Spring 2011 Osaka & Kyoto Trip Day 5: A Bridge That Wasn't Too Far

The longest suspension bridge in the world, the Akashi Kaikyo, is less than an hour's travel from Osaka.  I'd been interested in seeing it since we moved to Japan - I originally read about it in middle school and have always thought the project was cool as a serious work of engineering but sketchy in terms of ever paying back the billions of dollars it cost to build.  That aside, this trip was our chance to go see it and thankfully we're both nerds and I didn't have to spend the whole time with my wife wondering what the hell I was thinking when I said I wanted to go see a bridge.  So, we bought train tickets and headed out there.

I'm just going to say that this is a very large bridge.

If you're not ready for pictures of a bridge, you are in the wrong blog today.

This bridge is so big, it has two lobbies and and an elevator that goes up eight floors before you can get to the observation deck...which is well below the roadway deck of the bridge.

The observation areas were mostly covered completely on all sides... but they put glass in the floor.

The girders basically come to a point on the horizon before they even reach the first piling.

The observation deck also features an enclosed viewing area with a small cafe and gift store...literally inside the bridge itself, suspended over the water.

The gift shop has a cornucopia of bridge-themed goods.

Including their very own special bottling of beer

 

They did warn you about bridge pictures, yes?

The bridge: not small

After seeing as much of the bridge as we were going to that day, we got back on the trains and headed for Kyoto.  We got rather less lost in Kyoto Station than in Osaka Station and our hotel was literally right in front of our subway stop, so the transit went quickly and smoothly and we were surprised at how upscale the hotel was.  We'd gotten another $50/night deal and hadn't been expecting the army of uniformed bellhops and so forth.  The room was appropriately small, though, about the same size as the last place we'd stayed.

After settling in, we decided we wanted actual Japanese food tonight after eating our fill of Western cuisine on previous nights, and got the location of a rotating sushi bar from the internet.  We walked over to where it was supposed to be...but it wasn't there.  Other restaurants were, but not the one we were looking for.  We walked around for maybe half an hour, because, dammit, you know there is a rotating sushi place around there somewhere, downtown in a major city, but we didn't find any.  We later determined that we'd walked by at least two, but we didn't get close enough to identify them for what they were at the time.  We (horror of horrors) just went to a regular sushi place instead which worked out fine as a replacement.  I did eat one thing that I'm still not sure of the identity of.  I'd recognize it if I saw it, but I'm still not sure if it was fish or seaweed or something else or what.  Couldn't recommend it.  Hazards of the trade over here, I'm afraid.

The following day we found we have mixed levels of appreciation for some of the most iconic, famous, and revered shrines in Japan.

Spring 2011 Osaka and Kyoto Trip Day 4: Universal Studios Japan

To complete our conquest of major theme parks in Japan, we visited Universal Studios Japan, which is located on the outskirts of Osaka.  USJ focuses heavily on live shows and other things that are half live show and half 3D video over rides, though there were a few rides.  Some of it was good, some of it was so bad that it was good, and some of it was just plain bad.  Overall, I'd say it's pretty pricey for what you get but it isn't a bad way to spend a day. As before, see Flikr for the full picture set.

The Universal Studios in Florida carefully cultivates the teenage audience, trying to distinguish itself with the message that Disney is for little kids and that if you're cool you should come to Universal Studios.  Meanwhile, USJ has train cars advertising their new Sesame Street 4D attraction.

When you first approach the park you walk through sort of a commercial / restaurant district, which I wouldn't have commented on except that Ana found this popcorn place.  In looking at the original picture at full size, I'm pretty sure one of the 32 flavors is fried octopus ball.  I felt we needed to put that out there.

When we arrived at the park proper, it turned out that we were visiting during their 10th anniversary festivities.  That would probably mean the park should have been more full than usual, but the day was kind of gray and misty, and it was a Monday, so the crowds balanced out to merely significant rather than overwhelming.

All park employees had stickers or paint on their faces for the event - slightly creepy

I don't particularly want to go through all the different rides or shows and discuss them in depth - most readers have never and will never go there - but I'll toss out some tidbits and show some of our pictures.  I mention the others briefly towards the end.

1) The ride that looks like a kiddie ride where a space princess is supposed to save an anthropomorphic sun is actually a high-impact roller coaster, in the dark, where the car itself can spin laterally on the track.  Mom, you would definitely have puked.  We however, were pleasantly surprised.  It's kind of a Space Mountain clone, but then again, Space Mountain is fun...so that works.

