It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this!

Heh heh heh.

Midterms are rough on a poor young girl in Japan that wants to spend her time exploring and having adventures. Actually, midterm time has been no different than any other week thanks to the ridiculous amount of vocabulary and lesson tests we are subjected to. Because of this, when I woke up on a cloudy Saturday, I knew it was time to stand up to my mountainous pile of homework and… go do something else.

Most of my friends already had plans for the day, so I decided to try and head out on my own. Japanese cities seem so much safer than those at home, and I have a pretty good sense of direction, so I didn’t think I would get lost. Plus, I had my handy-dandy guidebook with a map.
So, after a wonderful home-cooked lunch, I set my course for downtown Osaka. For, right in the middle of the city, is Osaka-jo, a seven storey fortress first built in the 16th Century. I only wondered why two months had already passed before I went. I love castles.

I had an uneventful train ride to Temmabashi station, and walking out through the station mall, I found a sign pointing me in the right direction. Excellent! I couldn’t see the castle yet, but I knew it must be close by. While waiting at a stop light, I took a look to the left and…

Hey! There’s a bridge! The river must be over there!! (I’ll admit… the real reason I wanted to go out on my own was so I could run around like the easily distracted person I am without confusing a group of friends to no end.)

And I surely did find the river. It even had a park running alongside it, which I couldn’t resist.


So, walking down the path on the right side of the river, I ran into a fence. No problem! I headed to the other side where there were several people biking and playing Frisbee, couples sitting on benches… the usual. I knew this was most likely the wrong side of the river from the castle, but I could always head back the way I came from. Or, I could take this cool bridge.


As I crossed the bridge, I looked ahead and there, in the distance, was Osaka-jo! I was headed in the right direction again. I found my way inside the outer gates.

This was one of the guardians at the entrance.



I want a moat….

After crossing the moat, the path led into the park where I saw a guy dressed in a clown outfit with all kinds of props, a kid with Kleenex stuck up his nose and some kind of performance group. I couldn’t tell what the instruments they had were, and I didn’t get a picture until I was farther away.

At this point, I was right up next to the fortress, and had a really cool angle that reminded me of drawing different perspectives in high school art class. (I mainly drew castles in art class…)

There’s even an inner moat, covered in moss and ivy. I REALLY want one of these.

Coming around to the courtyard in front of the castle, there were a lot of flowers left over from the chrysanthemum festival they had held recently.


If I hadn’t seen enough random things for the day, I ran into one of those time capsule things.


According to this sign, the capsule is “a gift to mankind 5000 years from now.” Which means that it will be opened in…. 6970. Wow. Really?

I still can’t get over how ridiculously pretty this castle is.

I headed inside, trekked up eight flights of stairs to the top, stepped out onto the balcony to enjoy the view.

Hey! There’s that cool bridge from earlier.

There’s the courtyard. You can see that flower formation toward the bottom left.

There were several of these decorating the roof:

This is the Osaka History Museum, which I didn’t go to, but looks really cool. It’s connected to the building for NHK, the major TV station for Osaka. We watch the NHK news at 7 almost every night.


Do you see that, how the buildings go and keep going until they’re completely covered in mist? That’s where the world stops. There is nothing beyond this point. Here there be dragons and all that stuff. I love cloudy days.

I walked down through the castle and the museum it hosts, telling the story of how the castle was built and major events that took place in the area, along with several suits of samurai armor from the era. I really wish I could have taken pictures of those…

On my way out, I ran into another weird flower sculpture.

I’m still trying to figure it out.

I headed back for the station, wanting to get back before it got dark (around 4:30 p.m. …I’m not really exaggerating.) I found this beautiful statue, complemented by the changing leaves on the trees behind her.

It had a plaque with some Engrish about the door to everlasting peace and the planetary citizen and… it sounded nice. Sure. And Osaka-jo got smaller and smaller in the horizon….

