Life in 3-D

Our second day in Osaka began with a trip to the Osaka Castle. It is big and bright white and green with gold trimmings. The grounds of the castle are huge and are a great place just to walk around for the day. When we first arrived we were a little peckish and wanted to grab some quick food before our trek up the stairs to the top of the castle. It wouldn't be Japan if they didn't combine their history with the modern phenomenons commercialism and technology. Just in front of the main gate into the castle there is a bit of an outdoor food court. Lauren and I stopped here to grab some yaki soba (kind of like Chinese lo mien) and apple juice. While we were enjoying our sustenance, a little bird decided to join us. I guess there are just too many people in Japan, but the wild animals don't seem to be bothered by people in the slightest. It makes for some cool close encounters and some good pictures.

Yaki soba having satiated our hunger, we made our way through the main gate of the castle. Just beyond this gate lay a rather large and crowed festival. I am not quite sure the occasion, maybe just the autumn season and the long weekend. But there were people dressed in traditional warrior garb taking pictures with tourists. Just a bit further was a stage with a vivid performance happening. I really didn't understand what they were doing, but there was a woman singing and 4 dancers doing some interpretive dance around her with fans and instruments that looked like horns. I think it was a show depicting a battle of some kind. It was pretty cool to watch for a while.

After the show, Lauren and I ventured up the castle stairs. Again leave it to Japan to completely gut the inside of an ancient castle and make everything inside sleek and modern. We discovered quite quickly that the only reason to go to Osaka Castle is to climb to the top and see the view. I always enjoy a good bird's eye view of a city, so I was not disappointed. The view was nice, and after a once around the top, we made our way down and back to the Mansion to regroup and decide what should be next.

After a quick nap - about 30 minutes - we got up and headed out to the IMAX theater and Suntory Museum. This was a very busy little section of Osaka and we just couldn't do it all. We decided to check out the 3-D IMAX movies, check out the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit, and ride the Ferris Wheel. We began with the museum and the IMAX movies. Now the coolest things are always in 3-D! The first movie we saw was about the ocean and how all the creatures co-exist and are dependent upon one another to survive and keep the ocean in balance. Lauren and I had to wear this awesome, gaudy headphones in order to hear the original English narration by Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet. You know when you are watching a 3-D movie about the ocean you are guaranteed a shot when it looks like the shark is going to chomp right down on you, and this movie did not disappoint! The next movie was about Mummies and ancient Egypt. It was fascinating and talked about how if scientists can figure out how to successfully extract DNA from Mummies it will help to advance modern medicine. This movie wasn't nearly as 3-D awesome, but it made my inner nerd jump for joy!

After the movies, Lauren and I checked out the museum and gift shop. Just browsing, Lauren happened upon a plastic folder that had my quote on it. The Albert Einstein quote that inspired the new name for my blog. It was actually pretty inexpensive, so I jumped all over that. I even strayed a bit from my usual red and bought the Kelley green one with white lettering. I love when I find/Lauren finds little things that just seem to fit so perfectly into my life. It makes me feel like the world is created just for me and gives me a renewed sense of confidence or excitement or a little boost of whatever I happen to need at the time!

When we finally got out of the museum - we seem to trap ourselves in them :) - the sun was setting and we went to the top of the Suntory building to grab a quick dinner and glass of wine. I was able to capture some nice pictures of the sunset over the water. After our pasta and wine, we headed out to the Ferris Wheel. It was a beautiful evening, not too chilly and the all the lights in the city were about to come on as we got in line for the Ferris Wheel. It was about a 15 minute ride to go once around and there was a nice little English voice over so we knew what we were looking at as we climbed higher and higher. We could see a beautifully lit bridge that connects the islands of Kyushu and Honshu.

After the Ferris Wheel ride, we booked it back to the train station and headed back to the Mansion to change clothes and head back out to the Sky Building observatory. Now this is the for real observatory in the heart of the city of Osaka. When we arrived at the correct train station for this observatory, we could see the building from the station, but we had no clue how to get there walking. There was a ton of construction going on, obstructing the sidewalks, so walking would have been a pain. Instead we hopped in a cab and the nice guy took us to the Sky Building. And he turned off the meter, so that Lauren and I only paid the flat fee - I guess we looked cute!

We found the counter to get our ticket to go to the 40th floor observatory. Once we were one the 38th floor, we got in line to take escalators up to the 40th floor. There is a picture of the escalator as we are ascending - it looks like a never ending tunnel! Once we were on the top of the building, the wind was strong, but the view was gorgeous. I love night time views of cities with bright lights and tall buildings. One thing that made this observation deck so cool was that they had black lights up around the perimeter of the walkway and the floor was specially made so that it glowed in the black lights. Pictures of things that are supposed to be glow in the dark just never work out. So think of going to laser bowling dressed all in white! Pretty soon, Lauren and I started to get a little chilly, so we headed back inside.

By this time we were pretty well starving and began our search for some dinner. We had seen signs for a restaurant at the Sky Building called the Star Cafe. It seemed like a nice choice, but we soon realized that it was closed. Sadly, we hopped over to the Westin Hotel for a drink to regroup and figure out where we should go for dinner. We went to the executive bar in the Westin called, Blue Bar. It was a dimly lit smokey little place where the cocktails were $14, and they sold $500 champagne! BUT, they did make a Black Russian - which I had been craving, so all was happy and well. After sitting for a while, we finished our drinks and headed back out into the world to try our luck and see what was still open at 11pm for dinner. We just started walking around the nearly deserted streets of this section of Osaka looking for a glimpse of an open restaurant. We thought we had totally lucked out when we heard karaoke coming from inside a brightly lit bar. Unfortunately we found out it was a private party and they wouldn't serve us food.

Shortly after that, we happened upon a little French place with blue Christmas lights hanging from the stairway up to the main entrance. We ventured up the stairs and saw the host at the front of the store. It was very quiet inside, but we asked if they were still serving food and the little guy asked us to wait a moment and ran around the corner. Next, a very well dressed man in a formal suit came out and seated us. As we rounded the corner to where the tables were, we saw that the whole place was empty and they were beginning to close. We started to apologize for bothering them at closing time and started to head out, but the suit man stopped us and said, "No, please stay, anything you want." Lauren and I looked at the menu and decided on a salad appetizer with fresh greens and tomatoes. For our main course we ordered a lamb stew and then for dessert we got the creme brulee - my favorite!! We each had a glass of wine with dinner and then when the nice man brought us our dessert, he also brought two glasses of port!

It is not customary to tip in Japan, but had we been in America, that incredibly nice man would have gotten one heck of a nice tip!!! The food was delicious and the atmosphere was just calm and warm. We really lucked out in trying to find a nice place to eat. After dinner we headed back out and hailed a cab to take us back to the Mansion. We basked in the fantastic-ness of our day and our wonderful finale evening and crashed when we hit our beds. However, despite the fact that we had gotten in so late, we both decided we needed to get up bright and early to be ready for Kyoto in the morning!