Today was mostly a travelling day but the distances were short so there was time to fit some cool stuff in. We dived back on the limited express train to Osaka which was alright once we had found the right train to match our reservations. I thought we were on Shinkansen but that was false. When we got to Osaka the walk was blistering and tricky as there were lots of of town planners dreams in play at once. Overhead walkways, traditional roads with complex crossings and two levels of subterranean walking options. Google maps does not handle more than one vertical level well.
We found the condo we were scheduled in for and left our bags in a container at the back locked with cycle locks. This left us with day packs and a hunger for lunch. Noticing the big ferris wheel we couldn’t resist a view of the city that starts on the 7th floor. The views were incredible! After that we stumbled across, under the railway arches, a Korean restaurant and Jenni ordered Italian from the menu. It was not the best 🙂 however the rest of the food tasted alright and it was an air conditioned break. We found our next pursuit right outside. Big Echo is a chain of karaoke were you can hire a room for a couple of hours and sing your heart out. This was very much on “the list” and I might have got a bit carried away. Sorry to the folk in the surrounding cabins 🙂
This evening was one of the highlights we had been looking forward to and the reason there was no blog last night. We didn’t get home until 11:00 and I was mashed.
The fireworks and boat festival sees nearly 1.3m people descend on Osaka for an event of gargantuan proportions. The river is lined up on both sides for about 1.5km with food stalls and just about everyone in Japan it feels like. You can get noodles, toffee apples, shaved ice, dumplings, drinks and then watch the boats and floating floats process up the river banging drums and shouting/dancing etc. This is the end of the mid-summer festivals and we happened across a seating area that was filling up for the fireworks. The compromise was that you couldn’t see the river but the fireworks view was spot on. Since we had seen some of the boats and the were perambulatory we thought this was right. It was a good call – the fireworks were great and so many. Eventually we were exhausted and tried to start back but the roads and bridges were closed to even pedestrians as the festival was still in full flow.
We ventured back into the crowd to get more food and I fell/tripped over a giant rock in the near dark. What a dummy. Never mind. As I said at the beginning we got back really late but we also felt very much part of it all.
