010

first light:

early morning street

I woke up early today and went to visit Osaka Castle, already early morning and the heat was undiscribable.
When i arrived i felt like jumping in the giant moat to cool down (i didn't do that though).
Its hard to discribe the size of this structure, because the human scale seems totaly abscent.
This starts with the giant walls that give this castle its magestic status.
The route to the main building is very long and in this heat every bit of shadow was welcome.
also the side structures and other buildings are a very interesting thing to see.

The main castle itself unfortunatly isn't the original anymore.
It burned down and as you can see from this model they rebuilt it with a steel skeleton structure.
this is kind of disapointing, because the complete interior experience is lost, with a museum inside and little of its original aspects.
The outside however is still an interesting thing to look at, so i snapped a ton of close-ups

I had lunch next to the castle moat and communicated with an old Japanese couple.
Their first question: American?
...nope...
After that we had a pretty good conversation :p

So i made my way to a meeting i had planned with Keiichi Hayashi, only to end up in front of a closed door.
unfortunatly he wasn't there. i left my contact card at his door so he would know i came along.

i checked around the area for a while and there was this amazing view of the skyline beyong Osaka city.

Housing for architects

A bit disapointed in not being able to meet with Hayashi i decided to visit the site of world expo 1970.
For that i traveled more north along the same transportline, and transfered on the monorail to the site.

only little of the 1970's buildings remain, but i saw what i was most interested in.
one segment of the original structure, a giant spaceframe.
one beam of this structure measures 10 meters, the connecting joint are about 1 meter.

This together with the welcoming solar giant are the only two original things remaining.
The rest has been turned into a park with sport facilities, gardens, etc.
Nice to hang out here though.

i decided to head back to Osaka city centre to have diner and start to prepare to leave Osaka tomorrow and head to Kyoto.
my diner: a variation of dumplings, onigiri and yakitori + 2 big and fresh orange juices and a happy smile service.

Now, i've writen this blogpost for today, and my bag is almost completely prepared,
so i'm going out to have a drink and get to bed.

ps:
Apparently there's a huge festival going on in Kyoto right now, and the highlights are this sunday.
i'll see what that brings.
My first plan when i will arrive in Kyoto is finding a good ryokan and dropping of my stuff there from then on,
its all a mistery again ;)