Okonomiyaki in various stages of cooking - basically you sit at your table, which has a huge hotplate in the middle, and they come and make your okonomiyak while you wait.
Doesn't it look delicious?
When it's finally cooked you smear a type of BBQ sauce, mustard and mayonnaise over it - delicious!! Although it was tough getting through all of it, espec when it comes with rice and miso soup as well.
The Umeda Sky Building - it looks like it's still in the middle of construction, but those two crane-looking things up the top are actually the escalators to the observation deck.
The view from the Sky Building - lots of city
Osaka is famous for it's bridges - and well, there are a lot of them.
Looking down from the Sky Building
Osaka Castle
A time capsule in front of Osaka Castle, consisting of two sections. The first section is supposed to be opened every 100 years from when it was buried. The lower section is supposed to be opened in 6970, 5000 years from when it was buried.
Kevin with some people from his work (I'm sorry Kevin - I have a terrible memory and can't remember their names!! But thanks for meeting up with me, it was a great night!)
Walking around Osaka on the Tuesday I found what appear's to be Ayla's restaurant
Osaka's version of the Eiffel Tower
Me at the Osaka Aquarium - their big attraction is a whale shark (and a whale shark replica as you can see below).
Not sure why the penguins turned out green, to be honest... very odd
A ridiculously cute baby seal (sea-lion?) that was staring at people through the glass at the bottom of the tank
Some very disturbing Japanese spider crabs
Beaker getting up close and personal with one
Thunderbirds are go! The Yamato 1 - a superconducting electromagnetic propulsion boat.
In Kobe:
This statue and clock toppled over when the Great Hanshin Earthquake struck in 1995, breaking the clock. The clock has thus stayed at 5:45 ever since (this confused me, since it was around 5:30pm when I visited it).
A section of the pier that has been left in it's damaged state since 1995
Finally a very crappy photo of Mt Fuji (or Fuji-san) as we were going past it on the shinkansen, very hard to see as it was a very hazy day.
So that was my holiday! I have many more photos, but well, in an effort to not bore you I won't post them :) cause some of them bore me :PI liked Osaka, and really liked Kobe (despite only spending a day there), but I'm very happy I was put in Tokyo. I didn't make it out to Kyoto, as it was stressing me out trying to work out what to see in one day - plus the day I was supposed to go I woke up with a cold (that I'd thought was almost gone, but instead was just preparing the troops for the final onslaught) and it was raining and just plain bleghy outside - not good conditions to be walking around temples and shrines in. So instead I walked around Osaka some more, and ended up finding a bag, some shoes (for half the price I'd seen them for the week before) and a heap of second hand cds, including the Japanese version of From the Choirgirl Hotel with bonus track Purple People! So the day ended up splendidly.
While I was away a English woman teaching for NOVA was found murdered in Gyotoku - the suburb next to mine. You can read about it here and here. Turns out that I'd been to a gig with her a couple of weeks before, as she worked with a friend of ours, but I'd never met her. It's very sad and disturbing, for obvious reasons, but I think it made a lot of foreigners realise that just because it is very safe here (there is no denying that, I feel a lot safer here, even compared to back home), doesn't mean you can completely let your guard down. Anyway, the police still haven't caught the guy yet, but a few people have said they think he'll turn up dead, having committed suicide.
oh yeah, and finally; it's news like this that makes me happy I'm out of Australia for Howard's last term.
Listening to: Tori Amos - American Doll Posse and Madonna - Ray of Light (don't laugh - it's actually really good)
4 comments:
It's interesting, yesterday in the Maths Honours room, the three of us present all tentatively had no problem with Howard's statement. I'm surprised it's got a reaction from the American ABC.
By god that's a terrible photo of me. Anyway, for the record, it's Christine on the left, Veronica in the middle, and me on the right.
Oh man, I love you so much for taking beaker with you...it makes me happy seeing you two having an awesome time.
It also reminds me that I need to quit my job and run away.
Excellent.
x Ben
Wow, this hive of activity makes me think I may have jumped the gun a little with my post the other day.
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