Didn't sleep well. The futons at the hotel were very thin and it was little better than sleeping on the floor. Because I sleep on my side I had bruises on my hips. And the pillow was very thin as well. And I was fighting the affects of jet lag. I woke up at 5:00 and lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a while. Eventually I decided to go down to the lobby so I could walk around and not disturb Charles. The same guy who was working the night before at 11 was setting things up. He must have worked the night shift.
Charles came down at about 6 and thought I was all ready to go so was surprised that I was still wearing my slippers and hadn't brushed my teeth or anything. I went back up to the room and got ready. When I came back down I saw that Charles had found the complimentary coffee and was drinking it like it was ambrosia.
We went to Tennoji eki (for those not versed in Japanese, eki means 'station') and caught the Osaka loop line to Osaka-jo (jo = castle). We wandered around the castle grounds for a while but everything was still closed as it was so early in the morning.
We went back to the Namba area because the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium is near there and Charles wanted to buy his ticket for the next day's sumo fights. We found the arena and went in so he could buy his ticket but they didn't start selling next day's tickets until 10 o'clock so we had an hour to kill. We went to Namba Parks (a shopping mall) and sat on a bench until 10. Charles got his ticket (way up in the nose bleed section).
We decided to explore the same areas that we did last night with the added benefit of daylight. The area looked a lot dingier in the day. We found an electronics department store and went in to compare prices with the prices back home. In general we found the prices in Ottawa were lower. Usually $10 less on most things. There goes that myth.
By this time Charles was feeling the affects of only having one coffee that morning so we went to a Mister Doughnut. While eating doughnuts we decided to go to Kobe, which is really close to Osaka. We hopped on an express train at Osaka eki and sat back for the ride. Our primary purpose for going to Kobe was to visit Ikuta shrine. Supposedly it is one of the oldest shrines in Japan (nearly 1700 years old). The shrine is very nice. It's a popular place for girls to go to pray for boyfriends. This tradition is fairly recent. Two big Japanese celebrities got married at that shrine so it has now become a place associated with romance in Japanese people's minds. To quote Asuka (you will meet her later) with regard to this practice:“Japanese people are easily led. A celebrity does something and the next day everyone else has to do the same thing.”
We decided to see the Kobe Earthquake Memorial at the harbour so we walked in that direction. Along the way we walked into China Town. There was a public demonstration of Chinese dancing going on so we watched that for a little while. Us being the size we are, no one behind us could see anything so only disinterested school kids who were not there by choice stood behind us.
We continued on our way after two dances. Lunch was some deep fried things on sticks bought from street vendors and drinks purchased from a vending machine.
The memorial is a harbour pier that was destroyed in the quake that happened in 1995. The pier was never repaired. Instead it was left exactly as it was after the quake hit.
After viewing the memorial we walked around the area and found a swap meet. We didn't find anything of interest.
By this time our feet were killing us so we decided to take a ferry back to Osaka. Looking at our map we noticed that the ferry going where we wanted was near the station where we arrived in Kobe so we went back to the station and started walking south to find the ferry dock.
We decided to do a Lawson dinner. Lawson is a convenience store chain in Japan. They sell various pre-made meals there. We went back to Tennoji eki and started walking because there was a Lawson between the hotel and the station. We forgot that the Lawson is actually across the street from the station that is on the other side of the hotel. We could have saved our feet an extra 15 minutes of walking by simply remembering that fact. Heading back to the hotel from the store we discovered that there is a soup kitchen next door to the hotel that all the homeless people in the area go to. Lots of smelly insane people were wandering around.
Once back in the hotel we watched a Japanese game show that I forget the name of while we ate. Soon after we went to sleep.
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