Last day of the Gate 1 tour – and delightfully on our own.  We originally had planned to go on the optional excursion to Nara, the birthplace of Japan.  Pre-paid for the tour and everything.  But we are so tired of this poorly mannered group, the sickness aboard that bus and the fact that it is Sunday and will be totally packed with tourists, that we just ditched it.  Told Osamu we weren’t coming, and now we have a full day on our own.  Phew.

So, we do what we always do….we walk!  Over to the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living, a museum that recreates Osaka village life from the Edo period.  The village, called Naniwa which is another name for Osaka in the Edo period, has recreations of actual size houses – on the top floor of one of the huge buildings here!  Crazy, but fun.  It was all inside but you really feel like you are outside the way they set it up – especially when a thunderstorm rolls through and the skies get dark, then the sunrises again and all is sunlit. 

You really get the feeling of life in old Osaka – with the merchants’ street, displaying all the wares out front, like cosmetics and accessories, the “Joinery store” with different tools, the toy store, where you could actually play with the toys left out – which this adorable little girl did – couldn’t resist that picture!

There was the Karamonoya store, for imported goods, the Fabric store, the pharmacy, book store, everything a village would need.  You could walk inside all these shops, and we did – exploring all over, including through the back alley where the mascot dogs were standing – Ten and Roku, whose names have something to do with the name of the town (at least that’s what I remember from the audioguide).  We really enjoyed learning about all the history and the different types of buildings – including the backstreet tenement houses – which the audioguide helpfully explained that even in those days the rich had gated communities (pretty funny actually!).

There were lots of great displays and different rooms and signs.  One interesting fact is that the house size was described by how many tatami mats could fit in the house. The bottom floor of the museum holds a lot of cool dioramas depicting early Japanese life.  Then, finishing with the main museum, we head down to the special exhibition we had paid extra to view – not a lot fortunately, because it is all in Japanese!  It focuses on converting old architecture into modern living and is interesting in the pictures and blueprints that are on the wall, but not so interesting for us to linger there.  Oh well – support your local museum!

It is getting on time for lunch, so we walk through the local shopping arcade, Tenjinbashisuji, located right outside the museum, in search of lunch.  This is supposed to be a more local shopping area, and it definitely doesn’t have that touristy vibe, with shops that sell more home goods and material and textiles and things.  But restaurants?  Oh, there are quite a few, and every one of them had lines – one place had this huge long line, so long in fact it wasn’t even at the front door of the restaurant!  It started at the corner of a block and wrapped around the street – we couldn’t even figure out which restaurant they were waiting for!  Okie dokie, this isn’t going to work! Once again, taking off out of the  main street and onto a back street we found an excellent little Chinese mom and pop restaurant (literally mom out front, pop cooking) and had a fantastic meal of an assortment of excellent gyozas and, yes, Karaage!  We love this fried chicken!  Nice, unrushed, uncrowded, and best of all, dirt cheap.  Win, win, win.

Done with lunch, we set our sights on the Osaka History museum, deciding to take the train instead of walking.  We have our Suica cards after all and need to use all the balance.  The museum is, once again, on the top floor of an 8 story building – seems like a thing to put museums on the top floor of buildings here!  The museum spans several floors, detailing the history of Osaka, including a reconstruction of part of the Naniwa ancient royal palace.  There are life size mannequins (which sort of startle you when you turn corners and don’t expect them), soaring ceilings to recreate the feeling of the palace and a view across the modern buildings to the original foundation of the palace. 

Being right across from the Osaka castle, there are also great views of the castle – on a much prettier day then yesterday when we were there.

Other rooms hold pottery with painted faces to ward away evil spirits, models of ancient villages and more modern palace grounds as well as these huge floats, full of detailed carvings, that were used during the Autumn Festival of the Wakamatsu Shrine in the late 1700’s.  Plus a great display on the ancient theatre, complete with huge puppet dolls – I mean they are almost life sized! – and these scary, creepy puppet heads.  Yikes.

