You Better Move....I Said....Move

I think it's going to be quite difficult to avoid it, but when I come back to England I'm going to have to try hard not to be one of those "When I went travelling....." people.

We all have those friends that like to relate everything you or they have done to a great experience in their life, and for the first couple of years after returning from Korea, pretty much every story I told or any wisdom that I shared was related to my year abroad.

In some ways, it's only natural, like when people get married, move house or are planning a holiday, everything you or they do is consumed by that one moment, and I feel like it will be the same with me when I come back as for the last four months, being in Asia has been 99.9% of my life, and it's very hard for that not to dominate my brain.

Obviously, I'm not going to avoid sharing my experiences just so I don't become 'one of those people' (what do you mean you people?!) and I'm hoping that it doesn't have such a massive impact on me that when I return I cannot possibly function back in my country of birth. Hopefully I will have lots of stories to tell, and by putting together photo albums and a scrapbook (probably more than one) it will be like re-living some of the moments all over again and perhaps remind me of some things that I might have forgotten.

I think that if you did anything for this length of time then it would have a massive impact on you, and I hope that I am able to take what I have learned about myself, and learned about the countries I have visited with me as I continue on with my life.

Starting at the age of seventeen I used to work in a restaurant in York, and my boss, who I got to know quite well through our mutual love of football used to be one of those people who had been pretty much everywhere that you would mention to him in a conversation.
He used to be very friendly with the customers and when he'd ask where they were from he'd instantly have a story, a connection or a fact about the place they mentioned and I thought it was quite a unique and appealing quality to have.
I think my travels around different parts of the world have given me the same skill, and I certainly am to use this experience to my advantage at work and at home in order to get the most out of this journey even years after it is over.

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I'm not sure what is happening to me at the moment, but it seems like my immune system is failing me and my body seems to be breaking down..... AGAIN

I went to bed last night with a troublesome combination of a head and earache which had been bothering me for a couple of days, and when I woke up this morning it appeared to have transformed into flu-like symptoms with a runny nose and a sore throat seriously threatening my motivation to get out of bed.

I'm don't know why I keep getting ill so much lately, but it's just these small irritating things that seem determined to try and make the last few weeks of my journey as difficult as possible.

As a long term sufferer of hay-fever, I'm pretty used to the sniffles and having to use a ton of tissues at this time of the year, but I'm pretty sure that I have some kind of virus or something which doesn't want to leave my body rather than suffering from allergies.

Whatever the issue, it took a while to rouse myself from bed this morning, and whilst I spent some time watching the basketball playoffs I also figured out what to do with myself today.

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog, having looked at my list of things to do, the aquarium and Osaka Castle were the two things at the top of my list, and so I decided to go today with the medley option of seeing and doing as many things as I could to fill out my third and final day in the city.
Once again time has gone by really quickly and after today I only have four days left in Japan before I head onto my final much anticipated stop.

Even though it's quite spread out, I set about heading into central Osaka and eventually working my way back towards the hotel seeing a few different things on the way.
The map I picked up from the tourist information centre the other day is brilliant, and it came in really helpful throughout the day. It has lots of details and even goes so far as marking the different exits on each subway station so you can work out exactly which one to leave through in order to get to where you're going.

I had a little task to complete first relating to my next port of call as I needed to buy a ticket for travelling tomorrow.
I'm headed back onto the Shinkansen train which brought me to the Kansei region of Japan last week and rather than leaving via the airport in order to head to southern Japan I have altered my route so that I can make the next step of my journey via the train.

Most of the major stations have ticket machines where you can buy Shinkansen tickets, but I thought it would also be a good idea to find out exactly where the station that the train leaves from is, and also that way if I got stuck, or had issues like I evidently did last time, at least I could ask someone at the ticket office itself who could help me out.

Although the train does go through Umeda Station, the main port of call for the express services is a train station called Shin-Osaka which is slightly north of where I'm staying. Shin-Osaka is about a thirty minute walk from the hotel, but it was relatively easy to navigate my way there as I just followed the train tracks all the way and this led me perfectly to the sight of what is yet another huge station in this city.

Thankfully everything is very well signposted so I managed to find the ticket office, and amazingly without any hassles or troubles purchase a ticket for tomorrow which will mean that I'm able to just turn up and jump on board when the time comes.

Making use of the fact that I was at a metro stop on the Osaka Subway Line, I found a train which was headed to Tennoji which is in the central part of the city and took the thirty minute ride to my first destination which is a very notable one throughout Japan.

Today was another one of those days when it comes across as if I was just ticking boxes on a list of stuff that I had to do, but there were a couple of occasions today when I was just passing by to look at a sight rather than spend much time in and around it.

The first place I went in the direction of was just that. Having spent some time near the Umeda Skytree the other day, I discovered that although it is inside the top twenty tallest buildings in the city, it is dwarfed by another building which isn't that far away.

