As usual, we hopped on a couple trains which took us close to the museum and the castle. We walked by the museum (which is connected to the NHK building) on the way to the castle grounds. After passing a large police station and crossing the street, we were right outside the park that surrounds Osaka Castle. Soon after, we approached a large bridge over a moat that leads to the castle grounds. Inside the grounds there are many signs about the history and different parts of the castle and castle grounds, as well as many trees and other plant life. While we were there, there were many other people walking around and enjoying the sights.
A little ways into the grounds we approached a Shinto shrine. Upon entering, we could see some statues and traditional Japanese architecture. At one of the small buildings were some bamboo stalks with wish tags on them, and a couple natives selling drinks and snacks. We were told we could write a wish tag for free, so Jared wished us good luck on our project on a tag in Japanese and tied it to a branch of the bamboo. We also walked up the stairs of the main building and looked inside at the ancient decorations. Right at the top of the stairs was a small ¥100 vending machine that dispensed fortunes, so each of us purchased on. I believe we were supposed to tie them to the nearby trees, judging by all the white tags on the branches and leaves, but we took them with us. As we were about to leave the shrine, we saw some people dressed in very traditional clothing proceeding in a line to the main building. It turns out we were actually witnessing the beginning of a traditional Japanese wedding! When the "wedding party" had entered the main building, we exited the shrine and continued through the castle grounds.
Proceeding on our way we could see the tower of the castle getting bigger and easier to see. When we had gotten fairly close, we stopped by the nearby gift shop to get some drinks from the vending machines. Inside the shop were lots of souvenirs and other trinkets, including some Maneki Neko and some Pokémon items. Outside of the shop were a lot of gashapon machines, including several Pokémon ones and a New Super Mario Bros. Wii one. Near to the gift shop was the Time Capsule EXPO'70 which was placed in 1970, not to be opened until the year 6970! Just past the time capsule was Osaka-jo in all it's glory. It costs money to climb to the observatory at the top, so we didn't end up going inside. We were able to take some great photos up close, though.
Making our descent from the summit of the castle grounds, we stopped by the edge of the moat to take pictures of the city buildings in the distance. Once again, it was interesting to see the clash between classic, traditional castles and shrines and technologically advanced, modern-day skyscrapers. On our way back down to the museum, we walked through more wooded, park-like areas and along the moat of the castle. Along the way, we could see the walls of the castle grounds with a turret at the edge and the police building in the distance.
Unfortunately, we got to the museum at about 4:10PM and were told it closed at 5:00PM, so we decided to wait until we could devote more time to it. Also, there is a discount for university students, so we thought we'd wait until we got our Osaka University ID cards to be eligible for the discount. We did walk around the ground floor of the NHK building to look around quickly (so much Domo!) and then we headed back to Umeda for lunch.(Check out all the photos from our trip to the castle here!)
(Next time I'll have a short entry since not much happened this past week. In the future, I'll try to update my Twitter with small events that don't constitute full blog entries. We will be adventuring this weekend, July 3rd and 4th, so I should have another full entry in the next few days!)
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