Just 3 weeks ago, a good friend of mine, Blair, came to visit me in Japan. Well, to be accurate he came to Japan to stay with his Japanese girlfriend and it was fortunate enough for me that Karumi lives just outside of Osaka on the outskirts of Kobe. Melissa and I got the chance to hang out with Blair and Karumi for a couple of days, and of course when your vacation is so short and you have traveled so far and wide to see a new country... well you make every effort to spend every moment seeing all that you can in that country. We spent one day in Osaka, checking out some major tourist spots... luckily some of them Melissa and I had not yet experienced.
Melissa and I have been wanting to go see Osaka Castle... pretty much since we arrived in Japan back in June. We had often planned, a day in advance, to go. Inevitably we would be so tired that we would sleep in and miss our window of opportunity to go visit the castle (it is across town and closes pretty early in the afternoon). It became a bit of a running joke with us that if we were tired and didn't feel like doing anything that day, we would agree to go see Osaka Castle, laugh, and carry on knowing that neither of us intended to really follow through. One night some friends of Melissa's said they were going to get some beers and they were going to go hang out outside of Osaka castle and drink. She giggled and told them she just couldn't g0... Well, the day had come, and we were stoked to check it out, the two of us, together with Blair and Karumi. It was fantastic! Here are the pictures in and around the castle.
We walked from the near-by train station and were excited about our first look at the castle. What we saw was the foundation and a small building on the corner (which could only have been a guard post of sorts. It was on the other side of a wide moat, and immediately I thought of how many people have died right here where I stand. We were probably within arrow range and had we been soldiers back then we would have had to evade all those lil' arrows before leaping off of an escarpment to dive into the murky waters below and start swimming for our lives. As we left those 
somber thoughts and made our way to the front gate, we began to hear oldies rock and roll and clapping hands. It sounded like a party. As we got closer we saw crowds of people standing around an inner circle of performers presumably dancing to Chubby Checker's "Let's Twist Again". Blair was out in front of us all with his camera and gear ready to shoot whatever was going on inside that circle. What we all saw was this; Japanese "cats" dressed up like they belonged in the movie Grease... lots of them. They were enjoying the 
attention they were getting from all of the tourists, and were dancing like crazy fools! After snapping some shots, we went in through the gates and were ready to see some castle. We wandered around the area where the Samurai and Daimyo would have had their homes. Now it is occupied by a few maintenance sheds, a building here and there (maybe offices for staff and researchers), vendor shacks and the odd taco-yaki stand. We had a quick bite to eat there, and then cruised up another walkway leading into the inner court yard. From the ramparts of those inner fortifications we had a nice view of some of the city scape. 
Just below us there were men working in the dried-up section of the moat. They were checking the foundation and testing the structural integrity of the corner stones. There has been some mystery about the construction of the castle too. Through recent digs they have discovered a buried 
foundation wall that does not coincide with the way the castle was originally laid out. Since the 90's there has been much debate and research going on because of the discovery. We crossed the last court yard and paused to take in the beauty of the main structure that stood before us. Before going in, I took my last couple of pictures. One of these was a photo of a guy dressed like a soldier. I kind of sneaked up on him to get the picture, but he turned and saw me and immediately struck a pose. Inside most of the castle, photography was prohibited. I admit that occasionally I shut off my flash and snapped a shot or two anyway. I 
had to get a picture of 
the old samurai sword they had on display. Also, I took a picture of a miniature model of the castle grounds (large image above). I didn't see any harm in it as long as I wasn't using a flash - which can bleach out colour and otherwise deteriorate old sensitive materials. I also shot a short video of some tourists getting into the spirit of Osaka castle, and having a little fun in an otherwise very serious venue (photographs were allowed in that area though).At 4:00 in the afternoon, we decided that we had spent too much time there and light was fading, so it was off to the next site-seeing hot-spot: Hep 5 - a shopping mall with the monumental red ferris wheel on its top floor... and then we moved on to the floating gardens on top of the Sky Tower.
Please check in soon for the continuation...
