Osaka

Here’s the deal with Osaka; it’s a pretty neat city. I’m not sure if I like it more than Tokyo but I certainly enjoyed it a lot. It was a good place to go and I’m glad I went and now that I’ve been I’m glad to be back home. Not home home but Toride home. I got back yesterday around eight. It was a very worthwhile trip. I was a little worried when I stepped off my shinkansen at Shin-Osaka station because I had no itinerary. I had no plans, no maps, nothing about what I wanted to see or do. My whole preparation consisted of booking a hotel, buying a train ticket, and reading the Osaka entry on Wikitravel.org. None of this bothered me before I arrived. I was depending on the tourist information center at Shin-Osaka station, a center I was even sure they had. Perhaps it was a bit foolhardy of me to go in so unprepared, but perhaps not because it all worked out exactly as I planned. Or didn’t plan as the case may be.

The tourist information center at Shin-Osaka station had a sightseeing guide to the kansai area (Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe) as well as different pamphlets on various activities in Osaka. I knew from my limited research that I wanted to see the world renowned Kaiyukan Aquarium, Osaka Castle, and the Osaka history museum. After collecting the map and pamphlets I set out to find my hotel. While taking pictures of the subway guide at the train station an attendant approached me and gave me a map of the Osaka subway system. A map was completely necessary. Osaka has the second largest subway system in Japan after Tokyo. I suspect it is also the second largest in the world but I cannot be sure. That is only a hunch. It’s complicated enough to get lost very easily. Luckily trains here are universally excellent. Never did I have to wait more than five minutes for a train. Maybe once I waited seven, but that was at night on the outskirts of town. From Shin-Osaka station, with my new map in hand, I found my hotel. Luckily I can read some Japanese because the hotel’s sign was not in English. It felt cool to use skills that most foreigners don’t have.

My hotel was a capsule hostel. There were capsule floors and western style floors with a big lobby with free Internet on the ground floor. The capsule was interesting but not anything more. It was not cramped nor life changing. My host mother tells me that my capsule was much more spacious that normal capsules. I even had a desk. From that desk I mapped out my first day in Osaka. The previous visitor had left a bag of garbage in the room with a walking map of Osaka. I snagged that and suddenly my collection had grown to a complete set of maps, guides and pamphlets needed to travel around Osaka. I decided to see Osaka Castle the next day when I would have a full day to wander about. On Sunday, the day I arrived, by the time I left the hotel it was nearly 12:30. I set out for the Osaka Kaiyukan Aquarium. 海遊館 means “place where the sea resides” and I felt it was a pretty accurate description. I haven’t been to the Shedd aquarium but this blew all memories of the Shedd out of the water. It was pretty spectacular. The biggest attraction was of course the giant Pacific tank. It was three stories tall and held not just one but two whale sharks. I spent the entire afternoon there.

For dinner I munched on my new favorite Japanese food, okonomiyaki. The name means, “as you like it cooked”. They mix egg, shredded cabbage, other stuff I don’t know, top it with sliced of meet, and fry it all up on a flat griddle. Mmm mmh. Delish. I ate in some random hole-in-the-wall restaurant where Wikitravel said the okonomiyaki was the best. They were right. After a tasty treat I wandered over to the WTC Tower. I’m not quite sure what WTC stands for. Maybe Wonderful Tower Center, or Why This Scene. I know it’s English because there are no c’s in Japanese. From the top of that tower I got a good panoramic view of Osaka and the cities beyond. It looked a lot like the view of Tokyo from the top of Roppongi hills. The two Japanese didn’t feel all that different. Sprawling metropolis would sum the two up accurately. There were some minor differences. In Tokyo escalators are ridden on the left while in Osaka they’re ridden on the right and in America no one cares.

So that was day one. I really enjoyed the bath and sauna in the capsule hotel, but the room arrangements were kind of lonely. After only one night on my own I got kind of lonely. It made me value my host family again. I’m so glad I came here on a host exchange program and not living on my own. Sometimes living with a family can be stressful especially if you don’t get along or your host mother is crazy *cough* Watanabe *cough* but being alone would have been awful.

