Around Osaka!

 

There was this taco yaki stand near my hotel, so I ended up going there a couple times.  Also, it was like, half the price of the other booths in more popular places!  And they were great! 

There was often a short line of Japanese people also waiting for some tacoyaki

One specialty of Osaka is also Kushikatsu, or fried breaded skewers of stuff!  So I also ate some of that one night.  Maybe a little greasy, but definitely tasty.  I had, from bottom to top, potato, mushroom, beef, horumon (I believe homumon=intestine, but it was just kind of chewy and meaty, like a smooth muscle or something, and not bad!), then on the left, a chicken meatball, and a slice of kabochya pumpkin, and then a chicken wing.  The wing was actually really good.  It was breaded and fried like everything else, but also the wing tip was left on but the bones were removed, so it was just this really tasty, crunchy, juicy couple bites.  You also get a bunch of big cabbage leaves (at the top) and can dip everything in a soy type sauce.  Also, they had several types of beer.  With friends this could definitely be fun. 

In the convenience store, I noticed that there were premade, crustless, shelf-stable egg salad sandwiches.  Also shelf-stable minced katsu sandwiches and Hamburgers.  So again, thats also pretty awesome/ horrifying.   

Ha, then along with titles like Toy Story 3 and X-Men: Wolverine, at the convenience store you can also get quality titles like Down Periscope with Kelsy Grammer, Harley Davidson and the Marlbro Man, and the X-Files movie.

The picturesque walls and outer moat around Osaka-Jo

Osaka-Jo and a very nice flower display. 

There as actually a time capsule thing there too, with actually 2 separate capsules.  It was first made during an international expo or something in 1970.  So there was one capsule to be opened every century (so in 2000, then 2100, etc.), and then the second capsule isn't to be opened for 5,000 years!  So in the year 6970!  It would be amazing for that to work, and/but like, I can't even imagine what will happen between now and in 5,000 years, and what things will be like.  I hope everything will be fine and like, they'll remember it's even there. 

View from the Osaka Museum of the Osaka-Jo site.

Night view from the Floating Garden Terrace atop the Umeda Sky Building

Same place in a different direction.  It was like this all the way around.

Also, there were black lights and glow in the dark flecks in the walkway which was pretty, and the whole place had a romantic theme.  Even with a place where you can buy a lock, have it engraved with your names, and put it on a like "lovers fence".  There were a ton of couples there too.

I also went to some museums, but either no pictures allowed, it wasn't very photogenic, or there wasn't much of anything interesting to photograph, so no pictures!