaka, so I was able to move to the window and use the outlet. Yay!

After arriving in Osaka, I stored the rest of my luggage in a locker there and set off. First I went to Osaka castle where I met this kitty.

It was a very nice kitty who was very noisy and wanted lots of attention.

I was trying to find a geocache to dump my travel bugs, but it started raining so I headed to Kaiyukan, the Osaka aquarium. I had to ask for directions from the JR station attendent and it's a good thing that I did. The aquarium is on a little island in Osaka bay and the closest JR station is not on the island. You have to go to a different station and take the subway from there. To get my subway ticket, I had to use the ticket machines for the first time which was a little scary (I could have gone to the ticket counter, but I enjoy making things difficult for myself by asserting my independence). I was pretty sure that I had the pricing right, but I was hesitant. I looked over and there was an obaachan right next to me that smiled encouragingly and indicated where I should insert my money. I thought about asking her if I had done it right, but looking at her I got the strong feeling she did not speak English so I just put my money in the machine. I guess I did get it right because everything went smoothly through the subway system and I made it to the little island. Navigating to the aquarium though was a little harder. Let's just say that this was another point in my trip where I was grateful that I had GPS on my tablet.

There was a giant Ferris wheel next to the aquarium which I quickly decided to ride. I happened to get the best carriage.

After I took the video, I realised that there were those see though guides on every wall of the carriage, I am just blind.

There was a huge mall that led to the aquarium from the Ferris wheel with lots of shopping, games, and restaurants. I decided to look for an okonomiyaki restaurant because that is one of Osaka's specialities. The one I found advertised an English menu and when I went in, there were two or three Chinese families already eating there. Thankfully they cooked the okonomiyaki for me.

It was delicious, but I wasn't able to eat it all. My melon soda was also delicious and I wanted more, but couldn't remember the right phase. All I could think of was 'mou ippai' which is for alcohol. Probably just as well.

The aquarium was really fun. You take an escalator to the top and then walk down, I guess it was in a spiral, I just followed the route signs. But you get to see the big tanks from different perspectives. There were again, a lot of couples. Japanese love cute animals. There were also a lot of people with nice cameras, possibly because they knew that taking pictures of things in aquariums is really hard. Most of my pictures are terrible. There needs to be an aquarium setting on my camera. Pretty much the only good pictures I have are of things that were not underwater, or were sitting perfectly still.

 

 

I did really like the music at the aquarium. It was a nice soothing background noise that crescendoed and decreshendoed a lot and worked really well with the swimming animals.

There was one thing that puzzled me, why does the aquarium have an adipose as a mascot?

That is definitely an adipose and I cannot think of anything else it might be.

After the aquarium I went to Spa World, which was honestly not everything that I had hoped and dreamed. There was not a lot of English instruction, which only upset me because their website did have a lot of English and made it seem very English-friendly. I also got there fairly late and the pool closed about 15 minutes after I got up there, and the part of the pool with all the slides and fun stuff is apparently only for kids and closes really earlier anyway. So I did get to try the different baths and stuff, but it didn't impress me any more than the bath at my ryokan. Oh well.

The train ride from Osaka to Kyoto was only about 15 minutes. I had chosen a hotel close to the station so I didn't have to carry my luggage far. It was a really good plan...except that the hotel was on the other side of the station from where I came out. I knew there had to be a way under or over the tracks and I spent some time looking for it. I came to a large staircase and decided to climb hoping it would lead over. Well, I didn't find the way over but, if you ever need that information, I can direct you to a great make-out spot in Kyoto. I eventually found the way under the tracks and my hotel was within site. By this time though, I was hot, sweaty, and a little grumpy. The lady at the check-in was seemingly oblivious to my pain and kept asking for things. She needed me to fill out a form with my information (which they already had). She needed a copy of my passport. She needed me to pay now. She needed to tell me that I got a free bottle of water for every night I stayed there. I needed to be not carrying my suitcase anymore. It made me miss my ryokan in Tokyo where they took my bags the second I walked through the door.

