Osaka

 

This is Saturday 1st April in Osaka. My laptop still shows this day as 31st March as it is based still on London time. But I had opened my entry at 7am on April 1st. As this difference in time records continues throughout the cruise it will eventually leave my laptop  out by one whole day. By the time  we reach Sothampton again I will have gained a whole day to my life. Fogg unknowingly experienced the same when he arrived in Liverpool as day early after his circumnavigation. I can take it, but my laptop will need readjustment. 

We had docked at Osaka port at 6am. The port and the ship were dominated by a giant ferris wheel and a large cargo terminal called the Tempozan Market Place. Again, we had to wait for clearance from the Osaka Port Authorities and again the inspectors spent a long time in the Medical Centre before they gave us clearance. In the meantime we had all been waiting for the news in the Neptune Theatre. When Sammie's assistant Tom announced at 10am over the ship's speaker that clearance had been issued and asked all those planning to leave the ship to gather in the Theatre, we all burst out laughing as we had waited there for nearly 2 hours. The coaches were parked on the quayside immediately adjoining the vessel's gangway. We were able to clamber on board without any interference from the Immigration Department.

The guide told us that we did not need to wear our masks on the coach. She explained that the worst of the covid pandemic had passed in Japan. However many people still wore face coverings, not because of covid, but as protection against hay fever, particularly at this time of the year. 

My first impression of Osaka as we started our tour was that this was a city of high bridges and flyovers with expressways laid out on toop of other expressways, sometimes upto three layers over the streets at ground level. The guide had proudly declared that Osaka was the City of Water or the city of 1000 bridges, but I would have settled for the city of 300 flyovers. Osaka has around 2.4 million inhabitants which makes it the third largest city in Japan and it is an important commercial hub and includes key commercial properties of national significance, such as the Mint and Stock Exchange, as well as the national headquarters of Sharp and Panasonic. However even these expressways are dwarfed by the modern office nad residential high rises which more than meet the challenge of sustaining such a heavy road infrastructure. Even though it was Saturday and so many office workers would have stayed home, the sense of claustrophobic intensity remains. Today was also the beginning of the new fiscal year in Japan so some of the offices were still open. Although the traffic was heavy there was none of he drama or street noises of India. Albina in particular drew attention to the cleanliness of the streets and the good condition of the roads.

Osaka is also the site of many cultural centres and administrative buildings built in the early 20th century in the European style, and then rebuilt after the destruction of World War Two. I noted the National Museum of Art, the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts, City Hall, the Osaka Museum of History and the National Theatre. The guide explained that when it came to art and culture in their museums the Japanese preferred to see Western Artis, both classical and modern. If they wanted to admire their own art they would prefer seeing it inside their natural structures, such as their temples or shrines or in the architecture and decoration of their modern buildings.  

We stopped at a monstrosity of a building called the Umeeda Sky Centre, built in 1993, which is over 140 metres high. We were invited to view Osaka from the top. The building consists of two seperate high rise offices with 43 floors surmounted by a round structure with the viewing platform on two levels, indoor and outdoor. To reach that 43rd floor we had to go up an escalator to the fourth floor, and then catch an elevator with windows looking out at the surrounding city. From the top of the elevator, we had to go up several more floors in a narrow round escalator thrown diagonally from the 43rd floor  of one building and reaching up to the top of the other building. I noticed that there was a similar descending escalator reaching diagonally back down to the 43rd floor and the two pass each other in the same way as the one way escalators in Charles de Gaulle Airport. There were two levels at the top, one inside the uilding and outdoors in the fresh air. From either floor the views of the city and surrounding hills were indeed breathtaking, especially the sight of the main Yodo River and the many bridges across it. We could see at least three other rivers passing through the city. Inside the lower indoor viewing platform were some 30 large pictures of iconic buildings,both spiritual and secular, with similar pretentions of reaching out to the stars. These included the astronomical observatory in Jaipur, St Basil's in Moscow, St Peters in Rome, the Eiffel Tower and Macchu Picchu and so unashamedly ranked this building with its famus peers around the world. We were all impressed. after descending we could also pay our usual respect to the art of japanese gardening by strolling through an adjoining model Japanes garden, with waterfalls and the usual picturesque humped pedestrian bridges that are a necessary part of any garden landscape in Japan. The Sky Centre adjoined Osaka Main Station, which, according to our guide, is supposed to be a great underground shopping centre, but all I could see from the coach was railway tricks and a construction site. 

