Osaka

Well we've had the Resident Evil stuff, and we've had some ranting about shopping bags, now it's time to talk about the city of Osaka itself.

Well, to be honest with you, because of time constraints I didn't really get to see all that much of it, but what I did see I really liked.  I actually felt quite at home in Osaka, I don't know if anyone would agree but to me it kind of felt like someone had taken London and Manchester, smashed them together and them cleaned them up so they looked all nice.

This view somehow reminded me of Manchester Piccadilly

But before I could really take in the city, I was on a subway train heading to an area that had a load of temples in it.  It looked like a place that would usually be quite quiet, but we were fortunate enough to get there on what I think was a festival day, so the streets and temple areas were little with stalls selling all kinds of junk.

The owner was really expecting this stuff to sell?

It was a really nice, vibrant area with a really strong smell of incense coming from the temples as people lit them and said prayers and whatnot.  There was also a really chill garden that you had to pay a couple of hundred yen to get inside, but it was a really nice escape from the festival crowds, and gave some much needed chill time after a day of walking around.

The whole thing was a really nice, chill start to the day that was going to turn into a hardcore shopping trip as we got on another subway to a place called Namba.  I can't remember if I've mentioned it here, but there is a place near me called Osu Kannon, which is this enclosed little street area filled with shops and stuff.  Namba was basically this on fucking steroids, it was huge and we basically spent the rest of the day there and still didn't get through all of it.

Near Namba is a place called Dotonbori, which fans of the Yakuza games might recognise since this was an area featured in Yakuza 2.  It's basically more of the same thing, but they have this famous sign for the Glico company, which makes pocky and shit like that.

So the rest of the day was basically spent shopping, so I won't bore you with details of our shopping trip.  That said, there was a funky little boat ride just near the sign in the above picture, and I recorded a couple of minutes of it before my cameras battery started to crap out, so have a gander at this video!

Following this post, the gaming shall resume!