It was a beautiful Thursday morning as we arrived into the shin-Osaka terminal and by this time i was starting to get a bit over the traveling and started dreaming about snowboarding again!! hahahaha 
I think i was just exhausted from lack of good sleep, missing the boys at home, worried about work and uni when i get back and probably the icing on the cake was that everywhere we went, it started looking just the same to me! Well at least we thought we were going to have one good creature comfort in our stay in Japan which was that we checked into a hotel instead of a hostel, but to me it was just a glorified hostel with room service…i guess you get what you pay for right! Anyway, it was right in the heart of the action in Osaka which is on Dontonbori Street where we expect to see lots of street foods and shopping alleys etc.
In the mean time we wanted to check out the World famous Osaka Aquarium which houses a baby whale shark in its main tank. So the rest of us headed off to see what the whole fuss was about whereas John, Orla and Tony decided to have a look around the place before meeting up to watch a sumo match held . The aquarium was alright and awesome to see a whale shark and King spider crab for the first time, but it was just a big version of under water world.
King Kani!!! These things are massive!
Next we headed to the Osaka Gymnasium where the sumo tournament is currently being held at. We had previously purchased tickets on the way to the aquarium as we were afraid we weren’t going to get any tickets for tonight. We ended up buying box seats and were super excited to see a sumo wrestle match for the very first time. Walking towards the arena we found a maccas and decided to have a quick feed before entering in the building. The place was a hive of activity with people everywhere waiting for someone like paparazzi waiting for celebrities down the red carpet. We later figured they were waiting for the champion wrestler to enter the building, which we waited for half an hour and saw him for like a split second as everyone had surrounded him as he walked past of his sumo body guards. We were ushered into our box seats which were like propped up scaffolding floors with cushions for you to sit on. I had no idea what it was all about and lucky with our tickets came with an information pack that explains the history and rules of the sport. Match after match and it was starting to drag on a bit and I lost interest in photographing every round. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great experience but to me it wasn’t like watching a footy match, but i guess the locals loved it as they were all going nuts!!! The event ended for the day with the winner of the last round doing the traditional bow dance.
Sumo wrestling in Osaka
John, Orla and Tony made their own arrangements to stay at a hostel near the train station but joined us for dinner after the match. We snacked on Tokoyaki (octopus balls), which is one of Osaka’s special treats made of some sort of batter with a bit of octopus inside of it. It was a really hot and gooey consistency that i really didn’t rate that much and by after my third one i was pretty much over it. We were surprised to see that there wasn’t much street food to offer and so we scouted out for an izakaya restaurant (proper Japanese pub that serves food on skewers). We found this dodgy looking, sticky floor place that didn’t feel like it had been cleaned for years..all spelt disaster but we decided to head in anyway…bad mistake!! After ordering some hot sake and a couple of crappy set menu items, we ate and left the place feeling dissatisfied and most importantly still hungry! I managed to find an Okonomiyaki (its like a Japanese style pizza of similar description) stall along a side street and chowed down on it. We were tired from being on our feet all day so we retired back to the hotel to plan what we were going to do tomorrow.
The next morning we were down two people being that of Kim and Young from what we suspect to be was food poisoning from the food we had at the dodgy pub last night. It must of been something in particular as none of the other guys got sick! But we all got up really early to get the JR train to Himeji which is a nearby town that has the most famous castle in Japan. John, Orla and Tony made their own way to Himeji as they escorted Tony to see his Archery master there. Getting to Himeji was only a half an hour shinkansen ride where Mike and Chuck wanted to power sightsee the castle and return to Osaka to check up on Kim and go do some decent shopping. In the mean time Lisa and I followed the Lonely Planet guide and hired bikes to get to the castle. Upon approaching the gates over the moat bridge was a spectacular view of the white castle that was perched up on top of a hill.
