The sunrise in Osaka is now 4:59 a.m.–by June 21 it will be rising at 4:45 a.m.! But it sets at 6:49 p.m. They do not observe Daylight Savings Time here, which I think is great, but why not push it back an entire hour. Or half hour like they do in India, according to Katie’s friend.
We were awakened by some noise Thursday morning, but it wasn’t as loud as you’d think, considering this is what was outside our window! The crew was here working all day and ultimately spread rocks and put up a fence. We haven’t seen them since so we aren’t sure what’s happening. It looks like a small area, but by Japan standards there’s room for an entire building.
We’ve had a great couple of days so I’ll try to get caught up. We don’t have an itinerary, which we all agree is excellent! The kids are tired from work and school, so being flexible has made our time pretty relaxing and fun!
On Thursday we decided to head in the general direction of Umeda with possible Mexican food lunch options. Katie had said that the rose gardens at Yodoyabashi are amazing and it was just our luck they were in full bloom! The Nakanoshima Rose Garden has over 300 kinds of roses. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day so many people were there appreciating the roses, taking pictures, and posing within the flowers. The fragrance of roses was on the breeze and it was just heavenly!
In the center area of the garden, there were roses named after Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, and other stars. Some sections were grouped by years with plaques on the sidewalk….1910, 1920. This one was called the Peace Rose and said 1945 on the plaque. The flower was bigger than my hand.
Priscila was graciously taking pictures of the kids and me and we were laughing because a man was standing behind her, watching and laughing at us. Soon he offered to take a group photo–now we were really laughing because he took picture after picture, saying Hai! (yes!) and Best!
We were only 20 minutes from Umeda so we walked through some areas we’d never seen, since usually we go to Umeda by train. It is a nice area of the city with interesting shops and restaurants. One intersection had an overhead crosswalk that once you climbed the stairs you could go in several directions. Katie wended her way between the markets and easily got us to Tacuba Mexican, where the owner is from Mexico City. We ate way too much food–chips & guacamole, burritos, and quesadillas.
You may recall the area next to Katie’s school includes a huge retail area with the giant red whale and ferris wheel I’ve shown in other posts. It was such a gorgeous day and the ferris wheel was only 600 yen, so we decided to ride it–plus Katie and I had not been on this one. Katie cleverly realized that each car had it’s own speaker. She plugged in her phone and soon we had our own personal Soundtrack to the City!
We even noticed that each window had information on it with the direction and the names of the buildings in view. Off in the distance was the ever present Osaka Castle.
Umeda is pretty famous for its shopping. We all tried on clothes in Uniqlo and again puzzled over the magic box that rings up all your stuff! There was a 4 story soccer store that intrigued Todd. If this store was in Orlando it would be packed, but here there were just a few people with only clerks on the top 2 floors. Japan does have professional soccer teams, but neither Japan nor the USA have made it to the World Cup which is being held in Russia next month. In fact, my souvenir from the store was a print out of the tournament schedule in Japanese!
Umeda is the biggest train station in Osaka, but Katie found a train that would take us near our apartment. The apartment area is new for her, so it’s pretty impressive to see her finding her way. We ended up walking through some of the large shrines and temples east of our apartment. People were walking their dogs after work and the area was relatively quiet. One shrine was big with hardly anyone around.
The shrine was perched on a hill and had stairs leading up and down to decorative architecture, wells, and lanterns.
As soon as you leave you’re back on the busy streets. We were only about 3 blocks from home and our visitors really feeling tired from the time change. Our goal was to help them stay up until 9 p.m. The girls sipped tea in their pretty new outfits and we played cards until no one could keep their eyes open 🙂
Photo: Nakanoshima Rose Garden in Yodoyabashi
Tell Todd thanks for representing…
GO GATORS!!