2) The Waterworld show - yes, based on that Kevin Costner movie that bombed way back - rocked my mind in several ways not related to the show being awesome.  First, there was a line to get in.  Not a small line.  Several hundred, maybe a thousand people, were waiting outside in the rain ahead of us for the doors to open to let them in.  Arriving ten minutes early, when we did, we got put in the we're-not-sure-we'll-have-room-for-you overflow line.  They pretty much filled the bleachers for this, though we got decent seats anyway - didn't want to be in the splash zone.  The show itself was fairly amusing and I laughed through a lot of it - perhaps not at things that you're supposed to laugh at and I may have gotten some dirty looks from the Japanese around me who were all "this is serious business in here young man" - but laughing none the less.  From time to time they had pretty big explosions / fires / something large coming through a wall of the arena when you didn't expect it and that kept my attention from wandering too far.

Typical example of transport after the polar caps melt and they put gills on Kevin Costner

The thing that really blew my mind though, was just the fact that the show existed at all.  Tens of thousands of people must decide each year that they want to see this show.  There are a couple dozen people who get up every day and what they do is act in or run the Waterworld show at Universal Studios Osaka.  They have a guy whose job it is to impersonate Kevin Costner in one of his less-loved movies.  That's what he does.  Right now, someone might be impersonating Kevin Costner and riding around this arena on a jet ski while yelling in Japanese, in front of a full crowd.  You have to admit - that's pretty trippy.

3) The special tenth anniversary show was simultaneously pretty decent, both visually and musically, and also reflected some of the most classic Japanese what-the-hell-is-going-on-here we've seen.

 

Note that Beetlejuice is in this picture, right next to characters from Sesame Street, Hello Kitty, and Peanuts.  Beetlejuice, in fact, was the character chosen to emcee this event and was on stage singing and dancing pretty much the whole time.  The theme of this whole gig was that the 10th birthday of some kid lined up with the 10th birthday of the park and for that reason the whole family got to dream about something they wanted, so they each met famous characters and so forth.

Doc Brown on the left of the stage - I believe there were Jurassic Park pterodactyls on the other half

At the end they all dream one dream together...which is that the patriarch of the family will actually take a goddamn day off from work and be with his family for his kid's birthday, which of course comes true.  That theme plays well in many places, but it rings a bit too painfully true here I think, where so many people spend such tremendously long hours at work (I said "at work", and not "working" for a reason) six days a week just because the everybody else does.

4) The rollercoaster pictured below is pretty awesome, as it weaves through the park, but mostly for the extended zero-G sections more than for the view, which you don't have time to pay attention to.  Your individual seat plays music during the ride, which can be selected by pressing a button on the console in front of you at the beginning of the ride.  The first time we rode it, we both screwed it up and got special 10th anniversary J-Pop, which was bloodcurdling. The second time, later in the day, we paid closer attention to the instructions and selected Eminem, which was much more appropriate for rollercoaster-ing.

It also lit up at night.

The roller coaster was so intense (and so over-innocent-pedestrians) that they put rubber bands on shoes they thought might come off during the ride.  Ana got some lovely purple rubber bands that matched her socks.

5) The gift shop and "candy store" were terrifying.  Allow me to illustrate this point with pictures rather than words.

Would you like Spiderman to stare accusingly at you out of your overpriced cup noodle?  Yikes.

How about some Elmo fries, kids?  Anybody?

Jaws likes dried squid strips.  Therefore, so should you.  Get 'em here!

We couldn't figure out if these were animal, vegetable, or mineral.  All I know is they make T-Rex angry and me very afraid.  The writing suggests the contents are fried "Fear Dragon" which I assume means T-Rex, and if there is one thing I'm sure of it is that there is no actual T-Rex in that package.

Do you think that writing "Snoopy Flying Up"  front and center on underpants is perhaps a little risque for a family audience?

Continuing the theme of horrifying themed edibles, Ana bought (and subsequently consumed the entirety of) a Dear Daniel (friend of Hello Kitty) Steamed Pizza Bun.  Despite my concern, the lethal dose is apparently higher than a single helping, as she is still alive and only twitches oddly now and then.

There were a bunch of rides and shows not documented much so far - I'll mention most of them here.  The Back to the Future and Spiderman rides used air currents and tricks of perception to create fairly convincing feelings of flying, swinging, and falling.  The Terminator 2 show had some unbelievably cheesy footage done by the original actors but the 3D effect for the metal monster on the end was pretty convincing - it did seem to be in the theater.  The Jurassic Park ride was completely lame except for the very tall, very steep drop into darkness at the end of it which certainly got my attention.  The Jaws ride was really, really lame.  They even had a show based on Backdraft (Seriously?  Does Backdraft connect with anyone at this point?) which featured an interminable period of talking film clips (dubbed in Japanese of course) followed by several minutes of them blowing things up and setting things in front of the audience on fire, using real fire, that was reasonably exciting.