We drove around the city while the guide explained what we were passing, but as we did not stop, we were unable to photograph anything properly, and sometimes even to recognize what building or park was being announced by our guide. She listed buildings of note but little remained in our mind. We did not stop at Minami, a very trendy set of streets which I would certainly have enjoyed spemding an hour strolling through the crowds in the streets, and which adjoins the area with kabuki theatres and geisha dancers. Although we passed the large reconstruction of historic Osaka Castle, surrounded by high walls and a moat lined with cherry blossom and ginko trees, we could not even stop to take proper photographs, which was indeed a great disappointment. At the end of the tour at the port, we had a feeling that somehow the city had passed us by. I  sensed that Osaka was a confident brash city which saw itself not as a privicial centre but as a world city. It claimed to have the largest Harry Potter themed park in the world, the highest building in Japan standing at 3000 metres, the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan and the highest castle. When we returned to the port area the guide also claimed that the Kaiyukan Acquarium was the largest in the world.

Enough that when we did reach the port I was very frustrated by a 4.5 hour excursion where we had only one stop. Instead of stopping at various highlights in the tour, she showed us photographs from the front of the coach of manga cafes and food courts we could have visited. The tour ended at 2pm and there were still four hours left to take an individual trip to Minami or the castle, but each time it would have been risky as we did not know really know how to move around town.

However one genuine option was to stay in the harbour area in the Tempozan Market Place. Albina bought a few knicknacks. After that we bought tickets to see the famed Acquarium which was nearby. There was a 70 minute wait to get inside the acquarium so we bought the tickets and then used up the waiting time by going on a ride on the big ferris wheel which had actuallly been overlooking the Borealis. Peeking in from our gondola we could actually look down into our pool on Borealis as the roof to the poolside had been taken off. There were also further wonderful views of the city.

The Kaiyukan Acquarium lived up to its name. A lift took  us to the top of an eight storey building looking from the outside like a bright red and blue triangle. Then Albina and I slowly worked our way down past a series of living tableaux in the form of acquariums, some massive, and some quite small. We began the downward tour with scenes involving a mixture of land and water, starting with otters playing in a stream in a beautiful wooden glade. This was followed by penguins in the Antartic, dolphins and sea lions, and gradually moveing to purely acquatic tanks containing all kinds of fish and marine animals, sections of a coral reef, sting rays, spider crabs, turtles and jellyfish, as well as a whale shark and some ocean sun fish. 

The aquarium brochure says that it houses 30,000 marine animals in all. The largest tank, which covered fish from the Pacific Ocean, was 9 metres high and stretched through 5 floors. We took lots of pictures and often kept losing each other in the dark. After all the frustrations with the excursion our visit to the port market, the ferris wheel and the acquarium, more than made up for that.        

The Borealis was docked close by alongside the quay as we returned to it worn out but contented. As night drew in the ferris wheel above us lighted up with a kaleidoscope of changing colours. We sat in the pool side of our ship looking up at this massive structure and its rotating gondolas, seemingly returning the gaze we had given it earlier from on high.

Albina wanted to have a full makeover before we got to Mexico. So she booked a whole series of treatments for Friday week. After that we had dinner in the buffet restaurant and Albina retired to bed.  

I went up for my regular evening quiz but my team mates did not show, worn out apparently be thir trip to Kyoto, which was along 2 hour riide from Osaka. I was joined by a Norwegian couple but our joint result was pretty dreadful.