Osaka rain day

I know it's raining all day so the plan is to find an interesting museum.

I am trying the area around the Osaka castle. I take the metro with a day card so I can go anywhere all day without walking too much. I run into the history museum but they are closed on Tuesday, pity that would have been a perfect start for the first day in Japan.

I'm on my second cup of coffee staring out at nice architecture and the castle in the park, drenched by unrelenting rain. I'm dry. I'm happy and I'll read up on some Japanese history on my phone.

I'll walk to the castle in a bit. Then I might try another inside attraction. Meanwhile I get into a nice traveler conversation with Tino from Italy who is a contemporary in the restaurant business traveling all over the world living from city to city doing his consulting. He's in Japan for a month just traveling around unbound by any kind of schedule.

I walk to the downtown waterfront and find a small Japanese locals restaurant where I have udong noodles with seaweed. Then I go to the famous Osaka shopping street, It's enormous, many city blocks with covered pedestrian streets to avoid the rain. It seems the entire city has descended into the street to hang around the shops and the food vendors. I have some Takoyaki octopus dumplings. Delicious.Read more