As one of the largest cities and probably the largest port in Japan, Osaka has no lack of things to do. Our itinerary for this trip allowed for only one day there, but one could easily spend at least a week in and around the city, and not run out of things to do.
The number one tourist attraction in Osaka that almost everyone goes to is Osaka Castle. As the former residence of many past Shogun and the site of numerous battles, Osaka Castle is huge and full of history. From the borders of the castle park, it takes about ten to fifteen minutes just to walk to the main castle building. The castle itself is an impressive eight stories tall, visible from much of the city, and surrounded by deep moat still filled with water. Inside, the castle has been modernized and converted into a history museum where we saw artifacts hundreds of years old and videos depicting what life was like back then. I found the multi-panel paintings particularly interesting. Many of them illustrated the great battles of Osaka Castle, all in incredible detail. They showed hundreds of individual soldiers, all drawn with unique expressions. It was an impressive display of skill, dedication, and patience.
Full diorama depicting the battle scene on the folding screen
Osaka Castle was interesting, but I think my personal favorite part of the day was our visit to Kaiyukan, Osaka’s world famous aquarium. Like the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Kaiyukan is ranked among the top ten best aquariums in the world by Trip Advisor. Having been to Monterey Bay many times before, I was curious to see for myself how another aquarium of similar caliber would compare. After visiting, my conclusion is that Monterey Bay does a better job going in extreme depth about the wildlife living in and around Monterey, but Kaiyukan has a much wider breadth of exhibits. There were animals from Japan, the Aleutian Islands, the Panama Canal, and much more. There was even a Monterey Bay exhibit featuring sleepy sea lions and playful harbor seals.
Sea lions from the Monterey Bay exhibit
At Kaiyukan, you start at the top of the aquarium and spiral down the building. Many of the exhibits span multiple floors, so as you spiral down, you can see close up the different creatures living at various depths of the ocean. Some highlights of the aquarium were the energetic white backed dolphins, the massive whale shark dominating the main Pacific tank, and the touch tank where I got to pet some rays and sharks.
Sleepy seal does not approve of noisy schoolchildren
One of the things that Osaka does well is food, and both the meals we had there were excellent. For lunch we went to a small family owned okonomiyaki place. Everything was cooked on an iron plate in full view of the counter, so we got to see our food go from raw ingredients to perfect golden brown completion.
Freshly made okonomiyaki
For dinner, we had Kaiten Sushi, also known as conveyor belt sushi. The sushi there was not quite as amazing as the stuff we had at the Tsukiji fish market, but still much better than anything you could get in the states for the same price. We mainly went there for the experience of sitting at a counter and getting to pick our food directly off a conveyor belt that continuously sent delicious plates of fish by us. For 14 plates of sushi and a Hokkaido soft serve ice cream, our total ended up being only 3800 yen, which was totally reasonable.
The kaiten sushi carnage
I would have liked to stay in Osaka longer - there was just as much to see and do as in Tokyo, and it certainly had better weather - but there’s always next time, and I’m almost sure I’ll be back someday. Today we are taking the shinkansen back to Tokyo for the last leg of our trip. We decided to forgo the day trip to Fuji Five Lakes on the grounds that the time and energy spent on traveling the extra distance could be better used doing more sightseeing in Tokyo instead. Considering all the things we haven’t had a chance to see yet in Tokyo, I am entirely satisfied with the change in plans.
- MC 4/18
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