City, beach and culture
It´s been a while when I wrote something in my blog the last time, sorry for that…somehow the time passes faster than I thought. Meanwhile we are travelling for more than 5 weeks and everything is fine so far. Currently we are at the island Okinawa, but I will talk about it later. First, some impressions about Osaka, Amanohashidate and Kusatsu. But before that, I would like to say some general words about Japan and the Japanese:
I am really impressed about the politeness, helpfulness and patience of the people. Everything is very clean and well-regulated, everything has it´s designation, function respectively it´s whole purposes. In the public you don´t have the feeling that the people are stressed or hectic. I am really fascinated and overwhelmed. You read and hear a lot about it, but it´s something different if you yourself can experience it.
Now about Osaka, Amanohashidate and Kusatsu:
When we arrived there it was still raining, therefore some pictures are grey and cloudy. I also went to an oceanarium during a rainy day and Mery went to meet some people she already knew from her last visits before, amongst others Mariko. She spent her whole weekend with us, Mery and Mariko look into their hobby and went to nice lunch and dining places. On a nice sunny day I made an excursion to Amanohashidate, the place lies north of Osaka, at the Japanese see and is popular for the locals. There you can walk on a 3km long dune, a very nice place to go for a walk, to swim, make a picnic or just relaxing.
In Osaka we visited the castle Tenshukaku, went to the longest shopping street (2.6 km roofed) of Japan, a comic/Manga area in Ota road, to a market in Doguyasuji where they sell kitchen equipment, temples and shrines.
To me the city Osaka is a colourful and shrill place, lots of shops, restaurants, cafés and bars, a very alive place. There are many Asian tourists there, they like to go shopping.
We also went to Kusatsu and met professor Ikeda (through the internet platform www.nagomivisit.com). He is meanwhile retired and his passion is to cook. For us he cooked a multi-course dinner and it was fantastic, very culinary and domestic. After our lunch he brought us to the mountain area Daihieihieizan. There is a temple (also under the UNESCO world heritage) where the Buddhism started in Japan and you have a fantastic view over Kyoto, if the weather is nice…it was a wonderful day, we are very thankful for professor Ikedas hospitality.
