Goodness gracious me.. once again the two of us are both mentally and physically exhausted.. but enough whinging because the fact is we have had an absolutely amazing day. We are grateful for the photos – we can barely remember what happened yesterday, let alone this morning.
Today, in Osaka, we:
- visited the Shittennoji Temple
- went to the Osaka Museum of History
- climbed the Osaka Castle
- walked through Den Den
- and finally, saw Dotonbori
and we did it all on bicycle! 
We got up early, had our breakfast, spoke to the Switzerland couple also staying in the Guest House, rented our bicycles for 500 yen each and we were on our way! Here we are looking absolutely ridiculous..
There are many photos from Shittenoji Temple so I’m just gonna batch em together – actually climbing the temple itself was wonderful.. otherwise, most places we weren’t allowed to take photo’s indoors.. except for one.. so I took quite a few. It looked cool And Jesse found our first toilet-in-the-ground, and ‘rinsed’ his hands in the ‘basin’ just outside.. The gardens inside the temple grounds were truly remarkable.
From there we bicycled onwards to the Museum.. which was unfortunately not as exciting as either of us had hoped – of course museums have never really been all that exciting, and there was very little in English.. we didn’t know what we were looking at most of the time.
There were plenty of miniature models of houses and towns which were quite intricately done.. we managed to snap a few nice photos of the Osaka Castle grounds and Osaka city, seriously, it goes as far as the eyes can see in all directions.. and it’s all flat here, unlike Brisbane, its just a lot of flat ground. This helps with the cycling.
By the time we left the museum we were already starting to feel a bit woozy and tired, I don’t know how we made it through the rest of the day.
From here, we cycled across the road and down a few blocks to Osaka Castle.. this was quite interesting.. as we’d already been through the Museum we were a little bit over looking at things with just Japanese writing explaining what they were. Nonetheless, we managed to take a lot of photos!
Next we moved along to Den Den town, which is known to be the electrical sorta shopping area.. it was good, OK, I guess we didn’t find any amazing super duper low priced stuff which I was definitely expecting to see. There were a lot of laptops and netbooks for like $100 – $200 but they appeared to maybe be 2nd hand. We spent quite a lot of time here, needing to pee quite frequently – we kept returning to the McDonalds’s to pee because we couldn’t find toilets 
And of course, another highlight.. I was able to smoke inside a Cafe.
From Den Den town, we cycled along to the riverside shopping mall type thing. Not long after dismounting and locking our bicycles, did we find a place to eat dinner – it looked like steak and noodles for about 1080 yen. Well, weren’t we in for a surprise!~
As we sat down there were 4 teenage-looking girls next to us about to start eating.. we were watching them out the corner of their eye, and in return they too were watching us and giggling at us. We sat on one side of the cooking-top things and the chef dude was on the other, he started to prepare our meal.. noodles.. fruit/veg.. squid.. ugh.. maybe some beef, I wasn’t too sure what a lot of it was. And then, he cracked an egg into the bowl. He took the bowls over to us and started stirring them in front of us – then we realised – we, too, would be eating the pancake-looking things we just saw the girls next to us eat. He turned it into a mash, and poured it onto the hot plate.. and 20 to 25 minutes later, we had a pancake-looking savoury dish!
The girls sitting next to us, just before they left, started motioning their chopsticks at us, all 4 of them looking at us.. just clicking chopsticks. Jesse cottoned on first, they were asking to see if we knew how to use them. He started tapping his, and they smiled and nodded.. and then I tried, and failed. And the four of them helped! They started saying ‘pen, pen, pen’ – so I held one of the sticks like a pen.. and then the other one I slotted it in the same way she did.. then they started saying ‘up, up, up’.. eventually I worked out what I had to move up and yes.. it was lovely – we haven’t had too many Japanese interact with us at all, though of course they are most welcome to – oh, and there was the old couple I waved at as we cycled past – they grinned broadly and waved back.
I.. liked it.. mentally, I hated that there was seafood in it, but I don’t think the seafood actually tasted gross, I just hated seeing the tentacle leg. There was a thick brown sauce he plastered over the top of the pancake which really, really made it for me.. it was delicious. Jesse and I were quite full, and discussed that we were unsure if leaving a meal unfinished would appear rude, so we finished it completely even though there was way too much.
I didn’t take photos 
It feels rude to take photos indoors at a lot of places, and a lot of places have signs, in English, telling you not to. There was an advertising, in poorly written English, for a Fight Club up the back – eeeeek. Made me feel a little odd.
After dinner we strolled along the huge colourful, brilliant lit mall.. it was just lovely. No bargains, unfortunately, everything was very Australiany priced.. but we continued to watch, to look, to gaze, to stare as we strolled along this well-lit street..
We then found another mall which went in the other direction, it was undercover, it was completely flat and in a straight line and it went, quite literally, as far as the eye could see. As far as I knew this mall went on forever.
Anyway, pictures!
And.. a moving crab 
great photos....love the crab :)
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