By Chris
Today we set our own schedule so we could take our time with seeing Osaka. First thing for Danae to do was sleep in of course. When we finally hit the streets, we decided it would make for a good blog entry to check out a "love hotel" (hotels specififally designed for 1 hour or more sexual rendevous). It wasn't long before Danae spotted a sign for one of thee, not-as-dubious-as-you-would-think, hotels. The easiest way to tell a love hotel is a sign with prices on a board for "rest" or "stay". Rest means you are going to have sex for an hour or so; stay means you want to stay overnight (only available after 10pm usually). So, after working up a bit of courage, we walked into the lobby of a love hotel. We checked out the display board, listing all the available rooms, however none really struck our fancy. It was also clearly not the best time being a Sunday morning, as almost all rooms were taken. So we left in search of more extravagantly themed rooms.
Further down the road we found a cluster of three more love hotels, so again we went inside a dodgy looking one. This place had some funny themed rooms, like one with a basketball hoop, or with walls all set as Tahiti background. I was in the mood for naked basketball, so I pushed the button for that room. We went to the counter to get the room key, however, we had an extremely painful conversation with an anonymous lady's hand. We still have no clue what she was asking us; we tried to give her money but she wouldn't accept it. It didn't seem to be a problem with underpayment, or even a case of gaijin racism. Whatever she wanted, we couldn't understand, so we just left. We went next door but no available room could compare to the coolness of the basketball room. Dejected, we decided instead to head to Osaka Castle.
Jumping on the immediately arriving JR loop train, we went only three stops to the Castle. While the Castle is Osaka's best known sight, it isn't historically impressive, as Japan's turbulent past has seen this destroyed and rebuilt not too long ago. It is best described as a museum in castle form, rather than an actual castle. We climbed the 8 painful floors of steps to the top (pro-tip: take the lift up) stopping to see the exhibits. I found it hard to become interested in the exhibits as it was mostly just pieces of ancient cloth. The best part was the view from the top, oh, and getting out of Japan summer rain. We descended the 8 floors and journeyed to the subway. Like seasoned pros we bought some tickets and caught the subway across the city to the Aquarium which is at Osaka Bay.
Arriving at Osakako station, we decided to have some Japanese McDonalds for lunch. A pretty good chicken teriyaki burger, and a pretty bad lemon chicken burger was about the most interesting thing we coud find to eat on the menu. We eventually arrived at the Kaiyukan (the aquarium) and wow we were both very amazed. There were penguins, dolphins, otters, stingrays and jellyfish, but by far the most incredible were the two enormous whale sharks. My IT nerd legs were so tired after trekking around the aquarium, so it was very nice to relax on the gigantic ferris wheel outside the aquarium. So big, in fact, that it is the largest in the world. We took the subway home but before going back to the Sheraton, we had one last-ditch effort to find a love hotel.
We headed for Gang Snowman, one of the most well known (for being silly) love hotels, but alas, we still couldn't find it (apparently these places close all the time). It wasn't a lost cause as we came across a tacky place called "Love". Steping into the empy lobby we perused the available rooms on the board. Unfortunatly it was still a busy weekend, so the VIP room with the pool was unavailable. We only had a choice of two fairly plain rooms so we pushed the button for room 219. A swipe card slid out of the display so we headed strait for the room. What a treat we were in for; the room had a jacuzzi (that lit up with different colours), a huge shower room, free Japanese porn, a chair with bondage straps, and a sex-toy vending machine. About a minute after arriving Danae received a phone call in Japanese. We thought our cover was blown, however on reflection I can only assume it was to organise welcome drinks or something similar. Not to go into details, but we made full use of our new temporary hotel. So well over an hour later we were trying to figure out how to leave the hotel (I had read that in some places they lock you in your room until you pay). Luckily, we weren't locked in, so we paid at the front desk and left out the secret back exit. The love hotel industry try to put a lot of emphasis on being discreet, but all that was thrown out the window when the receptionist lady came running 100 metres down the road to catch us because apparently they undercharged us by 300 yen (5 bucks). It was so funny, and very typical Japan.
For dinner I had my heart set on Japanese cook-it-yourself BBQ, aka yakiniku. We headed a few blocks south to a local place listed on a map supplied by the Sheraton. This hole in the wall place only had enough room for about 20 people, with shared tables and coals that you cook your meal over in the centre of the table. Once we settled down, we realised that the menu had no pictures (and of course no English) at all! As such we were completely screwed. Luckily one of the waitresses was Singaporean and spoke a small amount of English. The whole thing was very strange and difficult. The funniest part was when I said, "Please just bring us some normal/common things" and she came back with and I quote: "This is heart, this is stomach lining, and this, ummm, I don't know what this is." WTF! The great thing was that even if it was bad, we could cook the hell out of it at our own table. It turned out the heart was just like any other meat. The stomach lining wasn't great, but it was carried by the most amzing home-made wasabi I have ever had. The final item of this round was also very tasty - prhaps because it was so very fatty. The only problem was that as it was pure fat, it was extremely flammable. The waitress even had to squirt something on our fire to suppress the flames. It was our weirdest meal to date, but in the end still very nice. On the way back to the hotel we bought some yummy desserts and beers from the local convenience store.
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