As we wrapped up our day at USJ we though about eating at some of the fairly upscale places right outside the part that target people leaving the park, but ultimately decided on something less expensive and more satisfying.  We'd previously found a branch of Freshness Burger (ours in Kanazawa closed after getting us hooked) near the hotel, so he headed over there and bought several burgers each as take-out (they're small) and cleverly bought some wine from the convenience store as the liquor stores were closed.  Part of it was that I was really hungry, but a couple of real cheeseburgers and some fruity easy-drinking red wine delivered satisfaction far in excess of the modest price, and a tasty end to the evening.

The following day we'd make a side trip to see a bridge on the way to Kyoto.  Stay tuned for more.

Spring 2011 Osaka & Kyoto Trip Day 3: Osaka Castle and Osaka Aquarium

For our first day of real tourism in Osaka, we decided to see Osaka Castle first, or rather the original stonework and moats of Osaka Castle with replica central keep.  Osaka Castle is in the middle of a fairly large park.  I took a ton of pictures as it was our first day out with our shiny new DSLR camera, so I'm going to rely mostly on captions to tell the story here.  See Flikr for all the pictures - now available with unfathomable numbers of pixels.

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.

Spring 2011 Osaka & Kyoto Trip Days 1 & 2: Nothing Much but Mexican Food

Ana, at least, had to go to Osaka.  It's the only place in Japan where you can take the GRE, which is necessary for PhD program applications (I took it while at RIT to keep options open). We'd been considering a trip down towards that part of Japan, and with her train fare essentially mandated by the need to take the test, our spring vacation destination was decided.  She'd take the GRE early in the trip and then we'd see Osaka and Kyoto, along with at least one side trip.

Her test was scheduled for a Saturday, but we left on Friday so there didn't need to be a mad rush to get to the test site from Kanazawa in a single day.  The train only takes a few hours to get to Osaka, so we left in the middle of the day to arrive in early evening.  Osaka Station was confusing, with three literally separate but similarly named subway stations on premises, and only with significant difficulty did we figure out which one we needed and how to get to it.  We did a lot of walking around with luggage and consulting of maps first.  One to our subway stop we did some more walking around and staring at maps, mostly because the hotel was much closer to the station than expected, while not being easy to recognize.  We finally made it into the lobby, and it turned out that our room was in the hotel annex, which was across the street.  That seemed in keeping with the spirit of the evening.  The hotel was quite nice for the price, which was only around $50 a night with this last-second-fill-the-rooms-at-any-price deal we'd gotten online.  It could, however, be described as the smallest hotel room we've ever been in.

Not small enough to induce immediate claustrophobia, but notably not large at all

After the wandering we'd done trying to get the hotel, we were ready to eat.  Several friends had recommended a Mexican place named El Pancho that was only a couple of blocks away so we tried there first.  They were booked solid for the evening and turning away anybody without a reservation, so that was a no-go, but the gods of culinary cartography smiled upon us and and literally directly across the street from the building El Pancho was in was a branch of Barbacoa, the churrasco place we'd eaten at in Tokyo (long blog entry) and knew to be delicious.  We had to wait a little, but not much, before we were snarfing down all you can eat steak and ribs and the like, which was an entirely satisfactory dining outcome.

The next day Ana got up at a reasonable hour and went and found a Starbucks near the testing center a few hours ahead of time, to be certain that cross-city navigation wouldn't make her miss the test.  I pretty much just took it easy that day, with surfing the internet and napping, and a little bit of Japanese study.  Eventually she finished the test (it takes several hours) and returned to the hotel with her score results, which were very good, so there is definitely no need to try to take the test again and score higher.  The previous evening we'd made reservations at El Pancho, so we headed out for Mexican food to celebrate.

The restaurant's decor was described on the internet by one site as "festive cave dank" and I think that is pretty apt.  It really does feel like you're in a cave or basement somewhere, even though the place is on the 8th floor.  The food was decent, and cheap by any standard of eating in Japan.  I do think the Mexican place we go in Tokyo is higher class, but I'd not complain about having to eat there.  Plus, check out the size of the daiquiri Ana got:

 

 

 It's pretty much bigger than her plate.

Afterward, it was still early so we walked around downtown a bit:

Blade-Runner-esque scenery at night in a major Japanese city...check

This covered shopping mall area would take at least half an hour to walk from end to end of...at least, that's about how far we walked and we never found either end of it.  It may circle the earth for all we know.

We discovered a Kit Kat store...it doesn't hardly sell Kit Kats at all.  In Japan, there are more than 100 Kit Kat flavors and there is serious collector mania about them - we were hoping this place would show all the different flavors but it is basically a 100 Yen Shop with Kit Kat branding.  Pretty strange if you ask me.

We decided that additional celebrations were in order and picked up dessert from a somewhat fancy dessert shop on the way back to the hotel:

 Ana's dessert (Mont Blanc hazelnut torte, I think)

Lee's dessert, candied fruits over custard pie

The next day, the real tourism would begin.