A park with strangely shaped shrubs - I really wonder who gets up on a ladder to trim these things
Once I discovered the macro photography button I pretty much documented all the flowers we passed (Ana: Yes, we traveled with two cameras this trip. Don't judge us! They're both shiny and have lots of buttons.)
We came to the first moat...and discovered that this must have originally been one mondo defensive structure. The moats are very wide and look deep. The walls on the other side are high and sheer.
The moat either has fish or a bunch of people were doing some pretty serious wishful thinking.
Fortunately, these days the moat has a permanent bridge across it.
Past the first moat there was a stand of blooming trees - probably plums, as it was early for cherry blossoms
After the flowers, we found the second moat and second perimeter wall. I believe this wall was even bigger than the first one. Keep in mind, the stone wall is just the foundation for the wooden / earthen defensive fortifications that would have originally topped the wall, with battlements and arrow slits and the like, so this is a good bit shorter than it would have been in battle trim. After that, we found a truly terrifying defensive emplacement...
...in the form of a candied fruit stand. Our progress inward temporarily came to a complete stop. Ana had a candied clementine and some candied strawberries. I helpfully documented the process (and stole pieces).
Through another gate we discovered the part of the castle where the stonemasons got drunk and challenged each other to use the largest possible stone as a part of the wall. Actually, I just made that up, but this is the biggest single stone used for all of Osaka castle and it is not exactly a pebble.
At this point, you're starting to get up pretty high. Note that this is looking down onto the first raised tier, across the second moat. Also, our hardy camping camera has an awesome panorama setting.
View off the back side of the castle
And we finally came to the replica inner keep. (The elevator to one side of it sort of gives it away)
Having seen pretty much what we set out to see at the castle, the next stop was the aquarium. We paused for lunch on the way from the subway station to the aquarium and found lunch in an unexpected Turkish restaurant where we had really good roast lamb pitas.
When we actually got to the aquarium, despite it being just some random Sunday the place was jammed. There was a sign out front saying 50 minute wait time in front of an enormous line.
We said well, the place is way out on the edge of the city and there is no guarantee the line will actually get smaller if we come back later, so we plunged in. As we said, not a small line.
Once inside, we found that the Osaka Aquarium is not set up as the kind of place where you can wander from wing to wing and exhibit to exhibit at will - there is one route, and one route only. The sign says "usual route", but if there aren't any other options the remaining route is bound to attract a lot of traffic, don't you think?
This meant that the inside of the aquarium was basically a continuation of the line on the outside of the aquarium, except with fish. On the plus side, some of the tanks were pretty cool.
The big draw for the Osaka Aquarium is supposed to be their whale shark in the main tank. He's pretty big. What they don't tell you is that the Okinawa Aquarium has *two* whale sharks and probably sends nasty emails to the Osaka Aquarium teasing them about how small their whale shark population is.
When we were in Bali, a lot of divers were trying to find and photograph one of these. They are apparently quite rare and elusive. I recommend the aquarium, guys.
Got some fairly neat-o pictures of the jellyfish
After the aquarium we were getting towards the end of the time we wanted to spend out walking around for the day, so we went back towards the hotel and went looking for dinner. We ended up picking an inexpensive Italian place where we could load up on pizza and pasta without breaking the bank. We ordered four entrees for two people and the waitress gave us something of a look, but for hungry Americans the amount was right on and the quality better than I was expecting. The prosciutto-topped pizza had a strong and interesting meaty flavor and the pepperoni pizza tasted like home. Don't forget to check out the Flikr set for this trip for the rest of the pictures. The day after this we went to Universal Studios Japan.
The only really weird thing was that Ana's lasagna seemed to feature a carrot-based sauce in place of tomato. Fortunately, she likes carrot and enjoyed the dish. You can't tell me that's not strange, though.
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