For this blog, I will tell you about our time in Osaka. Osaka is a small town in Japan that didn’t have many tourists, so it was a very nice town to spend a long time in. We spent 3 weeks in Osaka and had a very wonderful time there.
Our 3 weeks in Osaka was one of my favorite parts about our trip. Osaka just had something about it that you can’t explain; it was quiet, peaceful, friendly, and magical in a way. The reason why it was magical was because you could take a nice morning walk and pass by the windows of a bakery with the aroma of fresh bread wafting out and people lining up to get a warm and soft baguette. You could pass by parks filled with blooming plum blossoms and kids throwing a ball to each other while running around and laughing with joy, and after your morning walk you would return to your small Japanese-style apartment with your arms piled with fresh breads and sweet fruit tarts and your cheeks tinted pink from the crisp autumn air.
One of our days in downtown Osaka, we went to the Osaka castle museum. For the rest of this blog, you have to understand that downtown Osaka was not the peaceful area of Osaka that we stayed in, and all of the events that I will be talking about for the rest of this blog are in downtown Osaka. The Osaka castle museum is a very large castle in a tall stone base surrounded by a wall and a moat. To get to the castle, you have to walk up a long winding path that will take you to the front. This giant, colorful, towering castle has the emperor’s garden surrounding it. This garden is filled with beautiful flowers and has a huge section dedicated to plum blossoms. These stunning plum blossoms are either white, white and red, or a bright pink. Inside the castle is an array of samurai armor, swords, and ancient paintings and writings. It was cool to see how many rare artifacts they had there.
Below the castle was a lot of gift shops but also a mini-figure exhibit. This mini-figure exhibit had a whole floor dedicated to mini-figures and models. What was super cool about it was that it had every thing you could possibly think of but in small plastic models. They had everything, from microscopic organisms to an eagle eating a fish. You also got a free metal coin with a dragon head on the front! One other cool thing about the mini-figure exhibit is that they set up detailed terrains were the dinosaur section was. The type of terrain (in glass cases) that they had was were there would be a T-Rex at the base of a tree, and small baby flying dinosaurs would be hiding in a hole just above the T-Rex’s head.
The last couple things, one of which was our walk through this town with hikes and temples. On our walk, one of the first things that we encountered was a small shop that sold fried maple leaves. Fried maple leaves are a Fall and early Autumn delicacy. To make this you have to find a-lot of maple leaves and then fry them in oil and leave them to sit on a pan overnight. It is a quite fascinating process that requires a-lot of time, effort, and skill. On the rest of our walk, we munched on a small bag of these (they might sound weird and gross, but they are actually very delicious).
After our walk around the town we walked a walking path up to the waterfall. On our way we stopped by an insectarium that had display habitats with alive and very cool bugs. At the back they also had a butterfly garden that we walked in quickly before we went to the waterfall.
At the waterfall, there was lots of vendors, one of who sold fish and ice-cream. We bought a (whole and not-gutted) fish from him and we got ice-cream. The ice-cream that I picked was blue-soda flavor, and surprisingly it was pretty good!
That is it for this blog. Sorry readers that I have not written a blog in a long time. I just got home a couple weeks ago, so it has been a busy few weeks and I totally forgot about blogging. I hope that you guys have enjoyed this blog and keep looking for new ones because now it is on my weekly schedule to work on a blog. I trust that everyone is in good health and good spirits, so farewell my dear readers. Until the next blog.
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