Osaka pictures and Hikone

No pictures last post so I put what I have here. Not much though since I most of the time was spent searching for the hotel and concert had strict no-photo's policy.

 Lunch boxes you buy on stations have time to time pictures like these.

Panorama from the Osaka.

 Wonder what these statures are supposed to be?

 Osaka castle. This is pretty much closest I got. This was taken as I was going toward the concert.

 Castle sure had nice moat around it...

 Castle had large(and I mean LARGE) garden attached and there was this pretty fountain in it.

Plus few smaller ones.

Anyway the night finally passed and station even opened 30 minutes before first train so got inside the station to warm myself a bit. While waiting for the first station couple old men picked up conversation with me(bit surprising that some 60-70 year old have been most likely to come to talk to me just like that). They went all excited when they heard I was going to see the Biwa lake and when they heard I was from Finland they went totally crazy in excitement. What's up with that anyway? Well nice to get chance to chat. Just amusing how they reacted to my country of origin.

Trip to Hikone was short(damn could have done with time to sleep! By now I had been 22 hours up with no sleep). On Hikone there was stature of samurai and small version of castle. Guess they are proud of their castle and samurai history as the place had all sorts of samurai related pictures around the place.

Castle was first to come across and sure enough I saw it soon but what I thought was going to be entry to the castle area was actually some sort of temple. Whoops! But can't say I'm unhappy into finding yet another temple.

Then toward the castle again and this time I found the road to there. Surprisingly, seeing this was SUNDAY, I saw what looked a lot like bunch of high school kids on their way to school. Okay time checks(about 8 am) but it's SUNDAY. Surely even Japanese kids don't go to school on Sunday's do they? Maybe they were 3rd graders going to cram school prepping for university entrance exams? I have heard the entrance exams are nightmare and that 3rd graders in high school are mostly preparing for them. That might be plausible explanation for the stream of school kids I saw.

Unfortunately timing was bad as the ticket sale started like 45 minutes later. Ah well. I'll go instead to the Biwa lake first. So back to walking. Saw first proof of it quite soon when I saw smallish river along which I spotted guy fishing. Then another. Then whole lot more others.

 This is finally from the edge of the lake. Could smell the water when I started to get close.

Unfortunately my timing was again bad(well it was sunday morning...) as it would be 3 HOURS before lake cruising would start. I was already dead tired, it had been like 30 minutes walk from the castle and wasn't exactly thrilled about idea of walking 30 minutes to castle, check castle around, walk 30 minutes here, take cruise for X minutes and then walk about 45 minutes to station before I could get home train and get some sleep. Also no idea how expensive the cruise would be...So in the end I figured I'll just settle for the view I had and don't even take the cruise. Didn't even know about the boat ride before I came here anyway.

So back to the castle. This time doors were opened though first there was nobody there. Wondered is it even OPEN on sunday's but going past the ticket gate I spotted the salesclerk doing bit of cleaning up.

First I went through path to plum trees after which I passed through the plums. If they were in full bloom it probably would be quite a sight but I think I'm bit too late(pretty sure plum season is late february/early march).

Then it was time to go to the castle and the castle was HIGH. Seriously high. Below is photo from bottom of the pathway to it though it doesn't do the angle justice nor the one I took from up which was just first stage of going up. Good thing I have been losing weight for 5 years and going to gym for year. Did think was this such a good idea after all but then just started climbing.

Here I had mother with small girl(probably not even elementary school though I suck at identifying people's age but so short yet I would guess maybe 4 or 5 year old) approach me to ask if I would like to get photo of myself and bell taken. Sure! The girl also dared to say hi, nod and when they left gave me cute little smile. After Katsuura I'm always happy when the little kids actually dare to interact with me in any way. Sure beats them running away ;)

As with Matsumoto castle we were expected to take off our shoes. This time despite looking hard I saw no "no photograph" signs and locals were taking pictures too so here's some pictures inside the castle for a change.

Apart from "no shoes" castle shared another feature with Matsumoto castle. Ridiculously steep and tall stairs! I felt sorry when I saw another mother-daughter combo descend as the little kid had obviously trouble going down(she basically had to sit down on each ladder to reach to the next step) and actually complained "kowai!" meaning she's affraid. Hell I wasn't too thrilled myself going down and at one point I actually managed to step in a manner that made the chafe in my feet burn which caused next step to go down too fast which ended up twisting my left knee a bit and ankle felt bit sore rest of the day. And due to the knee rest of the day was spent limping around.

View from the top was spectacular as not only were we top of tall tower but castle itself was on top of a tall hill!

Then it was time to get down(bought nice souvenir on my way. Not sure to whom I'll give this one though) and to the museum. Here too photographing was allowed provided it was not flash(I asked later why no flash and they said it damages the items. Maybe discolours them or something?

I thought I had seen all but guess I had been too little time as the ticket sales person guessed I had missed something. I had missed entrance to area that contained old style Japanese gardens. Holla. Guess another benefit of being so easy to recognize. That or the ticket sellers have very good face memory if they can remember when everybody came :D

Still she quickly led me there and I'm happy I didn't miss this as it was very beautiful sight. Also there was this mother+son pair which gave me(and the mother) good laughter as every time I ran into the boy he said happily "hello!". Guess he found the foreigner interesting sight :D After first time mother laughed as well.

There would have been park attached to the castle I could have went but with my slightly injured knee and 28 hours up no sleep I wasn't feeling like I could handle another long walk(Japanese parks aren't exactly small) so I just called it a day and headed toward station where I noticed the clock tower I had missed before.

On my way I got just 2 hours sleep. Not sure how I could get so little sleep even though I was feeling dead tired. I slept longer when I was coming from Hiroshima! When I came from Tokyo it occurred to me that since the concert was so fun experience I should give check if it would be(within reasonable budget) to do it again so since Harajuku was conveniently on the way between Tokyo and Shinjuku stations(well maybe there would be line that would have taken more directly and faster but I don't know such so I just use the line that loops around in circle) I dropped there. For this band nope. One of the other bands from same label, nope. Plenty for another band from same label but these ones I have very little knowledge and as they have now recently changed members there's practically no member left from the songs I know. Still I took note of days when they would be performing. None on next month so no JR pass so keeping in mind I don't want to pay myself sick for this it's imperative to find one that's NEAR Tokyo. Trip to Hiroshima for example put me down about 200 euro's for there and back...It was not THAT interesting experience!

First concert I checked was about 30 euro or so for the trip. Second one however was only about 8 euro's or so there and back again as it was practically on Tokyo's door step. On next day(Monday) I returned and checked prices for tickets for that and this time I even paid mind for what ROW I would be buying for. There was one that was one row closer than on Saturday and which wasn't unbearably expensive so I decided to go for it. Could have got myself seat on the first row but not willing to pay double the price for that one. 11th row gave me pretty good view so surely 10th will give as well. Could have saved little bit by going about 10 rows further but figured it's not that big of a saving so might just as well have good view to the stage.

So what's for this week. Mostly resting! I have no JR pass so going outside Tokyo apart from very closest spots is going to be quite expensive so don't expect lots of travels from me. My legs still hurt, knee hasn't fully recovered though I can actually walk without pain flaring up so that's good. It just needs little rest. Weekend was on the more expensive side though I'm still under the budget so no reason to get worried but I'll try to spend less again for a while. Tomorrow I have another meeting with Japanese and end of the month two more. Second concert is on Wednesday. Hanami is soon beginning so definitely looking forward to that.

Going to play more on Go salons I think. Last week didn't play one game. Still need to improve on my skills there!