We were pretty much done with Nara and my dad was longing for seeing other things than temples after 3 days of Kyoto and Nara :) so we ate a great breakfast at our Ryokan and went directly to Osaka. My dad was a bit tired, so he went in our room, and I went roaming around for the half day or so.

Osaka is literally filled with shopping arcades, too many to list :)

I got the Osaka 2 day attraction pass (3000 yens) and went to see attractions on the list. The first 2 were museums next to Osaka Castle. The museum of peace shows the ravages that war did to Osaka, although it does a poor job saying much about why Japan was at war to start with, or how Japan repeatedly failed to surrender when it was clear it was losing, and it took 2 atomic bombs to finally get them to yield without fighting to the last person alive like at Iwo Jima:

Next was the museum of Osaka History which reproduced a huge palace that used to be there before the whole city was destroyed to ruins from war bombing:

what's left of that palace

what it used to be like

a game where you have to hit a target with a fan

From there, I went to a 3rd museum, the osaka museum of housing and living, which was actually quite nice:

Done with museums (which all close at 17:00), I went to Ame Mura, to see some unusal Japanese people and stuff:

And went on to go to tsutenkaku, an old short-ish tower which still offers an ok vantage point:

abeno harukas, a 300m high skyscraper (the tallest in Japan), where I went next

So I then took a quick cab ride to abeno harukas since I was afraid of a long line to get to the top and I wanted to be there before sunset, but luckily, there was no line at all and I got to the top in little time:

tsutentaku, where I was just 30mn earlier

the sad zoo, I was warned to avoid at all costs

I then had just enough time to go back to our room to meet my time for dinner:

one fish restaurant had an aquarium with fishies that came to eat your skin

we settled for a 5 course crab dinner :)

crab sushi, crab sashimi, crab any way you can think of :)

And that was it for our first day in Osaka, just enough time to head back for some sleep.