Friday 12 November 2010

Day 17 – Umeda Skytower

Today we decided to visit the Skytower building in Umeda, a tall building kind of divided in two with a large ring at the top connecting the two sides. I remember seeing it when we first arrived in Osaka when we were taking the train from the airport. So we caught the train there and immediately stumbled upon a massive department store... with one whole massive floor dedicated to toys and games and music, so we stayed there a while (and saw a crazy genius just sitting on one of the pianos cranking out classical hits), but somehow in the process we lost David and David. We looked around but couldn’t find them so we just set of to the tower.
On arriving we made our way up a whole series of escalators but we really didn’t know where we were going. I remember noticing there was no-body else going up the tower though except another girl a little way behind. Eventually we reached a dead end as the escalators didn’t go any higher, when the girl who was coming up behind us asked if we were trying to reach the top. We said yes and she said she thought we were meant to get off on the third floor and take an elevator from there, so we all went back down and successfully navigated our way across to the other side of the tower where we caught an elevator the rest of the way. The view from the top was spectacular, being able to see all of Osaka in every direction. We also introduced ourselves to the girl we met; her name was Ioana and it turned out she was from Romania. We talked a while and after taking in the amazing view we went to the Skyview cafe in the tower and had a coffee. While there I mentioned that I’d love to see monkeys at some stage, and Ioana said she was actually staying not far from a reserve where monkeys actually lived! So we exchanged emails and said we’d see if we could catch up tomorrow and maybe see if we could find some.
After that we went back a pub near our hotel where it was happy hour, and I just can’t get over how cheap drinks are here. Roughly $3 Australian for a pint of Rum and Coke? You bet! :)

 The Skytower from the ground

 Osaka from the sky




A reverse waterfall!

2 comments:

mothermapes said...

Whatever happened to David and David? I am slightly concerned : (

Stuart said...

Oops! Haha forgot to mention that we eventually met up again at the skytower