Osaka castle looks everything like a castle from the outside, but the inside is like any other museum. The current castle is actually a replica from the old one, which has been destroyed and rebuilt many times. I think Nijo castle in Kyoto and Himeji castle in Himeji would have been more spectacular, but not enough time la...

Sandwich for breakfast again. Sorry about the bite mark. The Japanese don't seem to eat the crust of the bread. Bad habit, my mum would say.


On our way to the castle, we saw boys playing baseball. The Japanese really LOVE their baseball. Everywhere you see is baseball baseball and baseball. Its even more popular than their Sakura. 

Lots of people drawing the gate of Osaka castle.

Castle moat. 

This is the gate the artists were trying to draw.

Moat is populated b ducks, good friends of Liying. (See story later)

Osaka Castle is a very popular spot for viewing sakura as well. 

Entrance fee 600 yen. Not very cheap but oh well its an experience~


Cute flower beds surrounding Osaka castle outside. 

View from top of Osaka castle! Eighth floor was it? Its tiring climbing up so many stairs. 

Some well thing. 

The artisans who re-created this battle scene are crazy. 

I know this is Yukimura Sanada. Why? Because his name was there. Duhhhhhh. Anyway he's a very famous samurai, and called the best warrior in Japan from the Sengoku period. 

Too bad we went a little too late to see this lady perform with her monkey. When we were there she was about to collect money from her audience liao, and I was like "OK SIAMMM!". I thought it was illegal to keep monkey as pets? 

I had to wait for a long time to take this photo because an ang moh's head was blocking my camera and I wanted to take this angle. I still wanted to take from a lower angle but his head was still there and so explains the awkward level. 

LUNCH! 


Funny how blue the sky now looks. 


Act shuai.

Sorry about the lens flare. The story about Liying and the ducks I mentioned above goes like this. One fine day on our way up to the Shuudokan Liying somehow was talking something about prettiness or how pretty she was and tonggab went "Ya you're pretty, compared to the ducks.", and so Liying chased him down for like 200m and manhandled him. :)

The Shuudokan. We kept making rounds outside for like half an hour trying to decide whether to go in and ask if we could go in not. I asked a guard and the staff inside but they were not that helpful. In the end a kind mama knew that we were unsure and told us we can go in and see. 

The shuudokan holds kendo, iaido, judo and naginata practices. I wanted to see naginata but apparently no such luck.

Warm up. Judo and Kendo training together, how cool. 

Fun sia their warm up consists of hitting balls too~ sounds wrong. 

Men-tsuke. 


Kirikaeshi. These boys and girls really got spirit! 

I thought the sensei was really good man. I admire his form best out of so many I saw in shuudokan. He's got a really straight, firm yet relaxed posture, and when he moves from and back he does it as though he applied butter on his feet. I remember reading somewhere in a book about virtually not bouncing up and down when moving front and back in Kendo, and I wonder if it was physically possible, but this guy really can do it. 

To the old ones. Surprisingly I preferred watching the kids. The high school ones were further back, I couldn't see them, which was a waste because they got speed! And they all came for extra training! How crazy is that. 

That ah pek, I was so worried about him all the time, because he seemed so frail and couldn't even stand in a straight chudan kamae. 

And he was slow and all but I think he's really got spirit and doesn't let age deter him.

I didn't really like returning too late especially after the sun sets. Its like super brrrrr cold. 

I think there was some kind of a concert event? Because there were a lot of girls and booths selling these photos of I dunno which band.

Dinner from family mart again~ a bit poor thing hor us, always getting dinner from convenient stores but they're good! But after eating udon for so many times I got sick of it and really wanted some nice bak kut tehhhh~

Oh yaaaa

I found the commercial liao leh MK. Aren't I a pro? This (irritating) CM made MK sing the song all the time when we were in Japan. Anyway I foudn out that its actually a contest for people to choreograph to the jingle to win 1,000,000 yen. How cool. 

The winning dance?

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