Osaka Airport & How to Use a Squat Toilet

We are now waiting in the Osaka airport. We have a 5:15 pm flight which gets to SF at 11:00am the same day. The we get to Seattle at 6:00 pm, so the flight is less than 1 hour. We'll call when we are in SF.

This morning we took a short walk to the Osaka Castle, which is in a nice park near our hotel. We didn't go in since we had just been to Hemiji, which is supposed to be much better. The Osaka Castle was rebuilt in 1969, so it's not that historic. There really aren't old buildings in the cities either, such as you find in Europe. We guess the reason is that the structures are made of wood and have either burned down, or were torn down for hi rise structures. This will be the last entry. Maybe I'll put a few pictures on later.

Osaka

Today is our last day in Japan. We bought a day pass for the subway. As with every city we have visited so far, the public transportation is very good & easy to use. She found a knitting store that someone in Seattle told her about. It was located in Bic Camera, which has six floors of electronics. Ruth wanted to bring something back from Japan besides memories. The Nikei Index should go up on Monday.

Hemiji & Nara

Today we left Hiroshima and went to Himeji Castle one the way to Osaka. Since it was the last day of our JR pass, as soon as we arrived in Osaka, we left for Nara. Himeji Castle is more of what you think of a castle, than the Nijo Castle in Kyoto. In Nara, there is a park with several temples and tame deer all over the place. They sell deer crackers, so the deer are not afraid of people. Everyone was taking pictures of the deer, including us. After awhile, it’s kind of annoying trying to avoid stepping in deer droppings. Supposedly the Buddha is the largest in Japan. The have a hole in a log that kids crawl through that is supposed to be as big as the nostril. However, the Buddha is nothing compared to the one we saw in Thailand. When we got back to Osaka, we had a grilled steak. They give you the slab of meat & you cook it yourself on a grill. I don’t know if it was Kobe beef, but it was as tasty a steak as I’ve ever had. It was really marbled with fat. It was cut only about 3/4 inch, so it wasn’t a lot of meat, but it was enough, since it had so much fat. Since the Lee’s had already been to Nara on an earlier tour, they went to Kobe to get Kobe beef. The other pictures are at a Pachinko Palace. It’s really noisy, much worse than any casino. I don’t know how people can stay in there very long. Tomorrow is our last full day. There isn’t really much to do in Osaka, so Mom plans to do a little (if that is possible) shopping.

Miyajima

Today we took a trip to Miyajima. It was free using the JR rail pass, which also included the short ferry ride. It's about a 45 minute trip from Hiroshima. If you look closely, there is a structure at the top of the mountain. We took a tram most of the way up & then hiked up to the top (well, most of us did). Its 535 meters above sea level, or about 1,500 ft.

There were tame deer all over the place. Supposedly there were monkeys also, but we didn't see any. On the way off the ferry, we saw Ichiro.

Hiroshima

From the beauty of the gardens and temples in Kyoto to the ugliness of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. There's not much more to say than what the pictures show. At the time the cities population was 350,000. 140,000 died from the bomb. The rusty tricycle is from the grave of a three year old. He was buried with the tricycle in his backyard because he like to ride it so much and his father thought he was too young to die. Years later he was buried in the family grave yard. The little girl is Sadako. She was two when the bomb was dropped. She is famous because she tried to make 1,000 paper cranes when she got cancer at the age of 11 because she thought it would allow her to make a wish. She never got to 1,000. There is a children's monument in her honor. The night picture is the atomic dome. The building survived, but as you can see, the dome was destroyed.