First Day in Osaka, or WHY IS IT SO HOT?

Due to the time zones and international date line, I lost a day. I left home Friday morning and arrived Saturday night. After getting out of customs and into the airport, I was amazed at just how hot and humid it was. The place is massive and so it took a bit to find where to buy tickets because there were a lot of different options. Google gave me a plethora of ways to get to the hotel, and after skipping Friday and not sleeping and how bloody hot it was I just went with the advice from Walk Japan to take the Haruko Limited Express to Shin-Osaka. I found that ticket machine and then had no idea how to go about buying it because that wasn’t exactly straight forward… Or maybe it was and I was just addled. Thankfully a really nice attendant, who spoke English perfectly offered to help me. I mention she spoke perfect English only because while I’m good at the “we don’t speak the same language let’s try to communicate anyway” shuffle, see previous comment about the weather and my likely delirious state.

Ticket in hand, I guessed my way to the correct platform and proceeded to evacuate my body’s entire water supply through every available pore. I’m so glad the Walk Japan packing list mentioned bringing a handkerchief, which I had in my back pocket and tried to discreetly not be the crazy foreigner melting all over their train platform. I didn’t succeed.

Once I got to Shin-Osaka I made my way out into the non-ticketed area and found a 7-Eleven. I feel obligated to mention here that like many American spin offs, countries with actual food regulations have better stores than we do. Not that the food there will be gourmet, but it’s actual food. But my detour there was because I had read their ATMs will accept foreign debit cards, where many in Japan will not, and Japan is a very cash-heavy society still. Post COVID, there are more options to pay contactless or with card, but many places (the rural inns and towns I will be visiting) are cash only. Cash in hand, I grabbed two large bottles of an electrolyte sports drink (again, food standards means it’s not all sugar and a colour hitherto not seen in nature, looking at you popular Florida beverage), and made my exodus of the sprawling underground warren that is the Shin-Osaka train station.

I think I planned it this way, it’s been a few months since I booked it in February, but the walk to the hotel was an easy ten minutes. Like most things Japanese, check-in was extremely efficient and done at a kiosk, where my room key was dispensed on scanning my passport. Up to my room I went, downed half of the liter of sports drink I had just purchased and blasted the AC in order to lower my core temperature to something a skosh less dangerous. (Fun fact I recently learned, skosh is not from the Yiddish as I had previously assumed, but a truncation of a Japanese word picked up back in the “let’s explode each other over ideas and land that we can’t take with us when we die” times. Which are sadly still now, but I’ve digressed enough.)

The rest of the evening proceeded uneventfully, though I did discover the toilet seat had a built-in warmer in addition to wall controls to help keep you sanitary after you’ve concluded your business. I attempted to stay up until a normal bedtime but by 9ish I was not long for the waking world. I slept fairly soundly and woke at a crisp 6 am. Leisurely morning and complementary hotel breakfast later, I was deciding what to do today.

Osaka Castle and the aquarium kept coming up, so I ventured out to by my metro day pass and made my way to the castle. I’m glad I bought my ticket online because the line to get to the ticket window was long. I got to just skip the line and have a QR code scanned for entry. I made my way up the winding stairs to the castle entrance to find misters along the way. But due to how humid it was, the mist literally did not stick to me. I honestly could not feel it, nor were my clothes nor glasses wet whilst passing through. Have I whined mentioned the weather yet?

Sadly, I was disappointed in the castle. I was hoping to find a legit old Japanese castle, something like when visiting the château in France or elsewhere in Europe. I don’t know if something happened to the building, but it was completely modern inside and housed a museum that felt like it could have been in any building with any edifice. I will admit I didn’t spend a lot of time looking at the exhibits, as they were about a very niche historical subject and mostly text. And even though there was a bit of air conditioning, seven floors of reading about a war I had never heard of, wasn’t as appealing as I had hoped it to be.

Next up the aquarium. It looked so close on the map, but much like Europeans visiting the States, I discovered how long Japan is. Roughly the height of the contiguous United States. An hour, two trains, and twenty minutes of walking later I found the aquarium. As had the rest of world, apparently. Unlike the castle, pre-purchasing tickets was not an option, and they were currently selling admission for 3 in the afternoon. It was currently just before noon. And as much fun as it would be to hang out for three hours waiting for my time to visit, I opted to enter a mall-like object instead because I knew it’d be cooler in there. I did actually find a store that looked promising to find a fan 🪭 and instead bought two as well as a bunch of other things I could vaguely justify buying. Eh, the exchange rate was in our favor, so why not. From there I wandered around a bit and found a place to eat the looked appetizing. I also splurged for a strawberry milk boba drink that was really quite good. Unlike the pink stuff most people think of hearing strawberry milk, this was more like milk plus strawberry purée with boba. Zero regrets.

Not finding anything else that interested me, I made my way back whence I came, got lost once again in the Shin-Osaka train station looking for the 7-Eleven that sold me my sports drink, found a different 7-Eleven (there are at least four that I’ve found in said train station), got lost again trying to find the appropriate exit (there are at least 11), found the wrong one I used last night and just was happy to have found my way out again. Until I was embraced by the humidity once again, much like walking around in clothes you pulled out of the dryer just a little too early. But the hotel was close enough, and now I am back in my room with the AC blasting and mostly dry again.

So here I am trying to muster the will to go out again tonight, though I’m sure once the hunger sets in it’ll be much easier. I discovered this about myself in Japan, but I just get little enjoyment out of adventuring around new places by myself. But that’s not why I came here. I came to be an abridged Pilgrim on the Shikoku path to nirvana, which begins tomorrow. And that’s the part that I’m looking forward to.

Well, minus the humidity. Seriously, it’s insane. But I’ve seen locals mopping themselves and doing the quick up-the-bottom-of-the-shirt wipe down with a cloth, so I at least feel a little better it’s not just me.