Osaka Life Part II: Late June
The past two weeks that I’ve settled in Osaka the days have been drenched from the rain season. Fortunately, the rain has slowed down. Alas, in its wake the area has been suffering a terribly humid heat wave. According to all of the locals I came during the worst month for climate conditions. Not ideal for days spent exploring, but since muggy is better than rainy I set out a couple times this week.
I took my first ride into Kita, the northern more metropolitan business district. After a forty minute ride through the thick atmosphere I arrived at the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living. At the top of a ten story building hides a detailed reproduction of an 1800’s (Edo Period) main street, alleyways, houses, and shops. You basically have free roam of the miniature city, but since the information isn’t in English I can’t really tell you much about what I saw. It was a pretty cool place to spend a couple hours, but there isn’t much to say.
See photos from the Museum of Housing & Living
On Friday, to my surprise the skies were blue! I quickly stuffed my day pack and started off towards northern Osaka to visit the open air museum of Japanese traditional houses. This sight has been recommended to me by anybody who has visited it. So, I anxiously hopped on the twenty-minute ¥350 train only to find that a mysterious rain cloud appeared over my destination and began a torrential downpour just as I arrived.
That’s it… I give up trying to make anything happen during the day here. Getting stuck inside avoiding the climate when everyone is at work is pretty boring. Riding a bike for any more than a few minutes on the humid days is just plain masochistic. Luckily there is a great night-life here, and the evenings are usually cool and boast clearer skies. I’ve shifted back to a nighttime schedule again, and awoke around 4pm today.
Pub crawls are as easy as walking next door, across the hallway or to the next building over. It seems that everybody and their mother owns a bar in Osaka. The cool thing is that each place has its own unique style and cast of interesting characters, so there is always something interesting happening at night.
There is one other thing worth mentioning. Early today, I was killing some time by trying to understand what is happening in the anime on TV. In a break there was a commercial advertising a new cell phone with a built in TV-tuner! Absolute craziness!! What’s next?
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Tags: - Photography, Asia, Japan, Japan: Kansai, Kansai, Osaka
Adam Shane
OK…. I had to ask, didn’t I?
Q: What’s next?
A: Motion Sensor video games on the cell phones! They have a boxing game out, or coming out soon!!