Night and day . . .

Two weeks down and in to our final week, and how it has flown by. However in this final week we have four of our eight stops so you will be relieved to hear that the posts will be brief with few photos 😂. First is Osaka, Japan’s third largest city and it recently held the World Expo 2025 “Designing Future society for our lives”, so we were expecting big things. After leaving our bags at the correct hotel, yes we tried to check in to the wrong hotel first, we made our way to “Den Den Town”famed for its electrical goods, pop culture, anime and games. We got into the spirit and decided to have a go, but showing our age we eschewed the 21st century high fidelity graphics of modern games and went for the good old fashioned tonka toy diggers. As I was completely inept at that, I would have had even less chance with modern day games. Naturally Steven was better than me and you can see a video of him showing off his skills here and me eventually managing to pick up a ball here after 20 minutes of trying. At one stage the attendant took pity on me and moved some sand to make it easier for me and I managed to get up the ramp, although somehow I got stuck on it and had to be rescued a second time. Letting the side down badly there . . .

From there we walked around the Doguyasuji shopping area marvelling at all the shops selling culinary equipment, I’m a bit obsessed with chopstick holders. The knives are incredible according to an American tourist the nail clippers are worth buying, even at £20. The area is full of cinemas, theatres and electronic entertainment as well as restaurants. As today was a national holiday there was a street market around the hotel so we perused that before going to formally check in.

Acknowledging that whilst we were taking a break from Temples/Shrines and despite enjoying our time playing games and wandering around noting they had the most colourful manhole covers of any city we’ve been to (another obsession of mine), we couldn’t help feel we had missed something. We had always intended to go to Dotonbori in the evening, but weren’t prepared for what we found. It was incredible – not just the neon, but the energy, the hussle, the noise and the music. There were live performers dotted about, even some jazz. They have their own version of the big wheel – the big oblong! Of course they have their “street cams” and we are perfecting our technique to get the photo. You can get a boat to go down the river but it’s only a 10 minute ride and to be honest it’s more fun walking and standing on the bridges waving. You can see a video of the boat ride here and a video of the area here.

The neon popped and the whole experience seemed more energetic, fun and youthful than Tokyo and a complete contrast to Kyoto. Speaking of contrast, tomorrow we head for the mountains . . .