CODY SHIMIZU

A look into my life, a journal to look back on, a blog for others to see.

The original plan for me was to visit Himeji castle today, but since I was able to visit yesterday I was able to go straight to Osaka. After a quick stop at the hostel I headed towards the Osaka castle grounds, the castle itself was quite impressive, but just the ridiculous number of tourists that were there and the line up to get in just turned me away from wanting to go inside, and the grounds around the castle was a really nice public park with lots of food vendors out as well. So I decided to just chill out on a park bench and enjoy some authentic takoyaki.

Since the hostel that I was staying in at Osaka was situated towards the northern part of downtown Osaka, and they had shopping districts that went all the way from southern Osaka to near the hostel, I just took the train to south Osaka and made my way back to the hostel. First stop was a famous tower called Tsutenkaku not quite as impressive as the Tokyo tower, or the sky tree but the different architecture was still interesting. Also around the Tsutenkaku they have the Shinsekai shopping district, this is where they have the enormous moving crab legs, and other unnecessarily large objects just above the stores for advertising. Although Shinsekai directly translated is New World, the whole shopping area had a very nostalgic, old school vibe to it.

Just north of the Shinsekai area is the Minami Namba area (Southern Downtown). This area had a bit more of a traditional shopping arcade area with the covered side streets bustling with people, than the next street over would have a super modern vibe with lots of international brand stores lining the streets! The amount of different vibes/districts in such a small area was incredible. Than they also had Osaka`s version of Akihabara in Tokyo where they had a whole bunch of electronic stores, everything from multistory huge chain stores to small local stores that just take apart old electronics and carfully lay out the parts from them into small bins for customers to sift through. The really cool part was where right in the middle of all of the high rise buildings and the huge shopping districts there is a small river. It just cuts though all of the buildings and people and this is where they have the famous Glico running man.

Living in North America and being used to having one of the worlds largest malls at my disposal where Ive spent coutless hours hanging out with friends or shopping with family, then coming to a place like this where you can shop at any place from small local stores to huge stores with multiple locations across the country, to international brands, was incredible! The amount of fun I was having just walking around and soaking in the vibes were incredible! Before I knew it the sun was going down and I was back at the hostel. After coming back from eating some amazing curry udon I met some other solo travellers! I met a girl from Australia and a guy from Toronto! It was really cool talking with them and hearing about their future plans, and past travel adventures. Although this was just my first backpacking trip, listening only cemented my want to go backpacking again.

The next morning after hearing about Kuromon Market from the girl from Osaka me and the guy from Toronto decided to go check it out. Since it was a fish market we decided to have breakfast there, although I though we went pretty early 9Am it was already bustling with tourists, just walking through was quite the hassle. We ended up finding some delicious looking Ootoro (Tuna) and Salmon. The tuna was the most expensive part of a tuna although it cost $20 for the 5 pieces it was AMAZING, the best piece of sushi Ive ever had in my life! The perfect amount of rice topped with an incredible piece of tuna that just melted away in my mouth! The Salmon was great too but I definitely liked the tuna much more! Walking around the market we also had some eel, octopus , and puffer fish. This was my first time having puffer fish and I was surprised when I found out that there wasnt much flavour to it. For how expensive puffer fish is it was slightly disappointing, it wasnt that it tasted bad or anything, I dont really know what I was expecting either lol.

Afterwards I split with him and made my way towards Nara, it was a short train ride there. OH MAN it was BUSY! Well since Nara was purely a tourist destination I guess it was to be expected. As soon as I got there I made my way to the Kofukuji where they had a pagoda and a few other buildings to explore, than to the Kasuga Taisha where its apparently another very significant shrine for Shinto followers. Although it was still very impressive I still think the shrine at Konpirasan was still better. Afterwards was the main attraction of Nara which was the Todaiji Temple, but on the way I would be going through Nara`s famous Nara park where they have a lot, I mean A LOT of wild deer. All over the park they have vendors selling deer crackers for tourists to feed the deer, it was really fun to feed the deers because when a deer comes to beg for some crackers they actually bow their heads!! Although even when I was out of crackers they stalk you for a while begging for more. It was pretty funny actually watching all of the little kids balling their eyes out running for their lives as the deer would chase them around.

Todaiji temple, like OMFG is definitely a place you HAVE TO VISIT if you are in Japan. The temple is famous for their HUGE Buddha statue! It is 14.98m tall! The Todaiji Great Buddha Hall was built specifically to house the statue, at 57m wide and 48m tall apparently it is one of the largest wooden structures still standing. Just the immense size of the statue, the amount of work and time that it must have took to build was just incredible. The inside of the hall is very minimalist no weird decorations, no fancy artwork, almost like a shed built solely for Buddha.

After savoring the moment, I headed back to the hostel to meet up with the Australian girl and the guy from Toronto to have some Ramen than to visit the Umeda Sky building for some night views. It was quite busy as we had to wait in line for close to half an hour to take the elevator up to the top, once we got there it was really cool to see the sun just dipping under the horizon as the city lights got brighter, you could see the trains snaking through the buildings, not gonna lie the view in Nagasaki was more incredible in terms of being able to see across the entire city. Since the Umeda Sky Building, although very tall there were other buildings that were similar in height. So you couldn’t quite see the entire city. But it was a fun night in Osaka!