Day two started with Osaka Castle (大阪城). It wasn’t quite what I expected but I didn’t realize that until I had almost finished walking through the whole thing. I realized I wanted to see a real castle. Maybe someplace where a plaque stood that read, “this is the room where Ieyasu Tokugawa slept” or something like that. I wanted to feel a connection to history. I got some of that but not in the castle building, which is only a reconstruction. The original castle that was built by Hideyoshi in 1584 was burned down by Tokugawa in the Summer War in 1615. None of those buildings remain. Only a charred, buried stonewall. Then Tokugawa built another castle on the same spot. A few turrets and a water well are left from that one. It was burned down in 1868 during the Meiji restoration. It’s amazing to me that as late as 1868 Osaka Castle was being used as a castle! It was the seat of the Tokugawa government for at least Osaka if not the entire Kansai region. 1868 is not so long ago for castles to actually be used. Then the compound lost some more buildings during the 1945 air raid Osaka campaign. I found that was a common theme wherever I went. In America WWII is this thing in the past that constantly plays on the history channel where we saved the world. But here it’s a terrible mark on the history of the people and responsible for the destruction of much of their culture icons.

Despite all that, Osaka Castle was a cool place. The moats alone are worth the visit. They're like, enormous. The moats are freaking awesome. I can understand why this was an awe-inspiring monument and a representation of power. From this castle Hideyoshi conquered Japan for the first time ever. He united the country and ruled from the giant, towering building. So I got my history fix and then I left. The Osaka history museum was right across the street. I learned there that before Kyoto and before Nara, Osaka was the capital. Back then it was known as Naniwa. The emperor lived there back in the 7th century when the imperial lineage was established. (Japanese folklore dates the imperial line back to the 7th century B.C. but historians put it a thousand years later.) Neat museum but not much English.

One I left the museum my trip really began. Up until this point I had followed my guidebook faithfully because I didn’t know where else to go. I had done very touristy things, been surrounded by other foreigners visiting famous, well-advertised places. But from this point I ventured into streets and venues where I was clearly the only non-Japanese around. The first place was a comedy club near a temple I was photographing. I head a drum sounding and decided to investigate.
Japanese stand-up? Will I be able to understand? One please.
Stand-up is the wrong hyphenated work. Sit-down comedy would be more accurate. All the comedians sat seiza style (legs tucked under) on a square pillow on the stage dressed in kimonos. The whole performance was two and a half hours long. There were seven comics and one duo of guitar-like instrument thingy players. They were my favorite. When I could understand the jokes they were very funny. The first guy compared Osaka to Tokyo and had me in tears. His impression of a Tokyo lady was spot on Watanabe.
You can’t fold the towel like that! Fold it like this! Bad Scott!
I was told that repeatedly. It was nice to laugh about it. I learned from this performance that comedy is very hard to understand in a foreign language. There were so many jokes that went right over my head. So many references to popular culture, movies, celebrities, traditions I know nothing about. I understood about a quarter of the jokes. My comprehension slowly dissolved as the night wore on. I didn’t get the last guy at all. My head was spinning from trying to process it all. When I left I felt great. I had done something that I bet no other foreign visitor. I used the skills I have been honing for months to push my boundaries and try something I wasn’t sure if I could understand. As a result I came away with a different trip from any other non-Japanese visitor. I like touristy places but I liked this more. I like feeling like experienced some of the real Osaka.

Spurred on by my new experience I set off on my third day determined to get some more of the off-road experience. Maybe see something that wasn’t in any of the guidebooks or on any website. I checked out of my hotel and dumped my stuff in a coin locker at the train station. I love Japanese coin lockers. They are everywhere. Every single train station has them. Okay, that could be an exaggeration. Every single train station in major metropolitan areas has them. I set out towards a park near my hotel. This was my walk all over day. From this park extending north about two miles is a string of temples and shrines numbering about seventeen including a couple major ones depending on what route you take. I set a goal to photograph as many of these as possible. I figured that would keep me from getting bored looking at temple gates. Turns out I didn’t need that. I spend an hour or so at a very peaceful Japanese garden contemplating my place in the world. That’s an activity best done at a Japanese garden. It doesn’t quite feel the same in my room.

