28/01/11 - Osaka Castle/Shinsaibashi　大坂城と心斎橋

7:52:00 PM by Kim Dao 0 Comments A⁺ a^-

Since coming to Japan we had lots of friends who we had to meet up with, people who had come to Perth and have returned to Japan. We met up with Ayaka who stayed in Perth for about a year last year while in Osaka and decided to go to the Osaka Castle with her. We met her at a subway station and then walked over to the Castle.

We had another lazy morning and finally headed out for the subways

This is a "No my car" ticket. You can only buy it on Fridays I believe, it's 600 yen and you can use it the whole day on any metro subways for free. This is worth buying if you're planning on going to more than one place in one day, subways in Osaka are slightly more expensive than Tokyo if you're going short distances.

We went inside the castle and decided to go right to the top floor and then work our way down. Inside the castles you're allowed to take photos on some floors, there are about 2 floors you can't take photos on I think. On the very top floor you can see the city of Osaka

Inside the castle

I didn't take many photos inside the castle since some floors you can't take photos on. There were only about 2 floors you could take photos on. We were in the castle for maybe about 1-2 hours, then decided to head off. We went outside and tried some dango while sitting down to rest for a bit. While walking out of the castle, it started to snow! Only a little bit though... I haven't seen snow before so I was quite excited but it didn't snow much at all :(

And last photos of the castle from outside

Honestly, I don't think the Osaka Castle is worth going to. I went to the castle thinking it would be an old castle and we can see what it would really look like inside the castle. Instead, the castle is just rebuilt, inside is just a modern look and all they had was images/items that had to do with the castle, kind of like a museum. It was interesting to read and look at the items they had on display, but for 700 yen for entry, it wasn't worth it. If you're looking for an old castle to go to, this isn't the place to go.

Afterwards we decided to go to Umeda for lunch. Ayaka recommended to us this really nice ramen restaurant. I had ramen and gyoza, really nice!

We didn't know what to do after, so we headed down to Shinsaibashi. We went to "Round 1", it's like a gaming place. You go there, pay 500 yen I think for the membership card, and then another 1200yen for 3 hours worth of unlimited games. They have pool, table tennis, baseball etc. When you go downstairs you have things like karaoke, and a whole floor of game arcade games (DDR, Taiko, Mario Kart, Guitar hero etc)