Look at me, only six months since I took the photos and I’m already posting them. Much better than the full year it took me to post the photos from December 2023. Although, I have not even started on Kyoto yet, and there are a lot more of those. So maybe no celebrating yet.
Anyway. We went to Osaka for a few days before we moved on to Kyoto. I’ve never really been to Osaka, passed through but never really spent any time there. Since we flew into and out of Kansai airport, we decided to spend a few days.
We didn’t really have much of a plan for Osaka. The one thing we really wanted to see was Katsuō-ji [wikipeida.org], a Buddhist temple north of Osaka that is associated with “winning”. But the reason we wanted to go is the temple grounds are covered in daruma [wikipedia.org]. Daruma’s are a talisman of good luck so people leave daruma all over the temple. All the daruma are gathered up and burned once a year. It must be a big bonfire, judging from how many daruma there were when we visited.
One of the most striking, and photogenic, sites is a series of sheltered stalls along a stairway that are filled with daruma. Hundreds of daruma, all the traditional, round, red, papier-mâché daruma that people buy and fill in the eyes for their wish to come true. The stalls are filled with daruma of all sizes: from a small as a fist to more than half a meter tall.
Besides the traditional papier-mâché type, the temple sells a smaller, solid wood daruma with a whole drilled in the bottom containing a fortune. These daruma are more waterproof than the papier-mâché variety. Nearly everyone visiting the temple buys one of these, writes something on it and leaves it somewhere on the grounds. Every flat surface is covered in these mini-daruma. Every nearly flat surface has a few balanced on it. And people wedge them in the nooks of trees, or impale them on tiny branches, or squeeze them in crevices in rock walls. They are everywhere. Some have been taken over by fungus and the people have arraigned others into little cult-like meetings, surrounding the fungal ones.
In addition to seeing all of the daruma, the grounds of Katsuō-ji were amazing. Last year Japan had an unusually warm, and long, summer. In fact it was international news that Mount Fuji remained snow free later than any time since records began [bbc.com] (only since 1884, I would have expected that to go back longer in Japan…). But, in this case climate change worked in my advantage.
See, I almost always visit Japan in winter (at least for holiday, I’ve been there in summer for work). This is mostly due to living in Singapore where it’s always summer, so I want to visit cold places. And also the need to plan holidays around the Singapore public school calendar. The end result, is that usually there is no nice foliage, it’s too late for the colorful leaves of autum and too early for the beautiful blossoms of spring.
As I said, this time climate change worked in my favor; the long, warm weather meant that we arrived, in December, with the full colors of autumn still on display. Over the two weeks we where in Osaka and Kyoto most of the red, yellow and orange maples faded to brown and the leaves fell but we were constantly amazed that there were still trees in full color everywhere we went in the first few days. Katsuō-ji was our first stop and it was stunning. I took as many photos of fiery Japanese maples as I did of daruma.
Ok, enough of Katsuō-ji. What else did we do in Osaka?
We visited Himeji to see the castle, and Nara to see the big Buddha and feed the deer, but I’ll post about those day trips separately. In Osaka itself, we mostly shopped an wondered around the city.
We spent a lot of our time in Shinsaibashi [wikipedia.org]. We visited a cat cafe. and spent too much time (and too much money) in gashapon shops. This was to be a reoccurring theme in Kyoto too. Victoria was determined to get a full set of one particular Mofusand [mofusand.co] figurines. She literally got the final figurine on the last night I think.
I also had a chance to meet up with someone I’ve “known” since 2000 that I’ve never actually met. The creator of Little Gamers [little-gamers.com]. He’s Swedish but moved to a small town an hour or so from Osaka a few years ago. Luckily he was able to make the trip to Osaka and meet up. It amazes me, and delights me, that I can meet up with people I know in random cities all around the world. People I went to school with in London, or have worked with over the years, and in this case a guy I know because he draws a web comic I read. I don’t have a large group of friends but it’s very cool that I have people around the world to meet up with.
The last thing worth writing about that we did before moving on to Kyoto was to visit the small, but very interesting, Osaka Ukiyo-e Museum [osaka-ukiyoe-museum.com]. It’s small, but if you enjoy ukiyo-e [wikipedia.org] it’s worth the visit. Amazingly, they were showing a collection of original and early reproductions of Hokusai [wikipedia.org] prints when we were there. A number of pieces from the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji [wikipedia.org] series were on display, including the famous The Great Wave off Kanagawa [wikipedia.org], the most famous ukiyo-e or japanese woodblock print ever. You can’t photograph the originals or early reproductions on display, typical museum rules. They did have two slightly newer reproductions, owned by the museum, of The Great Wave and another Hokusai, Fine Wind, Clear Morning, on display that we were allowed to photograph. It’s a small museum, with only a single room exhibition space but worth the visit. They have classes too, on making prints (using linoleum, which is something I did in art in like 7th grade) if you make reservations in advance.
That was it or the first few days in Osaka. But we had to pass back through to get to the airport on our last day. As we flight out was quite late, we stowed our luggage at one of the train stations and spent the day at the Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan [kaiyukan.com]. The main attraction there is the two whale sharks in the massive pacific tank. As you make your way through the aquarium you basically spiral around this tank going from top to bottom of its thirty plus meter height.
And so that was it for Osaka. Next up was Himeji. Let’s see how long it takes me to post those photos.
You can see the whole Osaka, Japan, December 2024 [flickr.com] photoset on Flickr. Or browse them below.