So, I learned I am a pretty good navigator, even when I go on my attention-span-of-a-goldfish detours. But you know, it’s those detours that cause me to find some really interesting places that might not be on the map, like a cool bridge, or shrine to Thomas Edison (see Arashiyama) or the International Manga Museum in Kyoto (more on that later). Therefore, the moral for today is to take detours and go out and find cool places on your own. Unless you get lost easily. In that case, I’ll be happy to explore with you.

In my case, I arrived home to be greeted with a wonderful bowl of Okaa-san’s famous curry rice. Yum. I’ll have another, please.

Have you prayed for electromagnetic radiation today?

Well, have you? I’m sure this guy has:

After my trip to Asuka, the next two weeks flew by, mostly thanks to a bunch of tests, homesickness causing me to not want to do much of anything, and Typhoon 18, which only inconvenienced me in that it kept me from sleeping and made me wait around for class forever the next day.

Thankfully, there was another holiday coming up. What was it for? Health and Sports day! We got another Monday off. In celebration, we planned a little trip for Saturday.

At 10 a.m., we set off for Kyoto, changing train lines in the heart of the city at Gion-Shijo station. We could already tell it was going to be another lovely day as we headed down to catch the other train line.

After about an hour and a half trip, we reached our destination – Arashiyama, the famous mountain whose bamboo forest has graced the back of Japanese postcards for years and years.

By this time, we were a little hungry, so we stopped at the Mini Stop and grabbed some lunch. A couple of lucky pigeons got a little lunch too, because Cailyn was willing to give up a little bit of her sandwich.

I pulled out my guidebook and we headed down the street we thought was the most likely to take us over to the main stretch of town. Along the way, we ran into an awesome temple, Horenji. It wasn’t mentioned at all in my Lonely Planet guide, being a small place.

Why was this temple, amazing, you ask? Well, because of this shrine:

Close up:

Do you know who is on that plaque? Why, it’s Thomas Alva Edison, along with Hertz, who is honored here at Dendengusha shrine, which, from the main temple’s sign, is “dedicated to protecting electricity and electromagnetic radiation.” Needless to say, we stopped here to thank the “gods” of electricity before moving on. Lonely Planet, how could you have missed that?

And just a stone’s throw from Dendengusha was our next stop – the Monkey Park!

My guidebook said how steep the climb to the top of the park was, but we weren’t quite prepared for it, having to stop a couple of times after climbing over 9,000 stairs. We did find some cool things on the way though.

The view from the top of the park was spectacular, a panoramic scene of Kyoto.

Did I mention these little guys were up there too?

While we climbed up the mountain, a few monkeys joined us on our hike. However, we had no idea there would be this many waiting for us at the top. We were told not to feed them, make direct eye contact and especially not touch them.

They were just chilling out there, admiring the view with us and scavenging for food on the ground. People can go inside the building and get some nuts to feed them with, which has to be done through those windows like in the picture above.

We didn’t feed them, but we spent plenty of time taking pictures of them and watching them fight and groom each other, occasionally taking a break to get a drink at the koi pond. One of the workers tried to get one to come over and be in a picture with the three of us, but as soon as his treat hit the ground, the little guy snatched it away and ran off to eat it by himself.

After trekking back down the mountain, we crossed the famous bridge to head to the bamboo forest. The bridge was packed with tourists, gaijin and Japanese alike.

We decided a castle (preferably Howl’s moving one) should be on top of the hill in the middle here:

We took a stroll through the garden of the big temple at Arashiyama, Tenryu-ji.

The garden exited right into the entrance to the famous bamboo forest.

I can’t explain how beautiful and mystical it feels to walk through that path. It was something that felt like quintessential Japan. Anyone that comes here needs to experience that forest.

Unfortunately, everyone else in the country also holds this view, and so it was extremely crowded. We took refuge in Okochi-sanso villa, home to a famous samurai actor, where we were also served tea. He was even rich enough to have a private shrine on his estate.

And a moss garden:

After our tea, it was getting late, so we decided to head back home. Crossing back over the famous bridge, we saw something unbelievable:

My first rainbow in Japan, complementing the already perfect scenery. I was so excited.

When I got home, my aching feet informed me that they wanted the next day off. Probably not a horrible idea, since I had a ridiculous number of tests coming up the next week anyway.