I'll start with the 12th, morning was very simple had breakfast then went to Akihabara to once again have a shot at Outrun 2SP. It might be an old game but boy is it fun! I have found out that once of the club sega's has this and you can do the full 15 stage version of the game for just 100 yen, which is around £0.66, compare that with England where any place that has this game you won't get change from £2 for that so score!
Afterwards I spent the day mostly resting, talking with my girlfriend on twitter and generally having a nice quiet day. You might think why I did that but there was the cashflow and secondly, my sunburn was killing anytime I went out, so less outside contact meant less skin warming!
Still I did have a plan for the evening in that I wanted to go to Shinjuku as any person can go up to the observation level of the Shinjuku Metropolitan building for absolutely nothing! I aimed to get some night photos of Shinjuku and beyond as a result. Unfortunately it was raining, very very very hard when I reached Shinjuku. I had no umbrella and not even a coat. In the end I rushed into the storm and dived into a starbucks, grabbed a coffee and sat observing the rain.
Once it slackened off to a minor level I decided to chance my arm and walk through the area to the tower. Yes it was still raining, but the temperature meant it was like being in a shower, unlike manchester where when it rains it feels like you're in a freezer and someone has turned on the fire alarm system!
As I was walking though I realised that the lightning had not stopped and wondered if I could still get up there. After all, the normally bullet proof train system out here had stopped certain lines due to lightning. If that could be struck down, then a tower block at such a high level might also be affected. Luckily though it was open so I rode in the elevator and started snapping photos.
Shinjuku night skyline, lighting provided by the lightning storm!
It was an awesome spectacle to take in the night view and have the lightning flashing all over the place. This for me is what travelling is all about, doing stuff that you simply wouldn't get the chance to back home, wherever home might be. Manchester gets lightning storms now and then, but I have not been able to get so high up to visualise it before! I also did a simple video of this, but my HD camcorder for whatever reason would not capture the view! So I had to, of all things, switch to my cameraphone for that!
I would have embedded it but the 'my videos' section found none! Useful! But yes that link will take you there, I did stay longer and then finally I went home for the night, little bit of reading and chatting before I went to bed, all in all a cheap but thoroughly enjoyable day!
So on to the 13th, now I told myself I was going to go and see Osaka, and happened to be talking with my housemate Martin about it. Martin is a big animal lover and also loves aquariums, it turns out Osaka has one called 'Kaiyukan Aquarium', having looked at their website it looked like an awesome place to go, ever since I happened across the aquarium at Alton Towers last year have I wanted to see more.
So morning comes and I get reserved ticket for the Shinkansen down to Shin-Osaka. Once there it would require transferring and at first I went to Osaka itself. I knew from the website for the aquarium that the Chou subway line in Osaka stops at a place called Osakako but I was struggling to figure out how to get to it. So I go to Osaka itself and this train station is useful as they have english announcements on the platforms.
Problem is, their central map of the train routes is all in Kanji and only a few stations have romanised names! Osaka, Tenoji and Shin-Osaka being ones I remember. Now at first information told me to go to Umeda, then transfer to two other stations. I go to the map and I am trying desperately to figure out where it is, my kanji reading level is not that high, so while I know the kanji for Ta/Da, I didn't know the one for 'Ume', process of elimination didn't help as a few stations ended with 'Ta/Da'
Thinking it might be a subway I go to a lower level and see a second information booth, fortunately the lady here knew a lot more about the routes and simply told me to ride the loop line to Bentencho then the chou line is there and Osakako only two stops along the line. Sorted! Only annoyance is that this is subway only, thus it cost, round-trip, approximately 500 yen.
Speaking of subway, this was not a subway, as at Bentencho I had to climb two sets of stairs to reach the platform and the track never even went to street level, let alone subterranean on the way to Osakako, only subway I have ever been on where the crux of the line is way above ground! Still once at Osakako got to see a cool looking steam train.
After this I walked for around ten minutes and found the aquarium itself, and my was this awesome! If you have ever played Final Fantasy 8 and done the 'deep sea research centre' side-quest, the first part of involves you going through a spiralling series of floors that are underwater. This aquarium is exactly the same!
You literally start at the highest level of the aquarium and see the creatures right near the surface, and throughout the tour you spiral downwards, to show what I mean, I have supplied two different pics from my collection.
In the first shot we have the dolphin literally surfacing for air and then beginning to dive back down, where as the second shot, which is of the same tank, shows the dolphin at much greater depth swimming through the environment at that level! This was the same for all the tanks which featured otters, sharks, whalesharks, mantas, penguins... Literally almost anything you could bloody think of was here! The great thing was that it cost just 2300 yen to get in, so with the subway fare it was 2800 in total for expense on the actual travelling, that is around about £20, absolute bargain! (Note: - if you don't have a rail pass and are living outside of osaka... It will be extremely costly on the Shinkansen!)
Now I have literally tonnes of photos and linking them all here would simply melt your machines, so instead, you can view the photobucket album for this aquarium by itself by clicking HERE
I honestly have not had such a good time in ages with regards to any form of tourist attraction, this one does come reccomended. Also when going in they asked me what country I was from since I was foreign, once again mentioning I was english got the lady behind the counter giddy with excitement, I know it is far away, but still surprising to see the reaction haha!
After this took an evening Shinkansen back to Tokyo and just read books and chilled out before getting back to my room and once again chatting with my girlfriend about all the exciting things I have done before sleeping.
So today then? Gonna be another rest day, I just want to relax, probably go somewhere local later but for now, just going to enjoy my morning. Tomorrow is a mini-live and handshake for Kikka-sama in Shinjuku which will be awesome, so saving my energy for my number one idol! Until next time *sets sail*
No comments:
Post a Comment