More Catching Up: Osaka to Hiroshima

My only picture from the aquarium on my last post was a Capybara. Here's something more aquatic.

Whale Shark

After the aquarium, we went to Osaka Castle.

We didn't go inside, which is a museum, but we walked around outside. This eventually made us really hot and tired and hungry so we left.

We went back to the hostel and later, around 9, we went and got some sushi from some place. We passed handfuls of sushi bars and eateries, but we always kept walking because the lack of english was intimidating. But eventually we went into a place, managed to order stuff (though not always 100% sure what we ordered), and finally got to eat chunks of raw fish and other stuff. 

Our hostel manager guy seemed surprised when we told him we'd actually eaten sushi. I can't blame him since we clearly don't speak Japanese.

Another Day in Osaka

Today in Osaka I went ahead without Christian, who felt like he had a cold. I went and got my JR pass and then stared exploring the interconnected shop-lined tunnels that web their way beneath the buildings of Osaka. The main pathways have good signage telling you "This way to X building" and "That way towards X station" but if you delve deeper, for instance straying off the main path into a building's basement, the signs disappear and you are left in a crazy grid of walkways where everything looks the same if you aren't paying attention--the path was lined with restaurants but everything was written in Japanese and blurred together.

Anyway, soon enough Christian caught up with me at Osaka Station and I took him into the tunnels to find food. After about 2 and 1/2 hours of being underground I finally emerged onto the surface as we made our way northward to this thing:

That's the top of Umeda Sky Building

 I don't have any good pictures of the building, but it's quite tall, and as you can see it has a weird thing on top. Like a big slab with a hole in the middle.

We went up to that and took pictures from up there:

Looking Southwest. A bit right of that tall building on the horizon is where Kaiyukan is, and though you might not be able to see it here, there is a big ferris wheel there and I could see it from here.

Looking west-ish

Inside the circle, those are escalators, one up one down.

Zoomed in looking Southeast. Hard to see, but dead center is Osaka castle.

small panorama to the south

And that's all for Osaka! Except for some planning we did for later;

1. We're not going to Mt. Fuji after all, we are too sick and tired to climb.
2. We're going to Hiroshima instead
3. We decided to blow like $140 bucks on tickets to one day of Fuji Rock Festival in a couple weeks. 

The hostel guy mentioned earlier likes music, so I told him about the festival and he was jealous, but helpfully pointed out some must-see japanese artists. 

July 11th - To Hiroshima!

We took some trains. Reserved seats far in advance for a train to get us to and from the music festival. That could be a rough day, considering we are scheduled to arrive at the event around 11am and leave at....6 am the next day. 

Regardless, that's far in the future. Back to the present (which is actually the past). We took a train to Hiroshima, then another train to drop our stuff at the hostel. All trains were JR so we don't pay anything. We got a nice map from the lady at the hostel, and then trained back to the city, and went directly to the Peace Memorial, which was quite a somber attraction, especially the museum which explored everything from dry scientific workings of atomic bombs to the explosion's effects on people and buildings at various distances, to the physical effects of radiation, to personal accounts of life before, during and after the bombing. 

Inside the museum, showing the point where the bomb burst in the air above the city.

View toward the memorial grounds, at center in the distance is the Atomic Bomb Dome, which is a building which "survived" the blast and has been preserved in roughly that state.

Another picture on the memorial grounds looking north

Closer pic of the dome

After this we walked to the north and visited Hiroshima Castle, which we again didn't pay to enter (it is a museum devoted to...Samurai I think?). 

We walked around it as well, this is from the north looking back at the castle. As you can see it has a moat. Osaka castle actually had two moats! Popular feature for japanese castles, evidently. 

Here's Christian happily eating...something

7/12 - Hiroshima Part 2

Today we went into the city again, but I felt crappy. We went to Shukkeien Garden: 

And then we went back to the train station and had coffee and sat around, then had lunch and sat around, and then came back to the hostel where we are sitting around (and I'm blogging).

Tomorrow we hope to hop over to Miyajima Island and see what's there, and we'll be staying one more night here in Hiroshima, leaving the next day to go to...Kyoto I guess.