The Laundry Habits of Osaka

So, my second day in Osaka dawned cold and misty. I spent a good 20 minutes hanging out the window of my room just observing the morning. One of the buildings I can see from my room has a rollercoaster wrapped around it, but I haven't seen it run yet. It looks quite cool. My room is TINY!! Just thought I'd get that out before I forget!! But yeah, one of the things I took great amusement from observing is the laundry habits of Osaka. It's really interesting.

Also, it's interesting to feel the earth shifting underneath you. In Australia, we're on bedrock so the earth doesn't move. Here, it's ALWAYS shifting, and it's strange, and slightly frightening. The Japanese don't notice it at all, but we all did. It's akin to being on a boat, in a way.

So, after checking out how Osaka-jin start their day, we got breakfast from a convenience store - I didn't actually get the purple noodles but they looked interesting!! We then caught a train into Osaka.

First stop was Umeda Sky Building. We caught a glass lift up to the 35th floor, 140m above sea level, then rode an escalator suspended over nothingness up to the 39th floor - it was amazing, quite scary but totally awesome - and then another lift up to the observation platform, 173m above the ground. It was incredible!! The view is spectacular!! Osaka is simply massive, this vast sprawling mass of humanity. It quite literally stretches off over the horizon in all directions!! It was incredible!!

After Umeda Sky Building, we went back down and visited the little Christmas village in the courtyard at the bottom. Unfortunately I can't be bothered embedding links for everything, so I'll just direct you now to my Photobucket album for all of this so you can browse at your leisure. From now on I think I'll do this, just mention my PB instead if embedding photos because it just takes too damn long, it's taken me nearly an hour to update.

So, this little Christmas village. It was incredibly cute! Little German-style stalls everywhere, selling awesome stuff! One was selling ceramic mugs that they would fill with mulled wine (hot spiced wine, it's awesome)! I got some, and Leese and I ended up sharing most of it before she poured the rest out - it was too early to get drunk! After that, we headed to Umeda Yodobashi, one of the hundred gazillion massive shopping malls in Osaka. We bought a few essentials, then moved on to a ramen shop for lunch, then on to HEP 5. HEP 5 is awesome, it's a 10-storey tall shopping mall in Umeda, with premium shopping on 7 levels. Level 8 is an arcade, level 9 hosts a really extensive Pikurika (the little sticker photos) mall with easily 1000 stalls, and then level 10 is the base of a 109-meter high ferris wheel! It takes about 15 minutes to do one cycle, and you get the most amazing view! Unfortunately, by the time we got to the ferris wheel, my phone's memory was full and I couldn't take any more photos. No biggie, of course.

So, I'm all shopped out (I didn't really buy too much) and exhaustipated. We're waiting on David and Travis to turn up from the airport, they should be here in the next hour. Tomorrow we're visiting Namba (south Osaka; Umeda is North Osaka) and doing Den-den town (electronics heaven!) and Dotonbori (massive strip mall). Stay tuned for more excitement, same time, same place tomorrow!!

Missing everyone heaps, hope you're all well!!

Love
Nat

ジャ〜！！