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2007 - October - Back to index |
Of all weird things seen in Osaka, this one was my favourite - a cat petting parlor! For as little as 490 yen, you could spend half an hour in a room with ten freely roaming cats. (They should have one of these in Sydney as well, don't you think, Nina?)
Remember that machine from The Fifth Element, the one that put eye makeup on Milla Jovovich in a nanosecond? Zzzzappp! Well, they are already selling those machines in Japan, and they work with triple-A batteries! (Alright, these are just prototypes: they don't actually put on the shadow, they only make eyelash perms and shape eyebrows...but it's a good start!)
Every single electronics store in Osaka also had horseback riding machines. The machines are capable of emulating uphill riding, downhill riding, trotting, gallop and what not. I tried one, and sitting on top of this rhytmically squirming, saddle shaped thingie was indeed amazingly relaxing.
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Osaka's landmark is the Osaka Castle, pretty as a picture. The town itself is notoriously ugly and, suitably, it's obvious the very minute you step out of the castle: the huge park surrounding the castle is full of shacks of homeless people. Many of them have been living without a permanent residence ever since Japan's stock market and property price collapse in 1990, of which neither market ever really recovered.
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Soundtrack of my life Big in Japan Alphaville |
Picturesque Kyoto is a large but not huge city. Osaka on the other hand is a true Japanese megalopolis with neon signs, pachinko parlors and desolated amusement parks.
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Some twenty of Kyoto's temples are on the World Heritage List, none of them without merit. Two days wasn't quite enough to see them all, but I gave it my best shot. Some of the highlights included...
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...the surroundings of Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Temple... |
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...the rock garden of Ryoan-ji... |
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...the cedar shingle roofs of the buildings... |
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...the serene and moss-covered Jizo-in monastery... |
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...the autumn foliage and fairy-tale scenery of Ginkaku-ji, the Silver Temple... |
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...and its massive sand gardens... |
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...the bamboo forests of Kodaiji in the night lighting... |
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...and the spectral pagoda looming over the old town. |
-Ok, now it's over! Over, do you hear me? No more photos of temples or gardens, I promise!! C'mon...please come back! Or at least wake up!
Ok, it is weird. Didn't expect any less. The superfast trains look like platypuses. The platform numbers at the train station start from zero (they should, right??) The cotton swabs are black. The remote controlled toilet seats search your anus and wash it automatically. There are hiking boots with high heels for sale. What can I say? It's bloody Japan.
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Ages ago, I thought that travelling in Japan would be laboursome and expensive, thus I wasn't planning to do any. However, thanks to Helena Grey, I found out that it need not be if you have some streetwise. Once Helena (my warmest regards!) had given me the hint, it took a while before I got this far, but now I will check out Japan. And, please, relax.
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Spent the weekend on the north shore of Straddie. The wind was fresh, to say the least, but the swimming was good. On Sunday a helicopter kept flying back and forth above the ocean, making me worry that somebody might be in distress at sea.
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Soundtrack of my life Orphée aux Enfers Jacques Offenbach |
Went to see the big screen adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust without any expectations whatsoever. (I've never read a single book by Gaiman although I own most of his "comic" works, many of which are built around the figure of a fellow called Sandman, also known as Morpheus.) The lack of a priori information probably just heightened my enjoyment of this magical fairytale with a breath-taking cast of side characters. Mark Williams pulls through the greatest performance with no lines in the history of cinema since Charlie Chaplin - plus, I don't think I will ever listen to Can-Can with a straight face again.
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