7-day Japan exploration -Osaka

25th April 2014


We started our day very early. One of us has to start rising from bed as early as 3 in the morning, local time (which is one hour ahead of Malaysia time) to catch Fajr prayer and taking turn to the one and only bathroom in the house.

Our next destination started from hopping onto subway at Gojo Station,heading to JR station to catch train to Osaka city.

So at 5 o'clock we have already on the road.Oh man, even at this early hour, the city and the people were no less busy. Pfftt!~~

The day was still early when we arrived in Osaka. The men in suits were seen everywhere rushing to work, I guess.

We wasted no time and headed to first destination of the day, Sumiyoshi-taisha shrine. It was a looonng walk in the sunny yet chilled day. But at the end of the search for this place, we were thrilled upon seeing the spectacular view inside the area.

The following destination was Shittenoji temple. By this time, Kak Gee already gave up from resuming the tour and returned to Kyoto instead due to the pain at her ankle. So we continued with the remaining 4 of us walking to the next attractions. We dropped by at 100 yen shop and I was so glad that finally I found the dried seaweed, one of items that I was looking for eating in Japan! Munching them throughout the walk, I forgot the hot day instantly.

The next attraction in list was to go to Shinsekai. There was nothing interesting here.Since we have reached here, so we took picture featuring the Osaka Tokyo as the background.

We then proceeded to Shinotteji Temple, and saw the locals were crowding some sort of  flea market selling pre-loved books.

 

Quietly, I eyed for any interesting English books that might be sold, but no luck. And one thing I amused most about this market, it was very quiet, despite so many buyers were coming in! Truly, I have never seen the situation of its kind at so many countries that I have visited!

 

Spontaneously we toned down our voices, excitement to pose and laughter to fit in the quiet crowd. Kih kih kih.

We were ready to proceed to Shinsaibashi. We were told that we can buy the souvenirs here, as there were available at this place.The idea of having some shopping after exhausting walks has really uplifted our mood meter which were already half red.Grrr..

However, in order to reach Shinsaibashi, we need to walk across Namba Walk, at almost 30-45minutes. Thankfully it was under roof and there were shops here and there to stop.

Zaira and Fiza had shown vital sign of exhaustion. Seriously we never walked this far in our lives, except for marathon or walkathon. That is an exception, as we were not really mentally prepared that our tour would be this farrrrrr away to reach by foot. *gasp*

Out of the spirit to find for the said souvenirs shops, we toured round and round Shinsaibaishi, but at the end of many hours navigating the area, the efforts were fruitless. I didnt know where it went wrong, but somehow we felt like we were at lost in the crowd with map in our hands.

So we returned to the bus station to hop on the bus to our final destination of the day, Osaka mosque. It was the right bus, all of us were alert. But again, the bus  kept moving on and on and on for almost an hour, until we saw the signage "Kobe". O.M.G!

I started to feel goose bump on my skin, as the day was getting dark and our journey in the bus did not show any good sign that we were heading to the right destination as we left Osaka further and further away. We tried to communicate in English with the local teenagers next to us, but they seemed having difficulties to understand us.

We do not want to be dragged further in the bus, so we hopped off the bus in the middle of nowhere.

I was started thinking that we might ended up sleeping over at the roadside if the bus was not available to return at the hour.

The information board was written in Japanese, so I have no other option but to hail for the passing cyclists, a few times being ignored until a teenager who was willing to stop and help us. The bus was still available, but we have to wait until its arrival time, 20 minutes or so, he said in chicken and duck way of communication. pffttt....

At last, the bus arrived, punctually and we returned to the bus station where we started this haywire journey. Not so much of a good day today in Osaka. Bye.