Himeji Castle
The castle was amazing as we twisted around the castle up to the the fifth floor and reading about all the special rooms and functions it housed. It took about 1.5 hours to walk through the whole place and it was probably the most beautiful ancient castle i have ever seen. We headed back to return our bikes and caught a bus to our next destination which was the Engyoji Temple ontop of Mount Shosha. A 30min bus ride, then a 10 minute ropeway cable car ride, then a 15 minute walk up the mountain gave way to a very holy place that was so majestic and beautiful that i can’t think of any other words to describe it. Maybe it was because it was so secluded with hardly anyone there or it was because it was surrounded by dense forrest which had this zen like feel to the whole place. No wonder the guys who made the film ‘The Last Samurai’ chose this place to make their movie as it presents everything about ancient Japan that has been untouched in today’s world. The temple is over a thousand years old with all the paint being weathered away. In fact this place is so old that the wood outside the temple had turned to a pale ghost white from the tannins inside the wood being leeched out…amazing how a structure could last so many years without the risk of fire from wars or any natural disaster!
Engyoji Temple on Mount Shosha
It was getting late into the afternoon and both of us were getting tired and hungry as we headed back to Himeji Station. Since Kobe was only the next train stop back to Osaka, we decided to stop there to have their world famous Wagyu steak for dinner. This was kind of a double edged sword event as good and really bad event was about to take place at the same time..more in a minute! So anyway, we followed the recommendation of the Lonely Planet book and walked downtown to the hub of the city until we could find a place that served their famous steak. It is so weird as we could not find many steak restaurants along the main stretch; maybe it’s because we didn’t know where to look at or it’s because they export the good stuff and leave the crap behind! Be that as it may, we managed to find a busy looking place that didn’t charge exorbant amounts for a 200 gram steak. I ordered the 250 gram sirloin dinner set and Lisa had the 160 gram Tender sirloin dinner set, both costing about 6000 yen each (all up about 250 bucks for two small bite sized steaks! ouch). We had our own chef the cooked our steak to perfection! He was slicing into it with no effort at all like it was butter and it literally melted as you took small sized bites trying to savour the stupidly expensive piece of steak we just ordered! Dinner was a success and at this stage we thought the amount we paid for the steaks was worth what we ate…IT WAS THAT GOOD! We lost track of time and had to run back uptown to the train station where the bad started to happen…
Steak in Kobe....Notice the marbling on it...mmmmm!!
Lisa started to feel really sick and her tummy was churning like crazy. We thought it was maybe the steak combined with a pint of beer and a coffee that just didn’t set well, and so we raced to the train and headed back to our hotel in Osaka. Lisa was feeling worse for wear and nearly vomited on the train but she persevered until we got back to throw everything up the whole night. I was fine all the way up until we got home when i started feeling a little queezy and felt this numbing sensation running all the way through my body…It felt like i was about to get a massive flu with all your joints starting to feel really sore and soon later i was hoping in and out of the toilet for the rest of the night..Yep it was food poisoning and Lisa and I lied on our bed in shear agony with Lisa and her tummy and me with my knees, hips, back, shoulders and elbows starting to ache. The next morning we both looked like death had knocked on our door and it felt like that too! I was in rotten shape, worse than Lisa mainly because i think she spewed everything up whereas i tried but it wouldn’t come up. I was feverish and I felt like i was 100 years old as every step hurt so much as my knees felt like buckling all the time. I was super cold one minute outside but was sweating like crazy and it didn’t help that we had to check out by 11am; I just felt like sleeping in all day! Lisa was a gem and got me some fruit jelly and apply juice down the road even though she was feeling like poo as well! Tackling exhaustion and sickness I finally managed to get out of bed and checked out of the hotel to try and get some fresh air and something filling in the belly. Mike also gave us some of these sachets to take for the rotten stomach which he bought for kim the previous night. Our train back to Tokyo wasn’t due until 2.40pm where we had a few hours to burn, but i was too tired and sore that i just wanted to go back to the hotel and sit in the foyer.
We finally made it to the shinkansen after what felt like years as everything felt like it was in slow motion and every step jolted pain all the way up and down my body..arghhhh! As we headed back to Tokyo, I literally passed out on the train hoping to get a bit of rest on our three hour journey. We got to Tokyo and I woke up feeling a little bit better as we went off to find our Hostel back in Asakusa. After walking back and forth around Asakusa for a while which I just wanted to go to sleep; we ended back at K’s house to get directions for Sakura hostel as that was the only place we knew that had wifi and could possibly help us. After Mike and Chucky asked for directions, we headed all the way back where we stopped off at the train and passed through the street markets and temple where they were celebrating the sakura festival. We finally managed to get to our hostel where Lisa and I turned in for the night and the rest of them went out for their final night in Tokyo!
Filed under: Japan Trip 09!
