Weekend in the City

on thursday, the AYFers were given a briefing on fri's programme - orienteering in osaka city!! bascially they split us into groups of 6, provided us with activity sheets (aka amazing race) that required each group to complete a certain task in a certain part of the city, and Free one day train tickets (together with vouchers that gave us discounts into certain places of interest.

Rahman, Teng, John, Khine, Shiaw Jia, and myself were in the same group and we were asked to go to the Namba area (basically a shopping/entertainment district) and locate the Kamigata Ukiyoe Museum. Well, from the map we were given, it looked kinda close to the station. Until we actually arrived at Namba Station and realised that there were THREE different namba stations and we didn't know which one we were at, and therefore lost our bearings. we ended up wandering around Namba like lost children - because everyone we asked had a different idea of where the Museum was (some didn't even have a clue!) so we were pointed left and right and front and back ... it was a frustrating experience! we finally found the place completely by coincidence after FOUR HOURS of walking in the hot 36deg sun. and this is the completely nondescript museum, and us - we were Not Happy.



After this task, we had to look for the Mizukakefudou ... which is basically a shrine just opposite the museum. It's kinda cool because they got to 'water a statue' .. and this statue was covered in grassy/mossy stuff. it was quite nice. this is shiawjia watering the statue. p/s: sorry we were too too tired to really go find out about why pple water a statue. completely pooped by then already!



After that, we headed to a few other places, one of which was the World Trade Centre Observation Deck (see pic), which was basically 55 storeys high. We had a nice view of the area around us - just to give u an idea of the perspective from the top.....





we also made a trip to the Osaka Bay Maritime Museum which entailed a looong walk in the sun. poof. the Maritime Museum is a nice dome shaped structure with an underwater walkway from the entrance to the museum section. most of the explanations were in japanese. and we were so tired that all we really did was to go around getting stamps (like ink pad stamps) in order to create a jigsaw stamp puzzle. we managed to get all 15 empty sections stamped! we also saw interesting figureheads - ever seen a turkey at the bow of the ship before?





At another place, Osakako, we made a trip on the 'london eye' lookalike!
Apparently, this is THE largest ferris wheel....... nice, but well, its hard to believe!


this is the city scape of Osaka Bay Area at night.



By the time we were done with the programme, we were super super tired. but because we got home too too late (11plus) and the shuttle bus to the Institute had stopped running, we had to WALK back 20mins?! nearly killed my feet!

that was my first trip to a big city!