Kyoto and Osaka

Monday was a funny day, saw some nice culture as usual, but it was absolutely freezing! Was a bit of a weird day all in all. We'd decided to try and start saving some cash on the Sunday, as we'd been rattling through it a bit and had settled on spending only 30 quid a day. It's managable, but as the Sunday and then the Monday grew colder, so I became more miserable. It's hard being cold all the time and being skint, so we chucked our saving money idea out the window and have now resumed spending what we want, which to be honest isn't that much, but if we're going to try and save money we might as well be in a hot country where you don't have to spend money just to get out of the cold!
Apart from the cold weather, which has now got milder :) we went to see Nijo-jo. So, a jo is a castle, or in this case a palace. Lone Wolf fans listen up! Nijo-jo was built in 1603 by Tokugawa Ieyasu. He was the first warlord to unite all of Japan and took the title of Shogun. The Tokugawa clan ruled Japan from 1600 till 1860 something. The inside of the palace has a very cool feature. 'Nightingale' floor boards. The floorboards are constructed in such a way so that when you walk on them they creak, but they creak in a kind of sweet sounding way, hence the name. It was pretty impressive stuff, I tried sneaking around like a ninja, but it's impossible :) A couple of the main rooms in the palace had some dummies dressed as the shogun meeting his daimyo (feudal lords) and it really brought the comics alive! Also, you could see the hollyhock crescent all over the place; you could imagine Retsudo Yagyu walking round the corner at any moment!
Monday evening was spent in the warm, delighting in the glory that is Shabu~shabu. This is basically do-it-yourself cooking. You get a big pot of hot broth put in front of you and a plate of raw veg and meat. You then cook said veg / meat in the broth and then wang it in the accompanying dips. Very nice!
Tuesday we decided to get out of Kyoto and so headed for Osaka. Osaka is Japans second biggest city and on the brief glimpse we had of it, a dump! Well, alot of it looked like a building site. Some nice buildings here and there, particularly one called the Umeda Sky building. You can see why its called the sky building in the photo here what I took. Its an absolutely mental building to look at, what you can't really see here is that it looks like a futuristic Arc De Triomphe. We went up to the 39th floor for a nice view of Osakas many building sites; I think my vertigo is gradually improving :)

Anyway, the reason for going to Osaka was to visit the aquarium! We love our fish and in Osaka they have the worlds biggest fish in the worlds biggest fish tank! Rhincodon typus, is as I'm sure I don't need to tell you all, a Whale shark. These fellas can grow up to 40ft long, this particular one was about 15ft at a guess, a tiddler really, but it was nice to see for the first time a creature I've wanted to see for a long time now. Really, really hope we bump into a monster one while we are doing some scuba! Don't worry Parents out there, they only eat plankton :) Osaka aquarium was amazing! What they've done is basically got as many fish, dolphins, otters, seals, turtles and ... monkeys?? and stuffed them into really, really massive tanks. Apart from a proper whale, theres not alot they haven't got here and the tanks are so big that you don't worry about the conditions these creatures are living in. Well worth visiting Osaka for! It's definately time for an aquarium slide show, so enjoy, and why not have a nice fish supper tonight...mmmmmmmmm...fissssssshhhhhh :)