Kansai Day 7 (26/10/07): Osaka

We are in luck! today is no-my-car-day. in order to encourage pple not to drive but to use public transport, the Osaka transport Authority made the 20th of every month and every fri no-my-car-day. u can get a day pass for 600 yen instead of the normal 850 yen which entitles u to unlimited rides on the subway, bus, tram, within Osaka. so we got to save 250 yen just because we made the right choice in choosing today as our Osaka day.

today we visited two museums. one of them i thought was very interesting was the Osaka museum of housing and Living. the highlight of that museum was a life size replica of a town during the Edo period (the period juz before Meiji period in 19th century). we can go and wander around the town, walk into the houses, look at the furniture and touch the utensils and they even simulated day and night. at night there will be sound effects like crickets and insect noises and when day breaks there will be a rooster crowing and during the day there will be sounds of everyday life like pple chatting, bargaining for prices. oh and they simulated rain as well, but without the raindrops... haha. the sky grew darker and then there was sound of thunder. i thot it was quite interesting. but i told JY that i thought the exhibit would be even better if they have real pple acting as the inhabitants of the town, dressed in their edo period clothes. but this was quite impossible cuz to make it realistic, u will need to employ a huge cast to portray the bustling town. and the investment may not even be worth it because from what i observe there were not that many visitors to the museum and most of them were the locals themselves.

the 2nd museum we visited was the Kamigata Ukiyoe Museum which featured paintings with woodblock prints. this one was a bit hard to appreciate cuz woodblock prints is not sth that we see everyday (unlike housing) so i really need to read the Japanese explanationto understand but again with my lousy Jap i couldn't really get far.

today was a rainy day and we thought we were really lucky because we have done all our outdoor sightseeing the past few days and today was mainly museums and indoor shopping. i realized i am always quite lucky when it comes to weather. I can still rem when i was in Taiwan it rained only on the last day we were there and on the day when we were at the National Palace Museum (indoors) and the weather was perfect every other day. when i was in Phuket the weather was also very good on the two days we were at Phi Phi and Phang Nga and it rained on our last day there. In HK, the first day we were there there was warning for no. 8 typhoon but this was reduced to 1 by the next day. so i seem quite lucky when it comes to weather.

Actaully the museums here are quite cheap - 500 to 600 yen amounts to abt $7 or $8 which is cheap compared to museums in Europe. of course if u can read the language, u will prob gain even more. we also noticed there were many smokers in Japan. and they smoke everywhere, even in restaurants and small eateries, at busstops, but thankfully not on public transport. even the girls light up as and when like nobody's business, but it spoils their image. after smelling so much cigarette smoke the past few days, all of a sudden u appreciate singapore's laws that ban smoking in public places and restaurants.

we went over to Cosmos Square in the evening juz to see what the place is like. but there was nothing much there, we looked at the setting sun, saw a ferris wheel in a distance and that's abt it. perhaps this place will be more developed in the years to come. we had a very nice dinner of Yakitori at Umeda. after dinner we started our last night of shopping. honestly in Japan, there's really no lack of nice things to buy. we were shopping around Hep 5 and shinsaibashi suji. because it was friday, shinsaibashi suji seemed exceptionally crowded and u could see big groups of young men in black suit and tie, in very funny hairstyles (basically coloured hair styled in a very messy way) talking very loudly or on their handphones. we are also not sure whether they are part of a group or syndicate or what they were doing. but that was how colourful the night life here was. but i still think the shops here close far too early. eating places still ok.