Day 5 has come and gone, and with that let's greet Day 6 with a new area. For the last five days we have been staying mostly within the southern area of Osaka. Today we're planning something bold by venturing into the northern section.
But before that let's supplement some of the posts Colin and Matt did yesterday.
We started off the day with finding the Shitennoji Temple and the Sutenkaku Tower as well as hopefully finding a bank where I can finally exchange my foreign currency.
We first tried to find a bank near Tennoki station where I could do some exchanging. Alas, it was not meant to be as the banks were closed for Golden Week (and they won't be opening till today). Since that proved fruitless we headed back towards Tennoji Station.
Along the way we got distracted by an arcade filled with fighting games. We couldn't resist the allure and ended up spending a few 100 yen coins there. You can see the videos I took of Matt playing some King of Fighter 13 and Blazblue Continuum Shift on his post from last night.
With that done, we continued along our way but our empty stomachs demanded remedying. Stepping back into Tennoji Station, we headed up stairs and found a restaurant to dine in. Matt posted pictures of the lunch we had. If I remember correctly, Matt had a Sashimi Lunch Set, Colin had some fried tofu with a dish of cucumber slices. And I settled with a bowl of chicken-raw egg rice lunch set.
Our appetite for food and game sated, we finally left the Tennoji Station area and continued on to Shitennoji Temple. It is one of the earliest Buddhist temples that was built in Japan. And had existed for 1400 years.
The Temple Grounds was pretty large, here's a picture of one of the walls that surrounded the Temple.
Like the Sumiyoshi Shrine we visited on Day 2, the Shitennoji Temple consisted of many smaller shrines with one large main temple located in the centre of the grounds.
The main temple was accessible without paying the entrance fee, so we decided no to go in and just wander around the grounds. Here's a picture of Colin and Matt at the entrance to the main tower.
We saw some monks there as well. Even monks need cell phones these days.
We went around the entire grounds before we decided to leave. Outside I took some photos of some interesting sights that you wouldn't see in Canada. I'll see if I can make this a daily feature in my posts.
Daily Culture Oddities
When space is very tight and when you're really efficient, you tend to make use of everything you can get. Here is one of Japan's solutions for parking space. A car-elevator parking lot.
It definitely a innovative solution but in case you worry of not being able to get to your car or just simple don't enjoy the heights, there are regular parking lots as well.
With the Shitennoji Temple behind us, we tried to get to the Shutenkaku Tower but found ourselves yet in another Shrine.
Our feet tired and the Sun getting to us, we decided not to go up the tower when we reached it but took some pictures from the outside instead.
We intended to head back straight to the Hostel but again we were tempted by another arcade. Unlike the first one, this was much smaller with more casual games. The one best of all has to be the Taiko Drum Master. Here's Colin playing it to the opening for Lucky Star, sorry it gets cut off at the end. Matt and I attempted it was well, you can see a video of that on Matt's post.
Still despite many of the moment changes we were pretty satisfied with how yesterday went, let's see what today has in store for us.
How's the night life at Japan?
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