The Abeno Harukas Building stands 300m tall and after being opened in 2014 is currently the tallest building in Japan:

It's a bit of an odd looking building and compared with some other skyscrapers I've seen on this journey comes across as being a bit 'clunky' but a record is a record and standing on a bridge I was able to get a full view of the whole building:

It contains offices, a hotel, restaurants and from floor one to thirteen is also a shopping mall. The top three or so floors are reserved for the purposes of an observation tower, but I decided to just spend some time looking at it from below rather than scaling the heights all the way to the top.

Next I was looking for another tall, but slightly diffeerently looking building which was also nearby and I had seen as soon as I exited the Tennoji Metro Station.

Tsutenkaku Tower is an old fashioned looking observation deck which probably towered over the city for a long time before the likes of the Abeno Harukas Building came along:

It's no longer the most impressive looking building in the city, but it certainly did look a bit novel from a distance, and from close up.

In order to get there I had to walk through Tennoji Park which is home to both the city's zoo and also the museum of art.

Once I got close up, it was actually really difficult to see the whole thing.....

.....and the best view I managed to get was actually when I walked further away from it and was standing on a bridge crossing the road:

Again, there was an observation tower at the top of the building, but I had other things to see, and was happy with the free view I got of everything on my way up and down the elevator at the Umeda Sky Building the other day.

The third thing on my list was somewhere that I was going to spend a little bit longer which was the Shitennoji Temple. It didn't take me too long to find because as I was walking away from the Tsutenkaku Tower the spire of the central pagoda stood out through the trees and guided me towards it.

The significance of the Shitennoji Temple is that it was the first Buddhist and oldest officially administered temple in Japan, first founded in around 593 by Prince Shotoku.
Obviously the temple buildings have been rebuilt over the 1400 years since it's original construction, but it was an impressive sight all the same:

The temple itself was set back from the road slightly, and was quite under-stated considering it's standing within the Buddhist religion. 

It had a similar layout to most of the other temples I'd seen with a large gate at the front.....

.....and then an entrance into the temple itself:

There were three main buildings although the one at the far side of the temple itself was closed:

You could walk around the courtyard which I did, admiring the pagoda which seemed to tower above me, and when I had completed a full lap I saw that there were quite a few of the people visiting heading into the main temple building itself:

I think it was people who were on a tour of the whole place as they were going in a few at a time, and aside from them there weren't a lot of people around - mostly just tourists like myself taking pictures.

I'm not sure, despite it's importance, that this is a major tourist attraction in Osaka as there was literally no English anywhere, and I think I was the only westerner walking around in the time that I spent there. Still, it was there loss as I enjoyed walking around in the peaceful surroundings of one of the country's most historic buildings.

Continuing on down the road I was headed for another temple which took me about half an hour or so to walk to, although as I was following the path from the Shitennoji Temple to the Ikutama Temple there were a lot of small shrine-type looking buildings along the way. The map I stopped to check to make sure I was going the right way at the station showed that they were all connected together as part of a larger park, but they all seemed to be quite separate so I'm not sure if just because they were quite close together and there was so many of them that they were shown that way.

Eventually I came across the one I was looking for which I believe is the largest amongst the group which was the Ikutama Temple:

The shrine itself is another one of the oldest existing in Osaka and was pretty much empty when I was walking around so I was able to look at things in detail without feeling self conscious that I wasn't actually there to pray:

Exiting the shrine from an entirely different place to where I entered it, I was now following the main road to another one of the major areas in Osaka which is Namba - an area I passed through on the train earlier.

There are a number of different places in the city (just like in Tokyo where there was Shinjuku, Shubuya, Harajuku etc....) which tend to be areas where people 'hang out'. Whether it's shopping, eating or socialising I think that Namba ranks quite highly and after getting out there I could see why it is a popular place:

The area that I spent some time in is called Dotombori Street and is known as the 'Times Square' of Osaka which basically means there are a lot of bright lights, shops and it's where people collect themselves together on sunny evenings like tonight.

Right on the river there is an area of huge advertisements, the most famous of which is the 'Running Man':

It's not quite as iconic as the ones at Oxford Circus and in New York, but I could see why it was a popular areas as I walked up and down the small stretch of river and took a few pictures of the shops and restaurants which were around me.

One thing which I was intregued by was a large yellow building which appeared to be a tax  free shop, but was actually more popular with people who were wanting to ride in the Ferris Wheel capsules which were going around the building:

I wanted to spend a bit of time there so I sat by the river for a while and relaxed, and although it'd have been cool to see all the lights come in, it was quite a walk back to my hotel and I think I'd probably still have heading back in this direction into the early hours of the morning if I wanted until dark so I walked as far as I could before walking back in the direction of Umeda and having left when the sun was setting I think I got back to my hotel when pretty much every neon light in Osaka had been switched on.

I'm glad that I was out and about today, hopefully the fresh air will help me feel a little bit better in the long run as I imagine going to the aquarium how I was feeling today would have been a miserable experience.
Three days in Osaka served me well, and I think like Kyoto it left just enough room for exploring on a return visit.

Run
Gnarles Barkley (2008)