Japan - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday in Osaka and Nara

On Monday afternoon, we caught the train to Osaka. It is really a very short ride as Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto are all very close to each other. In fact, if we were to do this trip again or if we were to advise people about visiting these places, we would recommend that they stay in one place and take advantage of the amazing train service to visit each of the other cities. That way, you would not be wasting time packing up every few days and moving. But as they say, hindsight is 20 - 20. 

We arrived at Namba Station in Osaka and we grabbed a cab to our Airbnb apartment. 

For those who have not used Airbnb in the past, many times you never meet your host. Rather, they leave the key in a mailbox or in a lockbox and when you arrive at the location, you simply let yourself in. 

And to ensure that you are the only one to have the combination to the mailbox, they usually email you the combination for the mailbox and you are good to go.

In this case, Jin, the proprietor was very creative. He did not email us the combination; rather, he emailed us a very creative video on YouTube showing you how to walk from the closest subway station and basically "walked" you to the apartment, into the mail room and you saw on the video how he opened the mailbox. If you want to see some creativity, watch Jin's short video.

Herein lies the problem and my huge mistake. 

I did not transcribe the combination on paper before leaving (when we had wifi) and since we would not have wifi again until getting into Jin's apartment, we arrived at the apartment and had no way of getting into the building. 

We tried a few people who were walking in and out of the building and asked if we could use their phone to call Jin, but there was a serious language problem and also what we had been told many times, that even tho the Japanese can be overly  helpful when it is their job to service you; in general, on a personal basis, they are very cautious about opening up to strangers. So we were stuck, sitting outside the building with all our luggage and no way to get in.

I finally asked someone where there was a Starbucks. She pointed in a specific direction and indicated that it was just up the road. So I told Fran to sit tight and I would be right back with the info. Well, just up the road meant about a kilometre away. And then to make matters even worse, when I finally logged on in Starbucks, it seemed that their internet was not working that day. My mazal that every other Starbucks that we entered in Japan had excellent wifi, this one was not working. 

What to do now? I saw someone who looked American and asked him if I could call Jin, and he graciously said yes. But when the fellow at the other end answered the phone, he spoke no English and hung up on me. 

I thought, Fran must be panicking...I had been away for quite a bit and she was sitting there all alone. 

Finally, I walked over to a Japanese fellow working on his computer and although he spoke no English, through sign language and showing him the address in Japanese, he picked up his phone, called Jin and within a minute was writing the combination down for me.....in Japanese!!! I looked at him and he instantly inputted the combination into Google Translate and showed me "turn left twice to the number 8 and once left to the number 4". 

I thanked him profusely and literally ran the kilometre back to the apartment where Fran was sitting patiently waiting, clearly worried....we tried the combination and we were in....Baruch Hashem!

Well, after two Airbnb experiences with very small apartments and hard mattresses, this apartment was a dream. It was much larger. Two large comfortable American style beds, and every modern convenience in the apartment. It looked totally new. And it had something that we had only seen once before...in China. A combination washer - dryer machine. 

We had wasted a few hours with the combination problem, but we were in and were very happy with the accommodations. 

We unpacked and set out to explore the town. 

Osaka is a huge city, very modern and bustling. Especially at night. They have these "shopping streets" all over the midtown area and while we had nothing to shop for, it was amazing to be in the centre of all this activity. Thousands of people milling around. 

We walked past a very large department store and the sign indicated that on the top floor of the store there was a Cineplex-type movie theatre. We wondered whether there was a chance of seeing a movie in English and when we asked, we found out that two of the movies, The Martian and The Marigold Hotel were both in English with Japanese subtitles. 

So two of our evenings in Osaka were spent at the movies. Both good movies and both attended by only Japanese (other than us). So they were either practicing their english or watching the movie with the subtitles. 

Tuesday morning, we went to see the Osaka Umeda Sky Building with the Floating Garden Observatory. It is at the north end of the city, and it an amazing architectural masterpiece. 

Before entering the building, we saw numerous office workers who were sitting outside on what was presumably their coffee break. They were all dressed identically...black suits and white shirts for both the men and women. This was indicative of what we saw over and over again on our Japan trip; the formality of dress by workers is rigidly followed.  Take a look at this short video.

There are two identical office towers about 40 storeys each, and at the very top, there is a circular structure that joins the two buildings. Apparently, when they built the towers, they hoisted the centre circular structure up between the towers and then bolted it in place. Here they are hoisting the centre into place before they added the cross escalators and the following picture shows the finished product.

What is remarkable, is that when you go up to the observatory, you go up one tower to about the 35th floor, and then rise to the observatory by means of an escalator that takes you to the top of the other tower. Then when descending, it is in the reverse. 

From the top you have an amazing view of the entire area. 

But it is really the structure rather than the view that attracted us. 

From here we were off by subway to the Osaka Aquarium. 

On the way we stopped in the subway to confirm directions and one of the english speaking attendants explained to us that we could buy combination subway entrance passes that would save us money. we did the transaction and then I filmed the now obligatory bowing ceremony at the end.

We have been to a few aquariums and enjoy them. This one rated with the best that we have visited. Fran and I are debating whether the Singapore Aquarium was better. Here are three of the favourite videos that we took there...

We spent a few hours and then spent the rest of the evening walking through town and enjoying the local colour.

On Wednesday morning, we had an appointment to meet a student guide in Nara, an ancient city about 30 minutes train ride from Osaka. 

Mikio, our guide, was waiting for us at the Nara Station. He spoke English better than any other guide that we had in Japan. He was graduating college that week and this was to be his last guiding job, before moving to Tokyo where he had secured a full time job as a manager of a comedy club.

We had almost cancelled the day because there was a steady downpour and all the activity in Nara is outdoors. But since Mikio had committed his time to us, we felt that would be unfair to him, so we pushed on.

By the time we arrived in Nara it was pouring. So we got on our raincoats and umbrellas and off we went. Nara was the capital of Japan before Kyoto (8th century). There are some very famous temples and shrines and a few beautiful Japanese gardens in Nara and there are wild deer everywhere. Each day they come down from the mountains to the city and mingle among the tourists. Other than grabbing your bags if they have food, they do not bother you. 

The problem was the rain, we kept hoping that it would let up, but it did not so after a couple of hours walking around Nara, we called it a day and said goodbye to Mikio and headed back to Osaka. 

We went back to the apartment to dry off and change our clothes and then went out to see the Second Marigold Hotel movie, which was a good way to stay inside, warm and dry.

We caught an early night's sleep, to prepare for our exciting day awaiting us on Thursday.

More to come

Fran and David

Sent from my iPad