christof's blog

Running Sightseeing in Osaka

I am on my next RTW trip. I arrived in Asia and passed through Seoul and Manila, before I touched down in Osaka to stop over for the night before going on to Tokyo because it's a holiday here on Monday.
Despite only 13 hours of layover, I managed to get a good Sushi dinner, go dancing, go sightseeing in parts of downtown including Osaka Castle from the outside and get nearly one hour of exercise.
Apparently, I didn't sleep a lot, but the trick was to go running and sightseeing at the same time, which was fairly easy in the empty city at 5:30am on a holiday. I ran along a river (which looked greener than it really was - photo) and ended my trip on Osaka castle hill among early morning Taichi practitioners.
A great experience, and the adequate answer to the Japanese 'Europe in 7 days'!
Flying out from the new Kansai airport, build on an artificial island in the middle of Osaka bay, was also an experience, though I was a bit disappointed from the architecture by Renzo Piano, the terminal building was big, but somewhat dull and unexciting from the user experience, not the mention the standard grey of most Japanese infrastructure installations and the flood of painsaikingly colored signs everywhere.

posted by Christof Wittig @ 9:13 PM