DAY SIX

Life Size 'Dick Bruna' posters in Osaka-Umeda

Today we venture out of Kyoto and to Osaka, about 40 minutes away by train (although sometimes the journey can be longer, depending on time of day and where in Kyoto/Osaka you are). This is where Michiel studies and lives. We aim to visit Osaka Jo (Osaka Castle), the Umeda Sky Building and Michiel’s lab and Uni.
When we arrive in Osaka Station, we see lots of ‘Dick Bruna’ characters on posters. For those of you that don’t regonize the name; Dick Bruna is the illustrator and writer of Dutch children books, mostly famous for ‘Nijntje’, which incidentally is callend ‘Miffy’ in the rest of the world (Nijntje being a Dutch diminutive word for ‘rabbit’). It is funny to see the life size characters, which we associate with Dutch life, in Japan with Japanese writing underneath, so we see this as an opportunity to record this weird phenomenon!!

On the way to Osaka Jo, we bump into a sign that says you can do a Sightseeing Cruise, talking about feeling at home! We decide to do it with the ’special discount ticket’ for the Osaka Jo and the cruise combined.

Views of Osaka city and Tosabori River

After the relaxing cruise we walk towards Osaka Jo and take in the amazing views on our way. on top of the castle we have a nice little view and inside a museum-type story about Osaka and the castle’s history. Coming back down the castle looks even better in the late afternoon sunlight so we snap away a few more shots of the castle and the sun going down. By now we have to get our arses back on the train to town where we are meeting Michiel. We can’t be late as our phones do not work in Japan (you have to have a UMTS phone and sim) so we have no way of contacting each other.
On our way we see a really REALLY busy zebra crossing and more star wars-police men with their Star Wars Darth Vader Lightsabers! (photo’s of these in Japan, The Photos Day SIX)
Luckily it all goes well and we manage to meet each other, how did we ever do it without mobile phones? I can’t remember, it’s too long ago for me!!
We walk to the Umeda Sky Building which looks like an alien-type-supersonic-arc de triomphe! There is a cool little German Christmas Market underneath with lovely Christmas music. It sure does not feel like Japan here.

Osaka-Ji in the evening light

The Umeda Sky building with the scary escalators in the top!!

To get up to the top floor you have to take escalators a few floors up, pay and get an elavator to a certain point (which by the way, is a glass elevator on the outside of the building AAAAHHHHHHHH- do something that scares you everyday….I certainly did!)
At this certain point, to get up higher, you need to take escalators, that go from one tower to the other, with a WHOLE LOTTA NOTHING underneath! and glass windows on either side, just so you can see how high up you are… another thing that scared me, but I still did it! in the other tower we had to ascend some stairs or take the old people’s lift up to finally get to the outside observatory level. This was not so scary, funnily enough, as there was a floor below us so you couldn’t lean over and fall off, which was nice cuz I could enjoy the views and the really cool fluoresant flooring that lit up because of the black light above .

The ultra cool fluorescent flooring on the Umeda Sky Building

Me and Robot Repliee Q2

After this we venture into town for something to eat and find a little Japanese style take away where you can buy ‘ramen’. Ramen is a type of noodles and is cooked very quickly, you sit on bar stools, choose your flavour and ingredients and its in front of you in a matter of minutes. Tastes very good too!!
Then it’s time for us to follow Michiel to his campus and the lab where he works. Unfortunately the robot I was most interested in (The Geminoid) was in a different lab and we couldn’t go and see it, but we did meet two other robots, a few robot toys and LOTS of computers! Very interesting indeed to see what my brother is up to all day (mainly play with robots )and see his enviroment.
It was getting pretty late and we end up catching the last train back to Kyoto and straight to bed as we get in