1 day in Osaka, after 3 nights in Kobe

Osaka, Japan
Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Happy that it stopped raining for a couple of days.

After 3 nights in Kobe, we made our way to downtown Osaka, visited their Osaka-Jo (tall caste w/ beautiful gardens & flower show), and floating garden (tall tower overlooking the city), before making our way to the airport hotel, in preparation for our morning flight to Hong Kong. The floating garden was worthwhile for the great views of city, but exorbinant prices for drinks & food. We’re sad to be leaving Japan, but very excited about our next adventure.

01 Umeda Sky BuildingOne of the more dramatic buildings in the city, this puppy features a rather fun escalator ride that links the two towers at the top.

02 Umeda Sky Building EscalatorHere's Jo riding the escalator in the building shown in the previous photo. Must be fun cleaning the glass on the outside!

03 on top of OsakaHere we are enjoying the breeze outside and on the top of the Umeda Sky Building.

04 Osaka CastleThe Osaka Castle is perhaps Japan's most famous Castle. Its history dates to the late 1500's, but was damaged, destroyed and rebuilt or refurbished a few times. The latest reno re-opened in 1997. We had fun running up and down the stairs inside 🙂

05 ArcadeDo you know that game - the one where you feed some money into a machine filled with some knick-knack or another, use a joystick to position a three fingered claw over your intented prize and press a buttom hoping it will be grabbed, held and delivered? Well in Japan, they are very popular as this entire arcade dedicated to the machine will atest.

06 PrizesA few special prizes waiting to be won from those machines!

07 Future Japanese NurseNo kidding - they're working on it.

08 hmm Octopus BallTitle says it all.