From the garden I walked north to Ishin-ji, (a ji, in, or dera indicates a temple while jinja means shrine) where to my surprise I found the whole place filled with people. Now, when I typically visit a temple or shrine it is almost deserted save for the occasional tourist. That’s how a lot of the places I visited were. That day it was raining slightly and in the middle of the week but the temple grounds were choked with wandering pairs of feet. One of those pairs was mine and I wandered into the main building to find that there was a ceremony going on! So I sat in the corner and watched and tried to figure out what was going on. People, groups or families, were lined up on either side of the great hall while two monks were praying. Families would be called one by one and sit between the chanting monks and a big statue of Buddha. I found out later that the monks were chanting for the families’ dead relatives buried in the temple grounds. Chanting Japanese monks is probably the most soothing sound in the world, at least for me. I love it and I could have stayed and listened all day but I started getting looks from families and other monks. This wasn’t, after all, a tourist attraction. And that was the whole point. I wasn’t there as a typical tourist. I was there trying to get a feel for life in Osaka. Temples are cool on their own but monks and people coming together to use and pray and remember in the temples is far beyond cool.

As I was leaving the ground I noticed an English inscription on a monument outside. Low and behold it told me that there was an English pamphlet upon request at information inside. So I went back, got my pamphlet, and learned a bit about the temple. I found out that I was witnessing what is typically a once-a-year ceremony but preformed at this particular temple all year round. And there were one-of-a-kind statues of Buddha made out of ashes of the dead housed next to the main temple. Apparently this is the only temple in the world that makes such statues. Or they were at least the first. The idea is that the dead ashes return to life by being shaped into Buddha. Twelve have been made since 1880 something but six of them were destroyed in 1945 by guess who? I started getting mad at Americans for bombing all these cool things I wanted to see.

I left Ishin-ji and walked north to Yasui Jinja. Here I stumbled upon another festival! What luck! I mean, I got there at 11:00 and a priest handed me a pamphlet explaining that the ceremony started at 11:30. This gave me just enough to chat with a bunch of people there. So a bit of history. I may have mentioned this before but the man who united Japan, Hideoyoshi Toyotomi, in the late 16th century built Osaka Castle and ruled from there. He died with his son only two years old or thereabouts. He charged his five highest advisors to rule in his stead until his son came of age. One of these rulers was Ieyasu Tokugawa. So no one listened to Hideyoshi and once he died they all started fighting. It came down to an Ieyasu camp and a Hideyoshi loyalist camp. That war came to a head in 1615. Ieyasu Tokugawa won (he had three times the men) and burned down Osaka Castle. The strongest general and most feared warrior of the Hideyoshi camp, Yukimura Sanada, was killed in battle four miles southeast on the castle. It happens that he was killed at Yasui Jinja and I walked into an annual celebration of the great warrior. I found it odd they were holding a festival to honor the loser, a bit like a festival in honor of Stonewall Jackson. Do they have those in the south? What was cool about this festival was that people were all dressed up as Japanese samurai.

One of the samurai approached me and started speaking in broken English. I led him on for a bit letting him practice his English before I started responding in Japanese. His reaction was pretty typical.
You speak Japanese! You speak Japanese really well! Where did you learn such excellent Japanese? Can you read too? Ah, kanji neh. Yeah, kanji are really hard. Can you read this? Hey you know a lot.
It’s always surprise. Japanese isn’t expected from white people. I had a great conversation with him. He gave me his business and asked me to email him. Then in a scene that reminded me of West Side Story when the Jets whip out their knife-combs, he pulled out his samurai sword. It was a long set of tongs used for picking up trash. I’m invited back to Osaka Castle Park next Saturday to help pick up trash.

After the prayer rites and several pictures with different characters, I departed to continue on my journey of hitting all the temples in town. I didn’t find anything interesting for a while. Not at least, until I came to Shitenno-ji. This was a much bigger temple with English pamphlets and some foreigners. It housed many treasures but isn’t all that old. The original was founded in 656 but this new one is only about fifty years old, destroyed in guess what year? You don't get a sense for how much of this city was burned down in WWII until everyplace you go says, “this temple is a reconstruction of the original temple that was burned down in the 1945 air raids.” The lady at information was extremely shocked to see I spoke Japanese and kept giving me stuff.
Do you know what this is? No? Take it. I see all sorts of foreigners here but my favorite are Americans because they’re always smiling. They’re so friendly like children and I just want to give them lots of souvenirs.
I got a photo book and a wind-spinning toy thing.

After viewing the main temple it was time to go. I picked up a black sesame ice cream cone on my way out, much better than it sounds. The ride home was uneventful except that I noticed that the rain outside didn’t stick to the windows. When we were stopped it came straight down but the train moved so fast it didn’t seem to even touch the windows. Pretty cool. Shinkansens are awesome.