2015-Japan: WED-30-DEC-2015 Day 11 in Osaka to Narita

WED-30-DEC-2015 Day 11 in Osaka to Narita

Sunrise in Osaka

A Wednesday morning and still very little traffic in the streets and very few people. This must be a holiday (Dec 30th) for a lot of people.

Woke at 6:00 AM and packed and ate another fabulous breakfast buffet. Scrambled eggs Fairly watery. Eggs are like this in Asia for some reason.

Looking down at the Hilton Osaka lobby from the second floor, there is a a very large train holiday display

Left at 9:00 AM for the castle tour but when we got there - after 1/2 hour ride - the sign in the train station said it was closed. We even checked with the hotel concierge before we left the hotel and they said it was open today.

The castle has a number of moats

These concrete blocks are huge and very heavy, how did they do this in the year 1600?

Look at the angles and the slope, it is very rough but perfect.

Click on the picture below and blow it up and look carefully at this battle painted here from 1615. You can see the fighters on the left are in one color and heading towards the fighters who are coming at them. So many battles for power for thousands of years. That is - what it seems - we humans do - keep on doing battles. Nothing has really changed over all the years humans have been on the planet. Why do we keep fighting each other? Will we ever stop?

All this was built not by accident

We then walked back through a large peaceful park with joggers around us and people walking their dogs. No dog poop anywhere.

We then went to the sky building and it is in a large complex called fun fun plaza

At the top of the building there are two red seats you can sit in and then there is a heart opening and someone can take your romantic picture

It is very quiet and peaceful up here and the temperature was about 50 F with bright sun and very little wind.

We left and ate some lunch downstairs. 3 pizzas. Desperate for normal food.

Went back to the hotel and got our bags and then took the 2:16 PM for the Shin train to Tokyo. When I activated the Japan Rail passes, I made seat reservations. Today is a busy travel day so it was a good thing we had seat reservations. No charge to make seat reservations.

Arrived in Tokyo at 5:03, then transfer to the Narita Express at 17:20 (5:20).

We had seat reservations here too but it was empty

Got to Terminal 2 at 18:23 but could not find bus stop 26 by 18:30 so we missed the Hilton bus and waited till 18:50. Took bus, got two rooms, went down for buffet dinner and then fell asleep.

Special set up for kids buffet as well