Getting around in Osaka is not as time consuming as it is in Tokyo, but for some places it comes close. The aquarium is in the seaside, so completely west of the city while Osaka castle is pretty much on the other side of town. You really need Google Maps to find the exact names of stations and Hyperdia (www.hyperdia.com) to plan out your trips. The web version has autocomplete support for stations, which the mobile app lacks. Trying to get Google to give you an acceptable route by public transport never worked for me, while Hyperdia has a lot of dials and filters, so you get usually 5 alternatives differing in price, duration or number of train changes. You can for example only show JR lines to check if it is possible to do the trip with your rail pass alone and you can also filter the Shinkansen which are allowed with your JR pass.
But I digress.
After getting out of Morinomiya station I looked around and wondered where the all imposing castle is... yeah well, the park is pretty big and it is too far away to see. Uhmm. OK. On we go.
Osaka castle is not an antique building and only resembles the old castle from the outside. The original castle was burned down in the summer war 1615 after the Osaka lords (Toyotomi clan) managed to fend off the troops of the Tokugawa Shogun in the winter of 1614. This was 14 years after the battle of Sekigahara which was the starting point of the Tokugawa shogunate and one of the last battles before the relatively peaceful Edo period started which only ended in 1850. The modern building is a reinforced concrete construction housing the museum.
It was already a bit late at 16.00h with the Museum closing at 17.30h. So I scrapped the plan to visit there and instead walked around the park on the east side to Osakajokoen station.
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| Even more Sakura than in Ueno park? |
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| Maybe not, but still a lot. And the first time I saw tents. Mums used them to safely store their infants. |
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| The top of Osaka castle tower. |
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| Zoomed out a bit |
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| View along the castle moat |
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| Osaka castle from a another angle |
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| This was an interesting enterprise. Groups and families could rent tables which had a charcoal grill in the middle and as far as I understood charcoal is included but you have to bring your own meats. Nice idea! |
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| In the foreground some folklore dancing group had a rehearsal while in the background kids were training baseball which is a big thing in Japan. |
Some diner was in order...
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Beer and fries for a start. Those fries actually taste like potatoes. An unheard of feature in Germany.
The secret is to just use potatoes which were bred for taste and starch content instead of only starch or normed size. |
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| Kushitori - deepfried things on a stick. Usually something from animals like fishballs, scampi or ground chicken. |
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| Something healthy also. Marinated cucumber and salmon sashimi. Store this picture on your mobile and the next time you have sashimi somewhere and they serve you those tiny scraps of fish get this out and do the Crocodile Dundee ("You call this sashim? *show mobile* THIS is sashimi.") |
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