03/25 Osaka

We started the day off by going to Osaka Castle and the surrounding
park. Like in Nara, the sakura tree were beginning to blossom and the
skies were blue. The castle only resembled a castle on the outside and
contained a museum and observation floor inside. The history of the
castle was quite interest since I don't know much Japanese histoy and
focused on the man we unified japan and his family's fall from power
one generation later.


After the castle we headed over to Osaka Bay to take a look around
there. The first island in the bay was sort of a ghost town but we found a
free ferry to get to another island. This area was Tempozan and had
some large ferris wheel, which we got on. The view was pretty cool and
seeing all the overpasses in Osaka was neat. We walked around the
market there for a bit and found some awesome engrish shirts but they
were expensive.

We headed back to Dotonbori street for dinner and went to a place to try fugu (puffer fish). It was a tad pricy, so no one else had it but me. The first course was thinly cut sashimi. The fish was fairly chewy and had the texture of a mushroom. The taste was not very store either, also similar to a mushroom. After a while, your tongue gets a slight tingly sensation, but other then that, nothing much happens. The meal also came with fugu deep fried, which made it lose the tingly property, and in raw chunks for nabe (hot pot). When cooked in the hot pot, it became over cooked very fast, resulting in a tough fish. Overall, the sashimi was the best and was something interesting to try, but not worth it to try often.

After dinner, we found a manga store that had a bunch of Full Metal Panic manga, which i picked up. Hopefully i can find the whole series.

Tomorrow we head over to Kyoto for a couple days and get a tour of a toyota factory soon, so should be interesting.