Springtime in Osaka

Here's a photo from Umeda Station in Osaka on Wednesday. I was in town for a meeting. I walked around a bit.

Under this bridge I saw some provocative graffiti.

A closeup on the sticker at the centre of the bomb:

The sticker commemorates the third year anniversary of a Chinese restaurant called Kitchen Yokoyoko. Make of it what you will.

While I was waiting for a train in Osaka Abenobashi, I saw this boy band at Q's Mall.

I didn't catch their band name. They were performing a song in unintelligible English and then stopped to chatter for a very long time.

So there's your little slice of Osaka for the month.

A Namba Afternoon

I spent the afternoon wandering around Namba in Osaka a few weeks ago. I think it was in my first year living in Japan that a guy at Starbucks tried chatting me up by complimenting my attire. Although I wasn't interested in flirting with him, I was kind enough to return the compliment--he was nicely dressed--and he told me he got his outfit in Namba. This led me to vaguely assume Namba was some kind of fashion haven and recently I've been wanting some rust coloured chinos. After seeing Matthew Broderick wearing rust trousers and brown shirt on Only Murders in the Building, I wanted to make more rust and brown outfits. I see people around here wearing rust coloured trousers all the time and finally decided I wanted a pair but, oddly enough, I don't see any in the local shops. I think they must get sold out really fast.

So I went to Namba and didn't find any. It was an interesting afternoon, though. I've never seen so many foreigners, and all of them apparently wealthy, since I was in Tokyo. There was a middle aged French couple who seemed to be lost. There was a 20 something redheaded Australian girl loudly arguing with her parents who were on the other side of a busy sidewalk. It was strange to overhear so much English.

Who wants takoyaki (octopus in fried batter balls)? I do.

I saw a lot of artwork. Part of Namba Station for some reason has a bunch of reproductions of art from the Chicago Museum of Art.

I dug the Degas.

Along the river, there was some local art.

I also saw Spider-Man:

X Sonnet #1743

Familiar bugs protect the hill from death.
Behind the varied plants, the eaters live.
Behold the leagues of ash and take a breath.
For time has come to stay and space to give.
Reduced returns have paradise in hawk.
Assembled brothers barter music rights.
Successful kills could feed the hungry clock.
Although the ice would fain retreat from fights.
Emerging fast from dusk's the pallid face.
Beneath a starless eve, the workers sweat.
Revolving pools deny the angel's grace.
Below the busy froth, crustaceans bet.
Diluted honey rains above the woods.
The critters don emrboidered magic hoods.

Illuminated Christmas

Merry Christmas from the top of Umeda Sky Building! That's me last night (which was December 25th in Japan). Isn't it marvellous that masks have been normalised? I had to hold onto my hat because of the heavy wind.

I went with some friends to Osaka last night to look at Christmas lights.

The city really goes all out. We watched an amazing hologram light show at Osaka City Hall. There were lights everywhere.

There were blue lights on the street:

It was nearly 9pm when I got home but I managed to get to the supermarket in time to buy one of the last Christmas cakes:

Christmas cakes are traditional in Japan. Many Japanese people believe this sponge cake with strawberries is traditional on Christmas in America (it's not). But I'm happy to partake in this.

For my Doctor Who Christmas special, I watched "The Runaway Bride", the Tenth Doctor's second Christmas special from 2006. I realised that, for the first time in many years, I could watch Doctor Who with hope for the future. For the future of Doctor Who, anyway. A trailer for the upcoming 60th anniversary specials was released yesterday, too:

Donna was always my favourite of Ten's companions (in no small part due to "The Runaway Bride"). If they were going to bring back a Doctor/Companion combo from the modern era, I think this was probably the best one for it.

If I were to theorise, I'd say Neil Patrick Harris has something to do with the Doctor turning into Tennant again and he's deliberately trying to bring back Donna's repressed memories of him. For what diabolical purpose, I know not! I'm looking forward to it, though.

Yesterday I also read Washington Irving's "Christmas" from The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon and a bit of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Not a bad Christmas at all.

Return to Osaka Castle

I paid my second visit to Osaka Castle on Wednesday with some friends. I first visited it in 2020, when I'd been in Japan only a couple weeks, and at that time I was unable to go inside due to Corona virus restrictions.

Wednesday was a holiday, Greenery Day, a part of Golden Week, a week where three holidays happen to occur three days in a row. So there were some special performances and festivals in the area.

This woman had a balancing act in which she first balanced a tray of teacups and tassels on her chin and then on a thread.

I went to the top floor of the castle where there's a great view of the park and Osaka.

I bought some ice cream from a nearby shop and decided to live dangerously and get their most expensive flavour, "Gold Leaf Macha".

It was 1000 yen, or about 10 dollars, and as far as I can tell from googling various web sites, it has real gold. It didn't taste like anything but I guess I have the bragging rights. I suppose this proves I'm not a Cyberman.

