osaka

6/5/5 – 6/8/5

after fukuoka, we spent a few days in osaka. osaka is one of the biggest cities in japan next to tokyo and is also one of the most liberal cities here too. we met up w/ two of randalls friends here and hung out w/ them too which was cool.

dotonbori

the main tourism street in osaka is dotonbori. the whole place is packed w/ restaurants, shops, bars, etc. there are so many of them, that they have to really compete against each other in order to get customers. because of that, they are all extremely flashy and have huge glowing neon signs, gigantic mechanical robots hanging on their building, enormous billboards, etc etc. it’s quite a scene walking around there. restaurants have crazy stuff hanging in front of their shops like a huge octopus or gigantic crab. people are passing flyers out everywhere. music is blaring all around. pretty cool.

sky building

in downtown osaka they have this huge building called the sky building. it’s basically two huge towers that are connected by an observation deck on top. the cool thing about the building though is that you ride a glass see-through elevator to get near the top, and then you ride the rest of the way, between the two towers, in a see-through glass escalator. it’s really crazy taking this escalator between the towers, many many stories up above the city and being able to see all around. the views of the city from the top are really cool too!

osaka aquarium

osaka has a huge aquarium that has the largest tank in the whole world. they actually have a whale shark in there, and i think this may be the only whale shark in any aquarium ever. this thing is huge… like 18 feet long. plus there is a manta ray and all sorts of other crazy stuff in there with it. the aquarium also has all sorts of other tanks w/ stuff, including one that has athese huge insane looking crabs. one of these thing had claws that were like 3 feet long!! yikes!

*v