Today was the opposite of yesterday, I guess I forgot to close my window before I fell asleep last night so I woke up at 5am freezing and with the morning delivery truck making noise outside. I couldn’t get back to sleep. When my alarm went off at 6am I went ahead and got up, showered, and out the door. I took the bullet train to Himeji, and walked over to one of the biggest and most gorgeous castles in Japan, in my opinion.
Himeji Castle is more of a spring castle, there are so many old cherry trees around it that during sakura season you can barely breathe there are so many people here, and that was 15 years ago so I can’t imagine it now! In the fall there’s not so much of a crowd, but it’s still gorgeous. I walked way up to the top floor, then back down and all around the outside, then back in to the side buildings and corridors. Then I went next door to Koko-en garden, which is definitely gorgeous during the fall with momiji, waterfalls, gigantic koi bigger than I’ve ever seen before, and mini-themed garden patches all hooked up in a maze. I hadn’t been there before, so it took me about an hour to get to it all. I walked through the shopping streets on my way back to the station, and went back to Osaka.
Since I couldn’t eat crab last night I made a reservation for tonight, and put on my comfy pants and a t-shirt and headed to Dotonbori to get fat. It was $50 all you can eat snow crab legs within 90 minutes, they also had a full buffet of other foods and you could order everything from raw crab (crab sashimi) to crab tempura. Well, 90 minutes was plenty of time, and I had to be practically rolled out of there. I’m probably solely responsible for the deaths of like 8 crabs tonight! All I wanted to do after eating that much was go lay in bed, and sleep early, so that’s the plan!
I woke up already feeling a bit burnt out, so I decided today was going to be one of those “do nothing but you’re really doing something” type of days. I laid in bed for a while, then got up and strolled over to Starbucks for a mocha and chocolate chunk scone, and sat and people watched for a while. I headed back to the hotel and packed up, and my plan was to do more stuff in Kyoto but I decided I kinda would rather just get over to Osaka before the trains got too packed. So I ditched my plans and hopped on the train (which ended up being packed anyway because this is Japan!) That left me with no plans at all, so after dropping off my suitcase at the hotel I pulled up Google Maps to see what was around within walking distance. There was a local park, Ogimachi Park, just a 10 minute walk to the north, so I decided to take a walk north. The park isn’t a tourist destination, it’s for locals, so there’s a walking path and a big empty dirt/gravel area in the middle where kids were playing soccer, families were playing catch and badminton, friends were tossing Frisbees, and a high school or young college age dance troop was practicing their routines.
I parked myself in the shade under a tree (it was a gorgeous, sunny 70 degree day with a light breeze), pulled out my much neglected book, and watched the dancers practice in between chapters. There was about 40 of them, and they first started with a full routine they all knew that was loud, energetic, and really fun looking. When I say dance troop I’m not talking about jazz or ballet, this was like acrobatic dancing with flared hands, high jumps, whipping their heads back, twisting and turning, every part of their body moving into the next step…like dancing and gymnastics rolled into one. It was really cool to watch their performance and practice their new routine. When traveling, I can get so wrapped up in the GO GO GO of it all that I forget to just sit and appreciate where I am, and have gratitude for the experience I’m having. This was one of those moments where I was having more fun just sitting in the dirt watching these kids having a blast than I’ve had the past two days walking 15km+ knocking out tourist hot spots, and I really needed that moment without even realizing I needed it. After an hour or so of practicing their new routine I pulled out my camera to record because honestly they were just SO into it and it was really funny, and one of them saw me recording and called me out so a bunch of them turned to wave and did their next practice round with EXTRA energy for my benefit which was cute. It instantly put me in a great mood that lasted for the rest of the day. After sitting in the park reading and watching for a couple hours it was time to officially check into my hotel, so I walked back and got my room.
Now, back in the day I really wasn’t a fan of Osaka. There were so many people, and they were so rushed, and I found them to be really rude compared to Kyoto, and I hated the crowds, so I tried to avoid it. But there was one thing that I went there for specifically, and that was the ribs at Hard Rock Café. Man, those ribs would just fall off the bone they were so good! So that was the first thing I looked up, and I noticed they were not where they used to be and I was a bit worried that maybe they’d changed a lot over the years. Regardless, I took the train over and ordered ribs. My worries were unfounded, the meat practically fell of the bone just like I remembered and it was delicious, still some of the best ribs I’ve ever had. After eating basically noodles and rice for a week some real meat was appreciated! The good thing about their new location is they’re on a main street, which just happens to be having their Festival of Lights. It’s similar to Chicago how they put lights on all of the trees and bushes and stuff for the holiday season, except instead of just a mile stretch with all white lights they do about a 3 mile stretch with different colored lights. I only walked the mile from Hard Rock Café to Dotonbori, and the lights were a rainbow of colors in that section.
