Osaka: A Second City In Name Only

When we last left off, Team Gweek was exiting the island of Shikoku and rocketing towards the Kansai region with reckless abandon. It was well past midnight when we finally arrived in Kobe, essentially Osaka’s twin city. After stopping at a konbeni to obligatorily ask “Where’s the beef?” (nowhere to be found, if that convenience store clerk is to be believed), we pressed on towards our destination. We arrived at our hostel at just after 1:00 am, exhausted and quickly drifted off to sleep in our dorm room-style twin beds. We awoke fairly early the next day and after bidding a tearful (and trunk rattling) goodbye to the Bluebird, we set out to acquire a taste for the city of “great heights”.

No matter how you slice it, Osaka is essentially Japan’s second largest city. Officially, Tokyo isn’t classified as a city (in a delicious nod to Marxist science fiction it’s known as a “metropolis”) but its suburb Yokohama steals the top spot from Osaka with a population of over 3 million. However, if you choose to classify the entire Tokyo area as the largest urban area in Japan (and on earth, for that matter) then the second largest would still be Osaka, with roughly 1/15^th of the Tokyo area’s population. However you choose to look at it, Osaka has a serious case of second-city envy.

But maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. In a lot of ways, Osaka really reminds me of another second city: Chicago. Like the Windy City, Osaka has traditionally been a working class town, a fact that ensured that local citizens were hit hard when the economic bubble burst in 1989. In the years since the recession, Osaka has garnered a reputation as the “homeless capital” of Japan; a standing that the Japanese media tend to obsess over. Homelessness really is quite visible though and certainly adds to the intangible grittiness that the city seems to exude, making it seem, at times, more like a major American city.

Still, this “grittiness” also manifests itself in other, more positive ways and serves to imbue Osaka with a street culture that is unique in all of Japan. Particularly notable is the pervasiveness of youth culture and the way that it reclaims urban space in the city through the use of graffiti and street performance (photographer Andreas Seibert has done some work documenting this rarely publicized scene). In stark contrast to the mostly pristine streets of Tokyo, Osaka looks, feels and even smells like a living, breathing city.

This is Amerikamura (“America Village”), the locus of Osakan youth culture. Not far from here is a busy street whose wide sidewalks and wealth of designer stores reminded me a lot of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile.

Inside a store in Amerikamura that specializes in clothing that defaces prominent character and brand iconography.

Osakans are famous throughout Japan for their love of food and the city is especially renowned for its unique takoyaki and okonomiyaki (the former having originated in Osaka). Although I couldn’t find the legendary oversized Osaka takoyaki, I did try the more diminutive variety. It seemed to have a gooier filling and was served sans toppings.

Here we see a car on a subway train that’s reserved exclusively for women during peak times. In many large Japanese cities, young women have complained about being groped on crowded trains by invisible assailants during rush hour. Reserved seating and women’s only cars are two ways that transit authorities have attempted to combat this problem.

Like in Tokyo, some trains in Osaka house video monitors (attached to the ceiling, on this particular car) that display animated maps, estimated time to various destinations and other travel information. The monitor on the left is dedicated to such functions while the right one displays advertisements.

Osaka has long been famous as a breeding ground for nationally famous comedians and Razor Ramon is certainly no exception to this rule. Having cut his teeth in various Osaka comedy troupes, the man known as HG has become an easily recognizable symbol of the city, as this omiyage (obligatory travel gift given to co-workers), spotted in a train station convenience store, attests. In other HG-related news, I’ve been spotting him on a lot more variety shows as of late; particularly those shows that tend to feature performances by various washed-up, flavor of the week comics in quick succession. Could Razor’s glorious 15 minutes in the limelight finally be up? Say it 'aint so Hard Gay, say it 'aint so.

There just so happened to be a roller coaster on the roof of what was otherwise a shopping mall down the street from our hostel.

Matt and Megan managed to “Have a fun!” in accordance with what is printed on one of the merit patches on Megan’s Gweek shirt.

Along Osaka bay there’s a waterfront amusement area replete with giant Ferris Wheel-almost a mirror image of Chicago’s Navy Pier.

The main attraction here is the Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan and with good reason-it’s one of the largest and most extravagant aquariums in the world.

Somehow, this performer outside of the aquarium managed to mesmerize Greg. He stopped to watch her act not once but twice. The second time I literally had to pull him away from the assembled crowd.

The Osaka Aquarium attempts to offer visitors a complete view of the wildlife that inhabits the Pacific Ocean’s vast “Ring of Fire”. In order to achieve this, the aquarium is split into 14 different habitats: from the floating ice caps of Antarctica to 8,000 meters below the Sea of Japan; from the Ecuadorian rain forest to the Great Barrier Reef, virtually every major habitat in the Pacific is represented. It’s really an undertaking so large in scope that it must be seen to be believed.

A giant spider crab stands as tall as a human in the “Japan Deeps” tank.

The most commonly overheard exclamation around the crab tank? “Oishisou!” (“looks delicious!”).

A whirlpool of sardines in the Coast of Chile exhibit. Nary a tin box in site.

A porcupine fish swims playfully in the fake Gulf of Panama.
I was treated to a different view of the porcupine fish later that night. The Japanese call it fugu but Matt calls it "the bacon of the sea".

The aquarium’s crowning achievement is their Pacific Ocean exhibit-one of the largest aquarium tanks in the world which serves as a microcosm of the largest ocean in the world. Here you’ll find the majestic whale shark: the largest fish in existence with a maximum length of almost 40 feet. This is one of only a handful of whale sharks in captivity and currently the only adult whale shark on public display in the world. The aquarium’s exhibition halls spiral around the tank, allowing visitors to view the denizens of the Pacific from an almost infinite number of angles.

Towards the end of the aquarium, there was a backlit jellyfish exhibit that seemed almost suspiciously reminiscent of an exhibition that I saw at California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium a few years back.

The final exhibition space was the aquarium’s special exhibition gallery, currently housing a show on sea life as visual art. While most of it was admittedly pretty dumb (a wall of fish tanks with blue lighting, anyone?) there were a few cool pieces like these stacked wineglasses full of bettas.

In all honesty, I really wish we could have spent more time in Osaka. It seemed like a huge, vibrant and stimulating city and we really only saw a fraction of it in the two days that we were there. Let this be a lesson to us all: second place isn’t always such a bad thing.