The Whale Shark of Destiny
Trip Start
May 26, 2004
1
9
20
Trip End
Ongoing
Osaka,
Japan
Sunday, June 20, 2004
We arrived in Osaka not really knowing what to expect. You see Japan on the TV and it's like another planet! We thought that as it was such a huge tourist destination it would be tourist friendly.
01-The aquarium
Of course we were wrong. Very wrong. The transport system was quite good, almost as good as Hong Kong. However you needed to understand Japanese in order to get around. Worse than that there were no words so you couldn't look for a name of a place and match it up. We had to look on our travel map, find where we wanted to go by matching the ideograms on the map with those on the train station wall. This worked fine but we ran into serious trouble when we had nothing to reference against which was pretty much all of the time! Despite the complete lack of English we were determined to make the most of the time we had in Japan.Osaka is a very picturesque area of Japan. It was the home of the Shogun 7 or 8 hundred years ago so there was plenty of castles and palaces to see and lots of little pubs. It's said that Japan is seriously expensive and after the dirt cheapness of the rest of Asia we were a little wary. We booked into our accommodation which was expensive compared to the rest of the trip. However we found that everything else was quite reasonable from the food to the beer. Of course we mostly ate Micky D's due to the fact that we found it next to impossible to find a restaurant that we could actually order any food in. Some places had pictures of the meals and we had to literally point out the one that looked the most like what we wanted. When we couldn't find these it was either a Bigu Maku or to the 7-11 for some pot noodles and dodgy sandwiches
02-Some Ray
. We ate a lot of noodles. Saying that, a large big mac meal is cheaper in Japan than it is in Dublin. A lot of things were cheaper in Japan than in Dublin!! We headed to the local aquarium as it is the second largest one in the world behind water world in San Diego zoo. It was suitably impressive. From the little Japanese birds who take your picture with the whale shark on the way in to the the size of the main tank. It was your usual standard aquarium fare plenty of small tanks with turtles, finding nemo fish and the likes until you reached the middle. The main tank is over 9 metres deep with a walkway around it. It holds several million litres of water and what they had swimming around in the tank was unbelievable. They had a full sized tuna which must have been about 4 foot long, several sharks, a manta ray that was about 15 - 18 foot wide and a giant Whale shark which was over 15 foot long. It swims along with its mouth open like a whale catching small fish and crustaceans. It just glided serenely around the tank and it was an amazing sight. Fiona took approximately 3974 pictures of the thing, of which precisely fuck all turned out well enough to actually see anything!! Got a couple of videos where you can just about see the thing so that will have to do. I was eventually able to drag fi away kicking and screaming so we could actually finish the rest of the tour. We saw the usual seals and penguins and also Puffer fish (which is a very risky delicacy in Japan due to being very poisonous) and a few piranha thrown in for good measure
03-Japanese Puffer Fish - Fugu!!
. We left the aquarium happy to have continued the holidays theme of aquariums and zoo's and headed for a beer!! We found a nice little place just down the road from our hotel. We went down stairs and ordered a couple of beers. Again we had to point them out to be understood. We were going on instinct here as the beer could have cost 15 Euro each but thanks to the menu we had no idea what price it was. We were drinking away when a load of businessmen came in. In Japan it's a big deal to go out after work and get drunk. It's the only time that they are able to express their feelings or talk about personal matters as all is forgiven as they are drunk. We watch them settle in and get seriously stuck into the Saki (which is seriously minging by the way). We were brought out some chips by the owners who were really nice. We had a few beers and headed home for the night surprised to see that the beers were also cheaper here than back home. We left a tip which we then had to try and explain that it was a gift. They finally accepted with a whole lot of bowing and we were halfway up the road when we heard running footsteps behind us and turned to see the waitress run up to us and hand us two Japanese cups which were probably worth more that the tip that we left. She just said "gift" and quickly turned around and back the same way she came! It put a smile on our face for the rest of the walk home
04-Scale model of the Whale Shark
.The next morning we headed to the local castle. Osaka was the old capital of Japan during the time of the shogunate. There was a large castle with a courtyard and we popped along to have a look. It was an interesting piece of history. The whole place was huge with several levels. It was not the original castle which was destroyed several hundred years ago but was rebuild brick by brick Anyway enough of the history lesson I guess. Overall Osaka was a good way to ease ourselves into Japan. We soon found out that there would be little or no English and trying to find something to eat would be as difficult, though not as disgusting, as Hong Kong. There were plenty of old historical buildings to see. We were looking to go and visit the golden palace (which does exactly what it says on the tin) but you needed to be there at a certain time. Apart from these and the aquarium there was not a lot else here unless you had a lot more time to explore.
On the plus side though they do sell beer in vending machines on the street. Worth coming for that alone!
