Monday October 6, 2025

Not such a great night’s sleep in this Apartment 11 Hotel. To get into the lobby you must press a code that the management send you after booking. Then they send you a code to get into the lock box to get the key.

Every time you want to enter the lobby area you have to put in the code that is allocated to the room. After you have entered the code the main door opens, and you can get to the elevators. At this hotel, for some unknown reason it also calls the room. Last night some eejit at 11:45, 11:50, and 12:45 decided to press our room number and called our room. Eventually, Ralf was able to translate and told the guy he was calling the wrong number. Not a good night’s sleep after that, but at least today was a rest day.

Of course, our rest days are not always resting. After breakfast, we headed out to explore our part of Osaka.

Although Osaka has a castle it is not one of the twelve originals. The original castle was built in 1583 and was destroyed in 1665.  It was not until 1931 that the present ferro-concrete reconstruction of the castle tower was built. During the war it miraculously survived the city-wide air raids. Major repair works gave the castle new glamor in 1997. The castle tower is now entirely modern on the inside and even features an elevator for easier accessibility.  We decided not to see a replica castle and would have a wandering day.

We wandered towards the Tsutenkaku Tower. The route took us through the Kuromon  Market which has multiple food stalls and fish stalls. Locals and tourists alike enjoyed the area. The locals buy a lot of their fish here and the prices were very reasonable.

The tourists love the atmosphere and the multitude of food stalls. The Kuromon Market which celebrated 200 years anniversary in 2025, and the Shinsaibashi-Suji Shopping Street.

We enjoy towers and there is a small(ish) tower, the Tsutenkaku, The Tower is only 108 metres tall,  there are three observation levels, one at 84 metres, one at 87.5 metres and the highest is at 94.5 metres. The original tower was built in 1912 with the arches at the bottom resembling the Arch de Triomphe and the upper half to resemble the Eiffel Tower. In 1943 the structure caught fire. This structure was rebuilt in 1956.

The tower has a jump, similar to the one that we did on the Treetop Trek in August. It also has a  slide that goes around the bottom two levels. We could hear people screaming as they were pushed down the slide. We decided to head right up to the observation decks. The views were amazing. We paid an extra $6.00 to go to the open observation deck. That was fun, there was an area that you could stand out and stand on a clear floor.

Osaka’s population is approximately 2.79 million for Osaka City The city is the third-most populous in Japan after Tokyo and Yokohama.

After our visit to the tower, we wandered back to the hotel, stopping at one of the food stalls in Kuromon for a shared lunch, Okonomiyaki (savory pancake). It was huge and plenty of food for the two of us. Ralf had a baby octopus. Poor baby octopus.

A relaxing evening and ready to head out tomorrow.