So we arrived from Tokyo on the sleeper bus fairly early in the morning, we’d had a good nights sleep in the bus, the buses are fantastic! I guess it’s because the roads are much like ours that we were easily able to watch a film and get to sleep without bumping out of our beds like in India (a curtain between the beds helps as well – you don’t have to worry about dribbling in your sleep…).
We checked into our hotel (Hotel Diamond) and headed straight out. That day we headed in the direction of Spa world and Shinsekai, probably the most advertised Onsen (spa) in Osaka. It was basically an isolated ‘fun’ area of Osaka with the Osaka Tower, cheap pinball machines (great fun), good food (the area is known for its tempura) and cross-dressing cabaret shows. We spent about two hours at one of the pinball arcades one day, quite hard to win anything but good fun!
We then headed to the area of Osaka known for its likeness to Akihabara, Nipponbashi. We had a good look around the shops down the street and while it was good and fun, with a few great cosplay outfit shops (one had a few Bleach costumes – wasn’t allowed to take a photo though), it had nothing on Akihabara. The actual town of Osaka is quite different to Tokyo, in terms of care and appearance, it was basically not what we were used to in Tokyo, it definitely had an urban feel to it!
A couple of ear plugs that I found humorous…
The next day we thought we would try out the ‘super spa’ that was Spa World. With 8 floors, we decided to dedicate a day (as it is open 24/7!), to, well, not doing much!
Each of the floors has a different purpose as we found out before heading in (as it would have been quite confusing…)
1F – Ground floor reception
2F – Shop
3F – World sauna area (Ganban’yoku) & Food zone
4F – European zone
5F – Hotel
6F – Asian zone
7F – Hotel
8F – Swimming / slide area
You could basically get entry into any of the areas except the 4F and 6F. These floors are rotated on a monthly basis between men and women. So the day that we went men used the European zone and women the Asian zone. They are basically the same things in each of the zones, only decorated differently.
The World sauna spa had 8 different ‘sub’ rooms, each for a different countries spa (Turkey Hamam, Israel Salt, Egypt Loyly, Austria Radon, Korea Hanjung, Russia Banya, Iceland Cold Wind and Canada Forest Bath). Each were completely different and we spent about half an hour in each.
The process of actually getting in was fairly complicated, and the staff spoke very little English which didn’t ease the situation! I think that was our first (of very few situations) we came across where we had trouble communicating! First off, we had to decipher where to pay, there are a few ticket machines around the entrance where you pay the entrance fee (2,700¥ for a full day, at the time of this post), you then go to the entrance counter and exchange that ticket for a wristband (the wrist bands are used to pay for things while you are in the spa, including vending machines and restaurants) and locker key, and take off your shoes (take them with you!). You then find your allocated shoe locker (this is different to your bag locker, and also different to the valuables lockers…!). Now you have a choice, if you want to use the world sauna section of the spa (800¥ extra) you then have to go to another counter (not far from the lockers) and exchange your wristband for a new one, collect your fetching spa PJ’s, towel and bag. Now the fun begins!
You now have three options, 1. The World sauna (if you got the new wristband, 3F), 2. The gender separated spas (floors 4 & 6) or 3. The water park (8F). Depending on what you want to do first depends on what you get changed into, or not as the case maybe… For all three however you have to take the lift to your genders’ allocated floor (depending on month as stated above) and head straight across the floor to the changing (read naked) room. From here you can grab a locker and change into either your swimming costume to go to the water park on 6F, change into your spa PJ’s if you have them and head to the shared floor 3F, or go butt naked and explore your spa floor (either 4F or 6F)…
We chose the option that would ease us into the whole spa thing and headed to the water park first. Not an overly large pool, but it had about 3 slides (one of which was appropriately called Death Loop, which I couldn’t not go on….), a lazy lagoon and river, and a few outdoor bits (which were bloody hot). It was strange to see so many people sitting around the river on their towels eating and generally using it as a park, but hey! The slide rides aren’t included in the price of the ticket (300¥ extra), you pay for the in the queue using your wristband. After a while we decided it was time for lunch so we headed our separate ways to get changed (into our world sauna clothes) and met on 3F to grab some grub.
A good selection of food on the floor from pancakes to pizzas and steaks, we went for a slightly healthy salad lunch, well, we are in a spa….
After lunch we stayed on 3F to use the world sauna. This was the area where we spent most of the time, we sampled everything, including the weird and wonderful Japanese TV shows in the Canadian oxygen room. I think we liked the Icelandic room the most.
Feeling a little relaxed and tired (we spent about 2 hours on that floor, and by that time my eyes had well and truly dried up) we finally decided to head to the last floor(s) we were to visit: the spas.
