Memoirs from the Land of Suits and Ramen, Fri, 08 Nov 2013 | written by Simon
Simon with Eva at a Castle, City in Asia, Japan

Osaka turns out to be only marginally less culturally boring than Sapporo. The history museum was closed, so we were left with Osaka Castle and… Osaka Castle. We went there in the morning and it was definitely time well spent. Beyond two sets of mighty walls and wide moats, stands an 8-floor castle that looks nothing like what Westerners are used to. The present structure has been restored several times and while it looks like the old castle on the outside, it’s all made of metal and concrete, and the inside is a modern looking museum. The views from the top are pretty great, but the structure doesn’t tell you anything about what life in this place might have been like once.
November in Osaka

The reason why it was rebuilt again and again, is because it burned down a few times. Since until very recently practically everything in Japan was built out of wood, and lightning rods weren’t used… you get the idea. So a great deal of all those 11th Century temples, palaces and other buildings are all actually later reconstructions. The Japanese don’t seem to be particularly bothered by the fact that technically the modern Osaka castle isn’t made of the same stuff as the old one, in fact very few of the structures we’ve seen have survived intact since the date they were first built.

Interesting fact: the castle walls are made of really huge stones, with the largest measuring over 52m2. That’s way more than an average Japanese flat.

After the castle we walked towards Umeda and talked a lot about identity conditions for buildings, and how different or similar they are to conditions for people. Some nice city views on the way, but nothing particularly great. Umeda is a central station for trains and metro and it has a pretty big underground city built around it – we thought it will be cool, but it’s just a pretty straightforward shopping mall.

Since there wasn’t much left to do, we decided to go to the Osaka Aquarium. It’s one of the largest marine life centres in the world, and it did turn out pretty impressive indeed. They have a couple whale sharks there! And super fancy Japanese crabs, and sunfish, and dolphins, and otters (small clawed and sea), and Eva fell in love with the seals. One was bobbing up and down in the water like a round, blustery cork of adorableness. This last sentence was written by Eva, in case you wondered. Anyway, good times.
By the way, the aquarium did a good job of promoting ecology and preservation of animal life. The interesting thing is: it managed it without once mentioning that Japan is one of the few countries which still allow whaling, and is responsible for most overfishing in the world. Well done.
Finally, we moved towards our last couchsurfing host’s flat. Toshiko turned out to be a great person – she offered us an entire 14th floor flat, now vacated by her son who is in Canada for a year (a pretty damn big flat for Japanese standards!), fed us tasty yaki soba, and got us drunk with Japanese beer and… Żubrówka with apple juice! Apparently she had Polish guests before.