Once at Dotonbori, which could be called Food Lovers Heaven since it’s like half a mile of straight restaurants, street food, and bars, I found the Glico Man and the giant creepy moving crab again. As I was strolling through, I noticed a boat tour was about to leave so I grabbed a ticket and jumped on that because, why not? It was a short ride, but gave an interesting 360 view of the Dotonbori shopping area. It’s on my list to eat both fugu (poisonous blowfish) and crab while I’m here since that’s what this area is most known for, but after eating my weight in bbq meat a couple hours prior I wasn’t hungry at all. So I jumped on the subway back to the hotel and called it a night.
I need to start getting into the habit of waking up early. In Japan, you need to get to everything as the sun rises to avoid the crowds. Today I failed at this, again. My alarm went off at 6am but I laid in bed snoozing every 10 minutes until after 7am. Then I got up and made coffee and sat on my balcony overlooking Wat Arun for an hour just reading and getting caffeinated. Then I went down for breakfast, and this place actually has real BACON! Not just cheap ham cut to look like bacon but for real bacon. It was an unexpected surprise and a good start to the day!
My first stop was Wat Pho, which houses this massive reclining Buddha statue. It was super-hot and the place was busy, but it’s a huge place and really neat to walk around and look at everything. After that I headed to Wat Ratchapradit Sathitmahasimaram (no I can’t pronounce it either), and although it was a much smaller temple the elaborate glass work on it was top notch. There were also a lot of birds here, so I sat for a while and listened to them sing. The next stop was the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha. The temple is supposedly the most famous and most sacred temple in Thailand, and because of that the place was PACKED. This is the first and only place I’ve been to in Thailand where you were really shoulder to shoulder and I had to move my purse to my front and cover it with my hand to avoid pickpockets. It was gorgeous, but for the crowd and the price I don’t think I’d recommend it. Plus the Emerald Buddha statue is tiny and way up on a pillar thing so you can’t even really see it and I have good eyesight. I moved through the temple fairly quickly just to get out of the crowd and went to the Palace, but you can’t even go inside, you can only look at the exterior so that was disappointing too. But, I got to see the Thai version of the “changing of the guards” which was neat, and the ticket included a free shuttle to the Royal Theater where you got to watch a Khon show with English subtitles so you knew what the heck was going on. That was really fun, I enjoyed it. After the show was over I walked back to the hotel and got some cashew chicken and rice for a linner/dunch, and cooled off in my room for a bit while the sun set outside my window.
I didn’t plan it this way, but today is Loy Krathong. In fact, if I had planned it better I wish I was in Chiang Mai tonight since it’s a waaaay bigger festival there with lanterns in the water and in the air. But, I’m in Bangkok, and I read that Wat Arun was a big place to be for the festivities so I hopped on a rickety ferry across the river to check it out. Unfortunately the temple itself was closed, but the party was going on outside. There was food, games, music, theater and hundreds of people walking around with various lanterns to put into the water.
For those not familiar, Loy Krathong is actually a bit of a hypocritical festival. People make these wreath things with candles, often out of plastic, light them up and put them in the river to thank the gods for the water and…apologize for…polluting the water? Yeah, so put plastic trash in the water to apologize to the gods for putting plastic trash into the water, haha! It seems like people are starting to catch on to this and even though there were still plastic krathongs there were more made out of organic plants, fruits and flowers. I wanted to participate, but didn’t want to throw anything into the already polluted river, so instead I donated some money to the temple monks who then gave you a little tea candle type thing in a reusable flower cup and you lit that and floated it in a nearby pool. True, it’s not a zero waste method, but better than the alternative. After hanging out for a bit, I hopped back on the ferry to Wat Pho. In hindsight, I should have done Wat Arun during the day when it was open, because Wat Pho was still open and now for free including the reclining Buddha. So I wandered around there again since there were far less people than in the morning, and watched some of the shows on the stage. It was getting late and I still needed to pack up for my trip to Japan tomorrow, so I called it a night and now I’m packing things up. Can’t believe it’s time for Japan already!
