Spent the morning at "pu-ru-zu" (which is Japanese for "pools"), a giant indoor swimming pool complex with slides and hot tubs, basically a small indoor water park. It was a lot of fun, not too expensive. Happily our friend Kana is budget minded and she is a local, so she clued us into the fact that even though they have a strict "no outside food" policy, plenty of people bring their own food anyway, they just don't make a big deal out of it.
I left the place early and visited the "modern transportation museum" right next door. It was pretty cool, actually. there were lots of old train cars and pictures of Japanese transportation history, some old steam locomotives. There were also several train simulators, but everything was in Japanese and there were tons of little kids messing around with them, so I kept walking. The best part was a gigantic layout of model trains. There were models of most of the major Japanese train lines, and the layout included mountains and tunnels and of course switchyards and a cityscape. They did a fifteen minute program where they started the lines one by one and announced each one, where it was going, etc. The lighting changed as the trains moved, and as it got dark the city lit up and the trains all had inside lights and headlights so it looked really cool. there were also cameras mounted at various locations, with the images shown on big monitors mounted around the layout.
After that we took a train to the Osaka Castle park and walked around a while. the four girls had a good time just running around and being crazy. There was a bit of bickering and whining, but overall it was not too bad. We kept them well supplied with snacks and ice cream. I tried a new treat - shaved ice with condensed milk and sweet beans on top. (Actually Jana liked it more than I did.)
Osaka is a big city like Tokyo, it goes on and on, very built-up, trains running every direction, big highways with big trucks and tons of traffic, neon lights, pachinko parlors, etc. etc. Like Tokyo, there are rivers running through the place and many of the major areas are known by names of the nearby bridges.
We caught the express train home and went to the Israeli falafel place near our house. It was a very nice place, but the food was not amazing. The posters on the walls did not do the trick - we felt very far from Jerusalem!
I learned the hard way: Don't order Chinese food in Scotland and don't order falafel in Japan!
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