Twitter Sonnet #1578

The late discussion vanished 'round the curb.
Ignition sequence brought the light to you.
Utilities comprise the breath superb.
And ev'ry shirt reminds the world of blue.
A modern shirt was but the thought of shoes.
And here we stack the pearls to make a snake.
As dancers paint the floor in pinks and blues.
The jealous chef would swiftly stake the cake.
Beyond the twelve we find a week to go.
For what was draining weak for strength we hit.
The pavement boils something grey and slow.
A flattened tyre trapped the killer pit.
The newest brick could never ape the old.
A golden fish was stored in Teach's hold.

The Last Blossoms

I took this picture at Shin-Osaka Station this morning. I was in Osaka for a meeting, in a part of northern Osaka called Ibaraki, one station north of Shin-Osaka by Rapid Express.

Here's a street in Ibaraki from an elevated platform.

The meeting involved a whole room full of foreign English teachers like myself. It was strange being in a room with so many native English speakers. The majority of the teachers seem to be either Australian or Filipino but there were a few Brits and Yanks. There were also a few whose first language isn't English. Japan is even more desperate for English teachers now due to Covid.

The cherry blossoms are famously short lived. I noticed some trees were already starting to turn green when I left.

Twitter Sonnet #1569

The easy eyes were rolling tens or twelves.
We counted more than cash to crack the scales.
The heavy tree was thick with Keebler Elves.
The violent sea was choked with screaming whales.
With heavy hair the climber gripped the snow.
From mountain heights connexions froze the frame.
Discussions turned around the things we know.
The wind and rain revealed a second name.
Dessert attacked before the dinner rose.
A field of cake was easy not for sweets.
A candy button pressed the guarded rows.
Assume the kitchen salts the larder meats.
Across the city, green consumes the pink.
The flames await beyond the falling brink.

Plants, Bones, and Stars

Help, I've been shrunk! Actually, that's a giant model of a venus fly trap at the botanical wing of the Osaka Natural History Museum. I went there yesterday with my friend, Tiffany, and her boss.

There were many wonderful plant specimens but my favourite was this:

I know they look lavender but, according to the sign, they're 青いバラ, "blue roses". Any Twin Peaks fan would be excited. Also by the fact that there was a big slice of a douglas fir trunk downstairs straight from Oregon (I didn't get a picture).

Next we visited the main event which, of course, is bones:

These impressive fin whale skeletons were outside. Inside, there were dinosaur fossils.

An allosaurus and a mammoth stood at the vanguard but there was also a stegosaurus and a triceratops as well as a t rex skull.

There were also many very small fossils:

Here's one I'd never heard of:

Desmostylus. Apparently they mainly dwelt on the west coast of the U.S. and Japan. Just like me.

Here's one of the giant deer that once dwelt in Japan:

What kind of Caitlin R. Kiernan fan would I be if I didn't take pictures of the trilobites?

Many of the labels say these things came from Ohio.

Most of these came from the U.S. or Canada except the Paradoxides carens came from the Czech Republic and the Neoadaphus kowalewskii (the guy with the antennae) came from Russia.

After the Natural History Museum, we visited the Science Museum and Planetarium.

This meteorite is from Arizona.

Always nice to see a familiar face from 17th century England:

Good old Robert Boyle.

Here's a bit on the evolution of the calculator:

We didn't have much time to look at the science museum exhibits because we'd gotten tickets for a planetarium show. It was a pretty relaxing tour of the solar system and the constellations. As I told Tiffany's boss, it made me want to watch Star Trek and Galaxy Express 999.

It was a pretty nice day.

Twitter Sonnet #1529

The lovely saucer dashed from cold to gold.
In bubbling ice, the glasses kept afloat.
A certain kind of youth is never old.
The tiny world became a cheery boat.
A world of spikes invites the metal man.
To jump beneath the waves some boots are light.
Electric suns bestow an iv'ry tan.
To power up, ascend the copper kite.
The spinning hair revealed a pulsing brain.
The hungry planet called to earthling gin.
Beneath the bones, belief excised the sane.
The thirsty world contracts the whisky bin.
Recurring storms denude the late abed.
The waiting roots revive untimely dead.

Paint and Animals

Yesterday I went to Osaka and visited Tennoji Zoo and the nearby Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts. The latter was by far the most impressive because it housed an exhibition of 500 years of Western art on loan from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. I went with my neighbour, Tiffany, and her boss, Nakai-sensei.

That's "The Three Ages of Humans" by Dosso Dossi from 1515. But the exhibition had bigger names including Titian, Raphael, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Degas, Van Gogh, and Monet. Everything looked amazing, every painting's colours harmonising and showing layers in ways that no photograph seems able to capture. I think my favourite of the day was Renoir's "A Young Girl with Daisies".

The colours behind her are more powerful and subtler in person. And her breasts are nice, too, you know.

The zoo couldn't compare to the San Diego Zoo, of course, but I did see some impressive animals. There were lovely bats:

I was surprised to see some Chinese grey wolves:

A couple of them were pacing rapidly and seemed to have a lot of anxiety.

We also saw a lot of big cats.

The lion was being very vocal.

We had a good lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant. All in all, a nice day in Osaka.