Today, was our first full day in Osaka. When we woke up we had breakfast and then started out to our first destination today. The forecast was calling for rain, but we were hopeful it would be light and scattered.
Nambayasaka Shrine:
Our first stop was the Shinto shrine Nambayasaka Shrine, which was only a few minutes walk from Namba Station. The shrine is famous for its modern architecture infused on the grounds of a traditional shrine. The new part is used for spiritual performances and is believed that the open mouth swallows evil spirits, thus promoting good fortune and luck:
If you look carefully in the center of the mouth you will see a golden object. During prayer, it is believed spirits will come down to the shrine and be embodied in this object whilst one prays.
After we walked around the shrine a bit we headed to our next stop.
Shitennoji Temple:
Shitennoji is a Buddhist temple and a beautiful sight to see. It even included a five-story pagoda you could enter and climb:
We have never been in a pagoda before and wondered what was in it. Inside there was a spiral stairway we could enter, after removing our shoes of course, in the very center of the pagoda. The stairs were narrow and steep. At each level of the pagoda save the 4th and 5th were small circular rooms with religious objects such as buddhas. In the center of these rooms were the up and down spiral staircases. At the top, there was a small square room where you could look out into the city. Going back down the steps demonstrated how steep the steps really were. When we reached the bottom we crossed the path into the main temple. Inside there were large golden figures and in the center a large golden buddha. Painted on the walls was the story of the buddha from birth until death. There was also a monk sitting before the buddha performing a ritual of some sort with a bell and woodblock. The room was immaculate and had a calming sense with soothing ambient lighting displaying the artwork along the walls. No pictures were allowed, but I would say this has been my favorite buddhist temple we’ve seen in Japan to date.
By now, the rain had started drizzling a little, so we donned our water shoes and equipped our umbrellas. We made our way next to Tsutenkaku, Osaka’s observation tower.
Tsutenkaku:
From the direction we came upon the tower, we saw this view:
The tower is 338 ft (103 m) tall and the observation deck is at 300 ft (91 m). The current tower is the second one to stand in its location. The first was built in 1912 and was part of an amusement park. The tower was eventually destroyed by a fire and the steel used for WWII in 1943. Here’s a picture from the top:
When we descended the tower we were routed through the obligatory gift shop, however this time it was entirely of Pocky treats. Here’s Sara as a Pocky stick:
We bought a box of Pocky and ate it while we waited for the rain to subside a little before venturing on. While we were eating we checked the forecast and it didn’t look to be in our favor so we decided to switch tomorrow’s plans with today’s, since tomorrow we planned on going to Osaka’s aquarium.
Osaka Aquarium:
The aquarium was about a 20 minute train ride from the tower, however google maps led us astray and a japanese man, seeing us trying to figure out the train lines walked us to the correct platform, which saved us a lot of time. We then made it to the aquarium and here is what it looks like:
The aquarium was incredibly impressive and housed many different types of aquatic life and even some not-so-aquatic life. Here are some pictures from there:
Below is a capybara, which is the largest rodent in the world. The entire time we watched it it never stopped eating:
The capybara was the size of a large dog. Interestingly, capybaras like to swim and the water it had to swim in was infested with piranhas.
Another exhibit showed this fixed giant, deep sea isopod, which is in the same family as pillbugs (rollie pollies):
I’d say the isopod was over a foot long and 7 inches or so wide. Even better, though, than a fixed isopod are real ones… They were in a dark blue lighting hence the image:
Here’s a video of some squid:
In the same tank as the squid was this:
It was huge, but not very bright. There were clear, soft plastic tarps along the walls so when the fish swam into it it didn’t run into the glass. This tank was the only one with these tarps, we wondered why. When this fish swam into the tarps it never stopped moving forward, eventually it slowly pushed forward until the tarp stopped against the glass and even yet the fish never turned. It moved very slowly.
Another exhibit had these giant spider crabs. They were about 3-4 feet wide from left-side leg to right-side leg:
The exhibit also had a bunch of jellyfish tanks of all various shapes and sizes. Some as small as a grain of sand! There was this exhibit with a bunch of jellyfish lit by a bright white light:
The main exhibit, however was a very large tank full of sharks, including hammerheads, grouper, sting and manta rays and 2 whale sharks. I captured some videos of them but are too large to upload on my internet tonight. The tank was spectacular.
After 3 hours, we made our way through all the exhibits and we left to ride a huge ferris wheel. It was 370 ft (112.5 m) tall and took a little over 15 minutes to go around once. We chose to get in the line with the others waiting for the clear glass cars so it felt like you were floating in the air. It was a nice view of Osaka at night. Here’s the ferris wheel:
To finish the night we had dinner at a nearby restaurant before heading back to the hotel.
Tomorrow we explore more of Osaka.
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