天気：雨天
We're on the sub-exp bound for 京橋 (Kyobashi). It's raining!!! So we decided (spur of the moment) to go to the 大阪 海遊館 (Osaka Kaiyukan - Aquarium), and keep the Hirakata Park trip for another day when it's sunny. Wow, the bus today, to get to Hirakata station, was absolutely packed. The traffic was chaotic, lots of ambulance and police cars; never in my wildest dreams would I want to drive around here! So yeah, here on the train with me are Diego and Jessica. It's going to be an awesome day. The aquarium's supposed to be one of the best in the world. I'm taking the video camera, so should get some great footage if I can get it to work, xD...
11:07am 京橋駅
We're waiting for the JR Loop train bound for 森ノ宮 (Mori no Miya). Then from there we're going to take the 中央 (chuou - central) subway to aquarium...
11:12am 電車
On the train...
11:24am 森ノ宮
Now we're waiting for the train in the subway. We met with a girl, Brittney, whose also going to the aquarium, so we're helping her get there. Overall it's been pretty easy to get here, the signs, for the most part, have had English on them. So now we're bound for 大阪港 (Osaka port).
11:30am 地下鉄電車
On the train. We still have 8 stops until we get there. Money-wise, I think it's been pretty cheap. About $10 to get all the way.
11:48am 大阪港Off the train walking towards the aquarium. There are signs everywhere, which is really helpful.
1:41pm 海遊館
Sitting here in the aquarium's "Cafe de Clever". Just finished my Mexican sand (I love Japanese-English). Lol, it's a weird looking pocket bread thing with a sausage and mince in it. Spicy too. So far the aquarium has been amazing! It's massive; 7 floors. Otters, penguins, dolphins, seals... They even have two whale sharks!!! It's incredible. Brittney went off on her own; i guess she likes doing things on her own? We've still got 4 floors left. Where we are sitting in the cafe, we can see out over the port. The skies are as grey as the sea.
2:42pm 天保山We're at the top of the 天保山観覧車 (Tenpozan kanransha - Ferris Wheel), which is apparently the largest in the world? It's pouring, but the view is still pretty spectacular. Ride time is approximately 15 minutes, so you can imagine, it's huge.
3:47pm 大阪港
We're in the waiting room in the subway. The next train is coming at 3:53. My feet are aching a little. After riding the Ferris wheel, we walked around the shops. There were some really cool shops, including a Studio Ghibli shop, and ninja shop. Getting on the train...
There was a really cool stall where you could get your face (photo) grafted into crystal, and another that did anime caricature. There were also lots of clothes shops. One in particular had some really cool shirts and jeans, but a little too expensive at this point in time. I hope Brittney gets back okay. I might see her around Kansai Gaidai. It's been a great day, though silly me forgot to check if there was a tape in the video camera!!! Fortunately, I could get some footage on the memory card, and I ended up taking some more video on my regular camera.
4:58pm 特急We're on the limited express back to Hirakata; it goes direct to Hirakata without any stops. This is a really cool train; it has two storey seating carriages. After getting off at Mori no Miya, we walked around the edge of 大阪城公園 (Osakajou Koen - Osaka Castle Park). There was a band playing in the park, but you had to have a ticket to get in to see it; we could still hear it though. We could see Osaka castle from where we were and decided that that would be our next adventure. Wow, Brittney caught up with us again. I'm pretty tired now but looking forward to the takoyaki party tonight.
9:35pm セミナーハウス
Well my legs are aching now, but it's a good ache I guess. After we got back to Hirakata station we said goodbye to Jessica; going back to her host family by train. The lines for the buses in the station were huge. We met Seimu and he said it was because of the opening of a new electronics store. We eventually got on a bus, and the traffic was again hectic. We found out why there were so many ambulance and police cars around this morning. There had been a robbery at the 99円 store. Indeed, we had seen police cars out the front of it this morning.
Getting back, the takoyaki was already cooking. It was really yummy; I had about 7. Then someone decided to make them with oreo's, calling them cookie-yaki. It was actually pretty nice. We danced a little, and got told off by Otosan for jumping around. Well not told off; he just came in and asked that we don't do it. He's really cool. I'd better get some sleep. I really hope it doesn't rain again, because I want to go to the Eisaa Festival, *fingers crossed*. Oh, and we found out that Tenpozan was formerly the biggest Ferris wheel; it's now the 14th largest. They need to update their signage...
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