MOOD: UNFINISHED BUSINESS
LISTENING TO: THE OFFSPRING – CHANGE THE WORLD
SWIMMING WITH SHARKS:
Today was my last day in Osaka; tomorrow I leave the neon haze behind for greener (and more cultured) pastures in Kyoto. After a rainy day yesterday I decided that the best way to use my final day was to hit up the sights that I had missed the first time around.
The first stop on my list was the Osaka aquarium. I had initially been skeptical, but after a few recommendations from fellow travellers and locals (not to mention the clincher - a positive review in my Lonely Planet Guide) I was convinced that it was worth a shot. It didn't disappoint.
I'm not sure why, but this seal just looked sad without a big beachball to balance on its nose.
The aquarium is modelled after the so-called Pan Pacific Ring of Fire and Ring of Life. Starting north of Japan, a winding circuit takes you around the Pacific in a clockwise direction, culminating with marine life from Japan itself. As with the Osaka Museum of History, you start off on the top floor and wind your way down. It really is quite a trip, given that the ring of fire stretches all the way from North America to Antarctica to the Great Barrier Reef.
I'm not exactly sure why the sloth was included in the exhibit. He didn't particularly look like he wanted to be there either.
I tried humming the Happy Feet theme, but nothing. What are we paying these guys for, anyway?
The Great Barrier Reef exhibit. Just how I remembered it from when I was a kid.
There are of course the standard features of an aquarium: hundreds of different types of fish, interesting factoids and a gift shop. What sets Osaka aquarium apart is the breadth of its displays and its unique structure. A trip through will let you get up close and personal with every form of marine life from spider crabs to whale sharks, with a fair dose of cute furry animals (seals, penguins, otters) thrown in for good measure. If you can stand the squeeling of teenage girls at the dolphin section you can even stick around long enough to see them do a couple of tricks.
The Great Barrier Reef from the floor below.
The whale shark. I'm glad there were a few feet of acryllic glass between me and it.
For some reason that little fish was swimming below the manta ray. The ray tried to shake it off by doing a loop-the-loop, but it just ended up with the little fish swimming on top of it instead. It's nice to know that shameless mooching isn't a behaviour limited to our species.
As mentioned before, the other fantastic thing about the aquarium is its structure. It is multileveled, meaning that as you wind your way down you can get a different view. Particularly impressive is the central tank that houses the collossal whale shark, a fair few sting rays, a handful of octopi and a spectacular selection of fish.
Wouldn't be a Japanese aquarium without some puffer fish, would it?
Apparently I can look forward to catching some of these spider crabs in their natural habitat when I travel further south.
You should be warned, however, that Osaka aquarium is a perennial favourite of both locals and tourists. I had been warned against going on a weekend, so I went on a Wednesday. I had done so in the hope of avoiding the rush of young families that flood the place on weekends, but I ended up with a couple of school excursions instead. Add a pack of boistrous high school boys and a veritable herd of primary schoolers to the aforementioned squeeling teenage girls and you've got the equivalent of a coal-fired power plant in terms of noise pollution.
WHEN YOU RUN OUT OF TRAVEL STORIES, WRITE ABOUT FOOD:
After finishing up at the aquarium I headed to the nearby shopping mall to get a mid-morning snack. I was doing fairly well money-wise, so I decided to splurge 350 yen ($4.50) on a 'sakura-flavoured' ice cream. The result was spectacularly underwhelming – it tasted suspiciously like strawberry to me.
It sure didn't taste like Geishas and drinking sake under a full moon, that's for sure.
To add to my misfortune it was around that time that my trusty old pair of earphones died. Well, that's not entirely true – the left one died. Why is it always the left one? I've had close to ten pairs of earphones over the past eight or so years and it's always the left one that dies first. Anyway, I decided to check out Den-Den Town, the electronics capital of Osaka and its answer to Tokyo's Akihabara.
"Are you sure this is Den-Den Town?""Pretty sure, yep."
To be honest, this place was also kind of disappointing. Perhaps it's because Akihabara truly is in a class of its own, but I just didn't get the uber-geek vibe that had been so overwhelming in Akihabara. While Akihabara is a place with a unique character, Den-Den Town just feels like a bunch of electronics shops stuck together with a smattering of second hand CD stores and a few cheap eateries added in for variety. I stopped at one such eatery for lunch, then stuck around for a few hours browsing the stores. Japan seems to have an obsesssion with inner-ear earphones at the moment, but I resisted the temptation and got a regular set. The last thing I needed in an urban jungle were noise-cancelling eardrum destroyers. It's hard enough to tell when there's a cyclist behind you. I also managed to find the Tower Records that I had been searching for a few days back, although their selection was much more limited than the Tokyo branch's.
Lunch in Den-Den Town. I was considering trying the same meal in a can, which I'd seen selling in a nearby store, but I decided that it was a dish best served hot.
By then I had done a fair bit of walking and my camera was out of batteries so I went back to my hotel to charge it up and rest for a bit. Later that night I headed out to downtown Osaka for one last glimpse of the flashing lights and decided to continue my day of Japanese cuisine by trying Japan's answer to McDonalds: Moss Burger. Apart from the unique Japanese take on hamburgers, the thing that sets Moss Burger apart is its focus on the actual burger. When you order McDonalds you usually get a set, whereas with Moss Burger people are inclined to just get a burger with a complimentary glass of water. Interestingly enough, Moss Burger also has strong ties to the agricultural sector in Japan and spruiks an 'eat Japanese' policy. It would have been nice if that meant Wagyu beef in my burger, but it was still pretty tasty as it was.
Just look for the crimson arches.
This is the first time I've had a burger that actually looked like it did in the advertisement (see below).
The headline reads "Let's munch on Japan". Probably catchier in Japanese than it is in English.
The rest of the night was fairly uneventful. I went back to Amerika-Mura, checked out some clothes (didn't find anything I liked enough to buy) and sat on the banks of the Dotombori-gawa watching the night go by. It was a surprisingly relaxing end to a frenetic week in the party capital of Japan.
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