Osaka Nyu See

Elizabeth has informed me that the title of this post would be more appropriate for Tokyo where the Statue of Liberty was.

We spent about 3 hours lounging around the air-conditioned Airbnb this morning, waking up late, taking showers, making breakfast, and just generally enjoying not being out in the hot sunshine.

We planned the day around walking down Tenjinbashi Suji Street, a very long shopping Street full of Street vendors, local shops, markets, etc. It has been described as the best place to purchase souvenirs and knick-knacks, and even better, it has a cover on it and so the sun can't shine on you.

We made it there around 10:00 a.m., and there weren't that many people, so we got to experience the street in a little less frantic way than we expected it would become later as the crowds arrived for the parade and eventual fireworks.

One of the reasons that we chose the Airbnb that we are in is that it is a short walking distance to parades and fireworks, and so it feels appropriate for us to try and experience this as best we can.

We headed over to the Osaka Tenmangu shrine as that was where the parade what scheduled to begin and we figured being in the thick of things was a good plan. After about an hour of seeing what was happening at the shrine, we realized that we were likely on the sidelines, and might miss out on the parade entirely. We headed out into the throngs of people heading down Tenjinbashi Street trying to figure out where the right place to see the parade would be.

After about 5 minutes of hemming and hawing and looking at Google maps, a nice gentleman stopped us and handed us a map and said that we wanted to go over here to this place and that that would be the right place to watch the parade from. We said arigato gozaimasu and proceeded to try to correlate what he told us to the Google map that we were looking at. 30 seconds later he realized that we were still not moving, and told us to follow him. He took us on a winding path across a variety of streets, through crowds, ignoring street signs and don't walk signs, until finally he set us up underneath an overpass with a barrier that we could sit on, right in front of the action. I don't think that I could have asked for a more convenient and nice place to watch the parade from. Thank you Matsuchiro. You are awesome.

The parade was staccato for the next 2 hours, people walking by, then stopping for 5 to 10 minutes, then walking a bit, then stopping for a few minutes. Overall, it seemed like the whole thing was not very well orchestrated or that they were trying to deal with traffic across the parade the entire time. Regardless, everybody seemed happy.

One of the things that stood out more than anything was the amount of silence during the parade. We were able to hear step, every drag of metal spear on the ground, every clop of every hoof. It is amazing just how quiet the Japanese people are on average in daily life. This has been somewhat stressful considering that our children are American and we have trained them to be loud and boisterous. They are working on it! So are we.

We left the parade a little bit early to get out of the heat, and we spent 2 hours convalescing in our hotel room waiting for the fireworks to begin.

The fireworks were scheduled to begin around 7:30 p.m., so we left at 7:00 p.m., and joined the throng of people that were heading down the main Street that follows the waterfront walkway where the fireworks are most prevalent. Rather than being able to walk directly towards the waterfront, we were directed six blocks down the right hand side of the street and then cross the street and another seven blocks down the other side of the street, until finally we were allowed to snake down and go to the waterfront where the entirety of the walkway was covered with Street vendors, poodle food shops, and people waiting to see the fireworks show.

This picture decently sums up the feel of the evening. A huge crowd, street food, hard to see fireworks in the background, and overall feeling rather claustrophobic and surrounded by street food and firework in the background.

While this was happening, fireworks were going off every 30 seconds and punctuating our conversation in various degrees. Unfortunately, the beautiful tree-lined walkway made it impossible to get a clear view of any of the fireworks, but it was still nice to see them through the trees. The fireworks were decent, but the atmosphere was more interesting than anything.

We waded through the crowds, bought bacon wrapped rice, ate some fish on a stick and eventually stopped at a 7-Eleven on the way home to grab some breakfast for tomorrow. We showered as it had been a long hot day. And then we headed to bed early, ready to travel to our next Osaka location now that the festival is over.