As I described earlier the men’s and women’s floors alternate each month, so one month the men are allocated 4F, and the women 6F. This month the men had the European style, and the women had the Asian style floor. The entrance to the spas are off of the changing room section, so after stripping off and grabbing a miniature towel, only good enough to cover one leg, I stepped into the land of the Greeks…!
A massive amount of different spas to go round (as I described them to Heather she said they were exactly the same in the women’s section, so it’s only the aesthetics that change), hot, freezing cold baths, herbal, optional body scrub (extra cost), Dr Oxygen, salt sauna (basically one huge tub of salt in the middle of the room, you grab a load and have a good scrub everywhere, one guy lay on the floor and made a salt angel… That was quite awkward). After the first couple of baths of being completely butt naked apart from the hand towel everyone carries with them, I felt a little more at ease, everyone was starkers and it seemed quite normal for them. It was also interesting to see a complete spectrum of ages visiting, kids and their grandparents was one example. Also the fact that no one seems to care about being naked in spas in Japan, we were both the only westerners’ in the spa and no one looked twice.
Overall, the spa was great, it just needed a few more instructions for the non-Japanese visitors! Even though this seemed like a daunting experience, with no signs, or help along the way, it was quite fun!
The next day we spent pretty much the full day wandering the indoor market of Shinsaibashi. Basically just a long street stretching the length of Osaka, covered from the elements. It has a great range of sushi, tempura, clothes, tea towels and small men’s clubs playing chess. We had a bite to eat down here after literally about half an hour of deciding what we fancied and where to get it from! Eventually we found a small area for people to eat lunch and bedded down for our sashimi, rice, sweet coffee and green tea lunch.
Another day in Osaka and we headed to the Osaka Castle. Just on the outskirts of town, we got the bus there and had a wander through the parks, up to the castle and realised we didn’t have enough cash to get in…! Doh! There weren’t any cash machines around so we spent our last pennies on ice cream and I had a go at slinging some traditional ninja stars, ???. I was close with one shot, completely missed with the rest…
We also found a brilliant place to get a well known Japanese food, Okonomiyaki. Translated its basically Japanese cabbage pancakes, it doesn’t sound that amazing, but mixed with the sauce it tastes amazing, a must eat!
Our last night in Osaka and we decide to grab some food a little closer to our hotel (hotel Taiyo). Basically next door we found a small eatery (all in Japanese) where we had a great meal, a few noodles and sake, good enough to recommend for anyone going to Osaka!
While in Tokyo we saw a large number of gambling machines that all looked very similar, a vertical pinball type interface with a crazy video playing in the middle and a knob to the side which players twisted and balls came flying round the pinball course. Although this was a new type of gambling to us that looked like complete and utter luck, what drew us in were the sheer number of silver balls people had in baskets around their feet. Some players had at least twenty or so of these shoebox sized containers filled with marble sized silvers balls!! These places are so filled with noise coming from the amount of people playing you can hardly talk! Unfortunately we had no idea how to play while in Tokyo so didn’t venture any further until we hit Osaka.
As it turns out Heather had been reading a book called “When the Cherry Blossoms Fall” by Kim Hotzon, which described her husband going off and playing the game, which we now know as Pachinko! So with this slight bit of knowledge and a small description of how to play the game from the book we headed across from the hotel to a place I’d eyed up people playing. We went in and had a quick look around but it wasn’t really all that obvious what you even do to start playing, it was at this point we thought we give a go to playing ‘how do you play Pachinko Charades’ with one of the guys that worked there… About half an hour later of intense training I was nearly getting it… The aim, we gathered, is to get the balls into the small holes at the bottom of the board, but then what happens is anyone’s guess, because the screen in the middle shows a random video, plays a song, does a dance and the whole thing starts again! Every so often you get a few more balls drop out for you to play with (I think what we eventually worked out was that these were my winnings), but we had no idea so kept pumping them back in until there were none left! It as was fun at first, but without knowing whether I was actually winning or losing it slowly lost it’s charm, not to say, since, we’ve looked online and know a little bit more about how to play!
Anyhow, fun ended and put to bed, our next stop was to Kyoto on the bullet train! We’d previously looked at getting the Shinkansen for a longer part of our journey but it turned out to be quite expensive so we decided to take it for a smaller part of the travel to Kyoto. It was nearly twice the price (1,420¥) but only took a fifth of the time of the normal train (it didn’t actually get up to speed, probably because of the short distance), it took 15mins instead of 1hr 15mins.
Osaka, a great town, with lots to do but I think we stayed a day longer than we needed to (we stayed 4 days in total). Roll on Kyoto!