Probably the best part about the museum is that the placards explain a lot about the history of Osaka – and Japan in general – in just a few short paragraphs. We’ve heard these details and facts throughout our trip, but seeing it written out here so succinctly helps us understand the Tokugawa Shogunate (the last Shogunate) and the changes and struggles that occurred at the beginning of the Meiji Period.  We also learn that modern Osaka was developed as an industrial city, being called the “Manchester of the East,” expanding in the 1920’s. In the modern section of the museum there are fabulously huge, life size displays of the trains, the entertainment area, modern homes, and so much more.  An extremely well-done presentation.

Finished with the museum, we ditch the idea of going into the castle grounds for sunny day photos, the ones we took yesterday look good enough.  Instead we strike off into the city streets in search of this little shrine we saw on the map, on the way passing the coolest parking lot ever!  It is an elevator parking deck – I guess that is the easiest way to explain it.  The cars are backed onto these lifts, then stacked one on top of each other.  To get them out, the lifts shift up and down and right to left, like a huge rubic’s cube. Totally wild!

We make it to the Tamatsukuri Inari Shrine, which is dedicated to foxes, same as the crazy packed shrine yesterday in Kyoto.  Foxes are considered deities here – they started out as simply guards watching over the shrines and the people sort of turned them into deities and started praying to them.  This shrine was virtually empty and lovely and serene, with a small shrine off the main one with hundreds of fox statues.  Really fun! 

In the corner of the shrine grounds is a little art gallery with displays of the ancient jewelry produced by the Tamatsukuri tribe.  They were renowned for creating Magatama which are comma shaped jewel ornaments.  Which now makes sense of all the comma shaped statues here.  We wandered into the museum, only to be chastised by some tourist already in there – asking if we had paid our fee to get in.  He was a little aggressively mean, so we just snapped a really quick picture and got out of there post-haste.

Probably one of the best things about this place though, is that you could buy a votive, which is actually a piece of wood cut into a shape reflecting the shrine and write out your wishes.  In this case, the votive is 2 foxes cheek to cheek and is for maintaining a strong love relationship.  Well, you know we had to do that!  Perfect for us!

We also purchased an amulet, in the shape of a magatama, for good health.  Hey, we have to take that damn COVID test on Tuesday morning, and we are not taking any chances!  The more help, the better!

Training it back to the hotel, we hang out getting organized and caught up, while watching what Ed calls the Zombie parade of identically dressed Japanese (white shirts and black slacks or skirts) fast walk from the train station through the mall and on to their homes!  It was like this in the morning, just in the other direction.  Thousands upon thousands of Zombies marching through the train station.  From up here in our perch it is really a very funny sight!

Tonight is the farewell dinner and, well, we are skipping out on it.  There are too many sick people in that group and we’d really prefer not to be stuck in a closed in room at the top of the hotel eating with the hackers and sneezers and runny noses.  See the COVID test comment above!

So at dinner time, we march back to the train station to the little restaurant we saw last night with the line out front.  We figure we’ve got all the time in the world, so if there is a line, we’ll just wait.  And there is.  At least 4 people sitting on the little chairs out front.  I sign up for a table (I think), the hostess gives us a menu and we preview our meal.  It’s Okonomiyaki heaven! 

The hostess comes back with her order pad, and we realize this line might be only for takeout!  We mime going into the restaurant and end up, once again at a perfect table in the corner.  But this table has a little grill built into it, that is on.  Hmmmm….curious.

We order on the tablet again – we’re getting to be experts at this – getting beer, of course, one mixed Okonomiyaki, one Yakisoba and a little assortment of sausage skewers.  Fun! But, oh, so much more fun when the food comes!  They bring out the yakisoba first, and essentially scrape it all onto the hot plate grill in front of us. So we get to basically heat up the dish and serve it from the grill.  Fab!  And it is excellent – with seafood and great spices and tastes.  Same with the Okonomiyaki, again, excellent.  We are both in heaven. The little sausages come on their own plate, and Ed enjoys them – I’m too full to even try!

Excellent end to our visit to Osaka – and this part of our adventure.  Tomorrow – we move back to Tokyo for our final night “on the ground” here in Japan!