Kansai 2004 (December) 

Kansai 2004 (December)

Originally posted on Saturday, January 01, 2005

Visited friends in osaka the previous week. here are some pictures from the trip...



On our way to Todaiji (東大寺） in Nara



It's actually raining sleet that day (see frost on window).



Rickshaw tours are common near famous temple grounds and costs about 2000 - 5000 Yen depending on the length of the tour. Scary price when you start converting to pesos. Then again, everything is expensive in Japan when you convert to pesos.



Todaiji is a collection of Temples buildings in a part of Nara. Here's me in front of the Koutoku Temple building where the Kamakura Daibutsu (鎌倉大仏） is housed.



The Kamakura Daibutsu (大仏）



Todaiji is known for deers roaming freely in the temple grounds.



The Kaiyukan (海遊館). Osaka's Public Aquarium. The main attractions here are the whale shark, manta ray (マンタ manta) and the ocean sunfish (マンボ mambo).



Whale Shark



Me and a replica of ジンベエサメ（jinbeesame). Don't ask what happened to my hair...

Unfortunately I wasn't able to take photos of the sunfish and the manta. Maybe next time. For those wondering what an ocean sunfish is, look here.



The Umeda Sky Building's floating observatory (taken from the ground floor lloking up). A picture of the Umeda Sky Building during the day can be found here.



Osaka skyline by night.

Other attractions in Osaka includes the Tempozan Giant Wheel and Osaka Castle.





I went to Universal Studios Japan as well, but didn't take any pictures. Too busy queuing up for the rides. The Spiderman 3-D ride was awesome and so was the Jurassic Park ride. Very good animatronics on the T-Rex, the other dinosaurs were so-so. Jaws was fun, Backdraft offered great fire effects, and Back-to-the-Future, literally was a pain in the neck (bumpy ride). Not bad for a day which started at around 11:30 and ended at 19:00. The queue for Spiderman was 180 mins!!!

More info about USJ here.

All pictures taken using my Nikon CoolPix2000 (as you can see, the quality isn't all that great, but it's definitely better than nothing).