They did have pajamas though, which I promptly changed into and then went to sleep.

Day 4 Part 2, Ueno Zoo

After the museum I was feeling hungry so I went to one of the restaurants in the area. I'd had to pay to get in that area and I didn't want to leave yet. The restaurant was predictably somewhat expensive, but also served Americanized food and was patronized almost exclusively by pairs of older ladies. The food was pretty good though.

I don't know what is up with the lemon again. I did not eat it.

After eating I wandered around some more. The museum of archeology was dissapointingly closed, and I couldn't find a way to get into the tea house gardens, if there was one open. So I headed for the zoo.

The big draw of the Ueno zoo is their Pandas. The was a lot of propoganda for the pandas. As they were right by the entrance, that's where I went first. One of the pandas was happily munching on bamboo which was drawing a pretty big crowd, but I managed to get some pictures.

 Trolololololololol. I'm so funny.

Here, have a panda.

This is an elephant statue that had mist spraying all around it.

Here's a picture of some elephants that if I had taken a few seconds later would have been elephant porn.

Apparently this zoo is pretty sucessful at breeding. I'm pretty sure that they put something in the water because the lions were going at it too. What makes this even more awkward is that the zoo is a popular date spot. I'm not talking a little poplular, either. Of course there were a lot of families with small children, a couple foreigners, but it was probably more than 50% couples. They were also a alot more talkative and affectionate than anywhere else in Japan that I've seen.

Anyway, have some cute bears.

Day 4: Part 1, Tokyo National Museum

I had a late start this day because, I'm blaming jet lag again, after eating at Kamen Rider the Diner I suddenly felt absolutely horrible and hightailed it back to the ryokan as fast as possible where I collapsed on the futon again. That's when I came to the realisation that I was not going to be able to climb Fujisan. After a nap (a long nap) I went to the front desk to see if I could stay another night. The obaasan that thinks I'm adorable was there and was very happy to extend my stay. Then I went and had another soak in the bath (I <3 Japansese baths).
Anyway, I slept late too and I didn't have any real plans so I didn't get going until almost 9 am. But it turns out I should have delayed a little more because I decided to go to Akihabara and nothing was open. Maybe Akiba is more of a nightime town. But I have noticed that rush hour is around 8:00 am to 9:30 am. The train I took to Akiba wasn't too crowded, but the seats were all pushed up so it was standing room only. The Akihabara station is a fairly big one so there were lots of people there, but as soon as I got on the streets, there weren't too many people. After wandering around awhile it seemed like it was going to be a little while before things started to open up so I decided to head to Ueno park.

Ueno park holds a lot in interesting museums and cultural attractions. I headed to the Tokyo Natioal Museum which is the biggest and most important one. On the first floor I wandered into a room with no exhibits and the nice man there did his very best to explain. There was a table that was a representative map of the museum, each room was a different texture indicating what it was. So the metalwork room had a tile that was metalwork. There was a map key as well. It seemed to be made for the blind, but I have to wonder why you come to a museum if you can't see the exhibits? It is a nice gesture though.
The museum held a lot of important cultural artifacts and they were all nicely labeled telling which ones you were allowed to take pictures of, and the really important ones included descriptions in English.

Of course, most of the pictures I took were of armor,

 weapons,

 textiles,

 and sassy birds.

Day 3: Part 2, Fangirling

If you follow me on Facebook and were lucky enough to be on when I was at Kamen Rider the Diner, you may remember that I was pretty excited.

For right now, I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures and later I'll write some more.

I've got a bunch more pictures, but it's already 8:00 am here and I haven't gotten ready yet. My jet lag is kicking my butt so I've decided to forego climbing Fujisan :( . I'm staying another night at the ryokan, Maybe I'll finally make it to Akihabara today.