Osaka

A beautiful sunrise, followed by breakfast in bed for an early start.

Osaka castle. Whilst originally built in 1583, it is in it’s 3rd rebuild, however the first two only lasted 31 and 40 years. They then waited a couple of hundred years to the third build.

Outside of the main moat is a large public park through which we took a lovely walk. Many runners and a baseball players.

Situated on the top of the hill is the castle, therfore giving great views from the top.

Over to Dotonbori, a busy street with shops either side of a river.

I think Mark is liking these little machines too much. Anyone for a game of Uno?

The Glico sign, apparently you have to see it and style your own.

The local Donki shop in Dotonbori has a ferris wheel, though not your average shape. The Ebisu Tower ferris wheel is the first and only oval ferris wheel, standing at 77.4m tall. Also, you are seated in a line facing the entrance and a bar is pulled down. As you move to the side you the spin 180° to face the opposite direction where there is a glass front. You the continue sideways and then upwards.

Kobe beef is a type of wagyu, however from only the prefecture that Kobe is in. We aren’t quite in the prefecture, but as close as we are going to get, so it has to be today’s lunch. Even better, we tick off ramen and found a “no pork” restaurant!

The Umeda Sky Building with the highest escalators in the world.

A couple of tubes back and probably the tightest to all aboard time we have done, eek.

We Are Arashi are performing in town for a few days, and they are clearly very popular based on the various tshirts, bags, handbag straps and even a very stylish jacket people have. Quite a range in demographic of the fans too.

Sail off with a play away from the Osaka junior band.

Our resident astronomer, Kelly Beatty, did a couple of stargazing talks. We learnt so much!

He had his telescope out and we were able to see Jupiter and it’s 4 moons.

A few facts learnt:

Locate the big dipper. Use the “pointer stars” at the edge of it and continue the line to the north star (polaris), which turns out not to be the brightest. From polaris, hold your fists up and count the number of fists to the horizon x 10 and you have the latitude.

Draw a line down from the north star, and that is north.

Stars rise in the east and set in the west due to the earth’s rotation. They will be the same shape, therefore if you came back today next year. Planets however are different. The word planet means wandering star.

Back to the big dipper, following the same two stars in the other direction takes you to the Leo constellation.

Stars burn hydrogen to helium. Then they eventually run out. A blue star means a faster burner, red is cooler.