Osaka

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I spent a few days in Osaka - well actually just out of Osaka, but spent some time in Osaka, mostly for nights out and did manage to pull an all-nighter in a fairly dodgy club. The best part about doing an all-nighter is that you can have an amazing Japanese noodle breakfast on your way to bed! My memory of those nights are a little sketchy but when I was there during the day, my highlights were as follows.

Osaka Castle is one of Japan's most famous castles, situated on a huge area of land. It is built on two raised platforms of landfill supported by sheer walls of cut rock, using a technique called Burdock piling, each overlooking a moat. The central castle building is five stories on the outside and eight stories on the inside, and built atop a tall stone foundation to protect its occupants from sword-bearing attackers. We didn't go into the castle itself but the area around it was very pretty and it was an imposing structure on the hill.

We also went up the Umeda Sky Building, which consists of two 40-story towers that connect at their two uppermost stories, with bridges and an escalator crossing the wide atrium-like space in the center. There is a rooftop observatory which we went to as night fell. Seeing the city lit up was really cool, so many neon lights, it's not hard to believe that Osaka is the 7th biggest metropolitan economy in the world!

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