Sarah will start the blog because she is at the hotel while Alan is out looking to spend money on old Nintendo Game & Watches. I'm back now, so my comments will be in red.
We got up this morning reasonably early but were unsure of where to spend our day. The newspaper that we have delivered to our room every morning (we get the English version of The Japan Times, all the news without fear or favor) suggested today's maximum was going to be only 9 degrees and raining. However the internet suggested it was going to be 11 so we thought we would take on Universal Studios.
It had been cool when we left the hotel but it was sunny and no breeze but by the time we arrived at Universal at about 10.30am, we discovered it was by the water, the breeze was very strong and it was FREEZING. Freezing does not describe what I felt when that wind blew. Icicles formed on my nose and ears, I'm sure. Thankfully I did a good shopping trip before leaving home and my jacket keeps me nice and warm. Alan had three layers on and still was cold. Maybe if he had some hair on his head, it would stop the heat leaving his body. I have more than enough hair! But a beanie would be handy over here.
Despite the cold, we weren't the only ones to decide on Universal today. The place was packed. We waited a good 30 minutes in the huge queues to get our tickets and finally we were in the park. We headed directly for the big rollercoaster, Hollywood Dream - The Ride. It's very similar to the roller coaster at Disney California Adventure in America, for those who have been there. I wasn't going on it and as I'm still moving slowly, I told Alan to run ahead as it had a 120 minute waiting time. I decided to walk around to see if I could make it for the Waterworld Show but it had started before I got there and couldn't get in. So I hobbled back to wait for Alan outside the ride. I had been sitting down about 5 minutes when he appeared. He had been off the ride for ages. Being a "single" at Universal means you get to jump the queue! Good news for us for the rest of the day. I walked around for ages looking for Sarah before I finally found her. We bought what appeared to be a bottle of water from a vending machine, a fair enough assumption given that it was clear liquid named Aquarius. Wrong! It turned out to be a sickly sweet lemon drink which neither of us liked at all. I'm definitely not going to try the bottle of waterlike liquid in our hotel bar fridge which is called Pocari Sweat. I don't know who Pocari is and I have no desire to drink his sweat thankyou very much.
We ventured down to Jurassic Park The Ride, one we love and which we have ridden previously at Universal Los Angeles and Universal Orlando. We used to laugh at the Japanese at both these parks who would don raincoats before getting on a ride. Today, they could laugh at us, but again, all the Japanese were wearing them. There's no way I wanted to get soaked on the ride and then spend the rest of the day cold and wet. We didn't want to pay the $5 for one so we started looking through the bins and a nice Japanese gentleman came up and gave us his. Off Alan went for his ride returning about 10 minutes later and then I went and had a go. I love this ride, especially the 80 foot vertical drop. Of course, for me to like it, it has to be into water.
We then walked around to Back to the Future The Ride but they didn't take singles and we weren't going to wait the 2 hours for a ride we've been on before.
Spiderman The Ride was next, again allowing singles and Alan was only gone about 10 minutes. Next was the ET Adventure but although they allowed singles I stood there a way down the queue for 10 minutes and they hadn't taken a single person from our queue. I decided to give it a miss. We had been in the park for about 4 hours and as it was so crowded and bitterly cold, we decided to leave. We stuck our head into the Hard Rock Cafe thinking about some food as so far today we'd only had a couple of donuts, but it was the equivalent to about $40 for a hamburger. They aren't worth that much. It's a shame because we've eaten in a lot of Hard Rock Cafes. But at least we went inside.
We walked through Universal City on the way back t the station and we came upon a Japanese girl with her performing monkey. He was very cute and clever but I felt sorry for him.
Despite the cold, we wanted to see the Floating Garden Observatory. It was about a fifteen minute (Sarah hobble pace) from Osaka Station but well worth it.
This futuristic observatory 167m in the air looks like a space ship floating between the two towers. You take this superfast glass elevator which is darn scary but that wasn't the worst part. I absolutely hate glass outdoor elevators. They freak me out! When you get to level 35 you then have to take this very steep, long glass enlosed outdoor escalator. I have a terrible fear of heights but I felt more comfortable on the floating observatory than riding this escalator up and back. From here, we had an unparalleled view of Osaka but the observatory is outdoors, 40 storeys up in the air and extremely cold. There was a security guard out there to stop people from climbing over the railing. Who on earth would want that job out there in the freezing temperature and howling wind.
We went back to the station and got on the train, with me getting off at Kyobashi station near our hotel and coming back to the room where I had a lovely bath and soaked my feet. Alan will continue this on his adventures this afternoon.
Well my adventures this afternoon weren't particularly exciting. I took the train to Tennoji in search of the Osaka electronics district known as Den-Den Town to see if I could pick up any bargains to take back home and sell for profit on ebay. After exiting Tennoji station I walked a kilometre or so to the zoo entrance where I was yesterday and asked the security guard there how to get to Den-Den Town and he said take this road to the end then go right and after that it's about 1 and a half kilometres. Oh well I might as well keep walking now I've come this far.
After walking for what seemed like ages, I finally saw a little sign post which indicated that I had entered Den-Den Town. Thank goodness! I had read somewhere that it's an 800 metre stretch of street lined with all kinds of discount electronics stores. I wandered along lookng for any shops which looked like they might sell old obsolete platform games from the 80s. I did finally find some up a steep skinny staircase in one shop but the games they had were a bit too expensive to risk spending hundreds of dollars on them when I may not be able to recoup my outlay when I sell them. Oh well, it was worth the effort to see the place in any case. Den-Den Town itself s a pretty nasty area. It comes across as a seedy mix of shonky electronics dealers, with quite a lot of porn shops thrown in along the way too. No, I did not venture inside any of those establishments.
Another long, long walk back to the station and I was on the train back to the hotel. Tomorrow we say goodbye to Osaka and get our first taste of the bullet train as we head for Hiroshima.
Trivia for the day.... There are vending machines selling drinks absolutely everywhere here. You can't walk more than 30 seconds without passing one.
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