Sumiyoshi Taisha Osaka
Rest day with no plan. The 2nd of this trip, the first one was day 3 in Tokyo when I went to a park.
Are you ready for a grey day for a walk through the poor areas of Osaka? If so then buckle up.
Before all that, I went to Namba JR station to exchange my voucher for a train pass and activate it. No. You cannot do that at Namba station, why? The machines have the passport reader, there is a manned ticket counter, but no, due to some ancient belief system I must go to Osaka station. So I paid to go on the subway to get a ticket I had paid for. Some things in Japan are really quite stupid.
Next, I decided to not even go on a train today, as tomorrow I will go on a LOT of trains for many hours, if things go to plan. So instead I headed south, a journey which went through many poor areas, past many abandoned covered shopping streets, and ended up at the main Shinto Shrine in Osaka.
This is a live music venue, but there is no show on tonight. I guess they are lining up to buy a ticket, probably for a concert in a completely different city, because some archaic tradition stipulates that in order to see BIG BOY PANTS MAN in Wakayama you must buy a ticket in person from a venue in Osaka at 9:40 on a Sunday morning 17 days before the show.
My journey south, was largely like this. There were homeless shelters and gatherings of people with various horrible disabilities.
Graffiti too, this guy is the devil.
Strangely, the vending machines were less likely to be drinks, and more likely to be frozen food.
Each station I went past, 4 I think, had its own covered shopping street, the first 3 were almost completely abandoned.
The last one very near the shrine had a bit more going on, mostly fish related.
Over the road from the shrine is a garden of sorts. Not Japan's best effort.
Although the trees were nice enough.
Time for some shrine, allow me to google - One of Japan's most renowned shrines, Sumiyoshi Taisha is the head of approximately 2300 Sumiyoshi shrines throughout Japan. Out the front people are selling chocolate coated marshmallows and fake antiques.
They did not trust their arch bridge architect, so it is reinforced with a lot of concrete.
There were a lot of people playing dress ups inside. Every building had a gold thing in front of it for instagram opportunities.
Exactly like this. I asked to sit with them but they pretended to not understand English.
Instead I crashed a wedding.
They fled as fast as they could.
Believe it or not, these flags all around the shrine are advertising a local tyre store, buy 3 tyres get the 4th free.
And for my final pic, some kind of plastic coated everything 'shop', which I think is selling political opinions. That is all for my rest day, tonight I will go somewhere colourful to balance out the grey day.
Namba to Tennoji via Shinsekai
Now it is a bit cold and windy. Time for an nice evening walk then.
My route was south east, through the giant upward sloping Namba parks mall which was fully illuminated. This gave me vertigo. The little LED lights were really bright and then there are wet stairs and it is very dark. I nearly plummeted, one girl slid on a wooden deck, I thought she was hurt but she just did that nervous laughing thing while her friends fanned her madly.
Next up, Denden town, which is the Osaka version of Akihabara. Much like Akihabara, the streets in some areas of Denden town appear closed off on Sunday, although I do not think they are closed due to a massacre as is the case in Akihabara where I guy drove a truck into a crowd, leapt out and stabbed a heap of people in 2008. Despite the streets being closed I did nearly get run over by idiots dressed as Nintendo characters in go karts. These tours are everywhere now. I hate them.
After Denden it was time to go take a photo at Osaka photo spot #2, the Hitatchi tower in Shinsekai. I have probably taken the same photo on 2 previous trips, along with billions of other people. I see that the tower is called Tsutenkaku but since it says Hitatchi all over it, I will just call it the Hitatchi tower. There were hundreds of tourists doing the same photo which was really annoying, because I wanted to do the same thing, so they should all get lost and leave me alone with the tower. Tourists should be banned.
Nearby there are a lot of covered shopping streets featuring almost exclusively karaoke bars. Very strange, very seedy, very old and dirty, I do not think I had walked through this area before. It all went for a few miles and then it got darker and darker until I ended up in Tennoji at a megamall, where the food court was just too packed with screaming kids, which forced me to spend a few extra dollars and go up a level to the restaurant floor.
First some illuminations from the 12 level Namba parks. You can walk all the way to the top up a series of stairs through a lot of roof gardens. In fact this may be the greatest roof garden.... in the world.
LED lights are one of the 9 wonders of the modern world, without which none of this shrine for enticing people to the mall to purchase more stuff would be possible.
Last illumination, featuring a waterfall of LED's.
Here are the back streets of Denden town. It is like Akihabara used to be, a lot more maid cafe's and porn.
There are some cool shops down each side, headphone shops, cables etc. There are also many shops selling vintage game cartridges for people that pretend to like playing video games made in 1984 to impress people on Omegle (RIP).
I think this might be the most popular place, based on signage up and down the street, the rather unfortunately named kids land.
Shinsekai, last time I was here I think I had okonomiyaki in a place full of people smoking. You cannot smoke anymore in restaurants in Japan.
Some of the places here are shut, but authentically old looking.
The restaurants here are known for their subtlety.
The shot. My effort was not great.
One more photo of the amusement area of Shinsekai, there are shooting galleries and similar things between the restaurants. One restaurant has an actual full size fishing boat in it floating in a pool with fish in the pool.
You can do some target shooting with a real long bow. What could go wrong?
Now for the weird karaoke alleys, lots of them! The sound was truly horrific. My heart will go on, coming from 9 places simultaneously, in broken English.
Last stop of the tour, megamall, here is the food court. Some good options but too many screaming kids even for me.
I ascended up a level. Tennoji is a modern place, lots of train lines, I think there is a zoo nearby.
The rooftop restaurant area had a few places without lines, many places inside the mall had long lines.
And so I ended up at a steak restaurant, and got the steak and chicken combo. The thing under the tricolore is a chicken thigh fillet. The steak was of a good quality, more vegetables would have been appreciated. Also this was served flaming, along with a suitable exclamation from the guy that set it on fire to frighten the hell out of me.
Tomorrow I am going most of the way to Tottori, I know how I am getting there, but am yet to figure out how best to get back because I do not know how long I shall be!