Picnic at Osaka Castle

Osaka Castle

A picnic at Osaka Castle, followed by a walk through Namba & Den-den town. First we popped in at Yukiko parents place and met her mother & two sisters. They live only a couple of streets away from where we are staying. Yukiko's mother lent us some Japanese Fans (modern plastic advertising sponsored fans which are much needed against the high humidity here). Subway to the castle, only need to change lines once. Subway here is very easy to use, cross reference on the line where you want to go and the price is shown, buy that ticket from the machine, pop it into the subway gate and grab it as you walk through. The subway tram/trains run every few minutes. Average journey is about 230 yen. There is also a bus that runs around the town, it is 200 yen for most journeys. (Get on the bus at the back, and pay when you leave via the front)

The castle grounds are quite beatiful, lots of people out and about, excercising, riding bikes, jogging. Saw a small group rehearsing tycho drumming, possibly for dun-jeerie? Started to rain so we found a nice perch sitting on the wall high above the moat (picture below). Some rocks in the wall are huge, with the largest "The octopus stone" being over 130t .

We did not enter the castle keep on this trip as it would have been closed before we got the head of the queue, but will see inside before we leave.

Namba & Den-den town (although we didn't only were on the edges of den-den) is a large commercial district, den-den specialises in electronic goods, a tech-boy heaven :-). Also interesting was the area that sells to restaurants and other businesses... you can buy the plastic display food (you see in eatery windows everywhere here), also signs and banners, crockery etc

more to come...

Picnic on wall above moat at Osaka Castle