I finally got a longer amount of sleep! Just getting fully over jet lag the day before we fly home. Ha!
We fly at 6:35 pm Osaka time, so we will be ready for sleep! Hopefully over the approximately eleven hours of flight from Osaka to San Francisco we can grab a few hours of shuteye. Then we have what will seem like a short day as we have a long layover and still touchdown in Humboldt about an hour before we left on the same calendar day. We’ll get back the day we lost on the way here. Wild.
Despite the rain I went out for a little walk after breakfast, but it was uneventful. I was trying to get a better handle on the labyrinth that is the Grand Green Ōsaka.
Snagged this image from some corporate real estate website. There are corporate offices and corporate stores to shop in like Nike and Zara and Gucci. On the tops of several of the buildings are hotels. In the basements are sometimes more shopping and usually restaurants and even grocery stores.
I wrote some postcards back in the room and had a little time to just be here while Amanda worked out in the gym.
Later, we popped down into a little healthy food store in the bottom of this huge complex of shopping all near each other and near a couple of train stations. There’s just so much going on in this neighborhood and we are kind of over it (foreshadowing).
Fortunately, Amanda scheduled a tour of Osaka Castle, because we might have called it due to the rain. We found the Osaka Loop line and rode the train to the Osaka Castle Station where our tour guide Pedro was waiting for us with a sweet family of three from India.
The castle proper is about 1.3 km (or an 18 minute) walk from the train station which would be fine in other weather, but it was actually raining. You know when something is not quite bad enough to call it off, but everyone is a little uncomfortable. Yeah. That was this. Our tour guide still chatted with us about the history of the castle and we made our way to the entrance.
Here we are putting on a smile in the rain!
Pedro is from Columbia and has lived in Japan 20 years and Osaka 7 years. He fell in love with a Japanese woman, got married, and they have a kid together. He was a great guide.
Pedro is pointing out Tokugawa Ieyasu in the final battle against the Toyotomi Clan who resided in Osaka Castle. This is in 1615, soon after Tokugawa Ieyasu took over as Shogun.
I had wondered about the time it took to build Nijo Castle in Kyoto, but I was just missing an important part of the story.
While Tokugawa Ieyasu had succeeded in gaining power in 1600 at the Battle of Sekigahara, the task was not complete there. His opponents in that battle were loyal to Ishida Mitsunari, who had formed an alliance of Toyotomi loyalists to stand against Tokugawa Ieyasu.
The Toyotomi they were loyal to was actually the son with the same name as his father Toyotomi Hideyoshi who was the second “Great Unifier” of Japan. His story is fascinating.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi was the first commoner to be elevated to the level of kampaku (Imperial Regent) and daijo-daijin (Chancellor of the Realm), the highest offices at the Imperial Court. He had to strike out on his own due to their family’s poverty and work his way into service for Oda Nobunaga, the first “Great Unifier” of Japan. Oda Nobunaga is also referred as the “Demon Daimyō” and “Demon King of the Sixth Heaven” because of his ruthlessness.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi became Oda Nobunaga’s sandal bearer, which is actually a pretty big deal. Our guide told us that Toyotomi Hideyoshi ingratiated himself to Oda Nobunaga by presenting his master with warm sandals to wear. Toyotomi Hideyoshi had placed the sandals under his own clothes against his body to warm them up in anticipation. He became such a trusted confidant, Toyotomi Hideyoshi succeeded Oda Nobunaga upon his death.
In 1583 Toyotomi Hideyoshi began the process of building Osaka Castle. He modeled it after Azuchi Castle, Oda Nobunaga’s main castle, but wanted everything to be bigger and better.
This is Azuchi Castle as painted by Iwasaki Ōu in 1855. That’s a lot to live up to! Image from Wikipedia.
Toyotomi Hideyoshi was the defacto leader of Japan, but he over-reached. He wanted to innate China so he started with Korea, but lost. I’m going to stop now before my oversimplification becomes ridiculous.
In any case, Tokugawa Ieyasu was actually loyal to Toyotomi Hideyoshi even through the war in Korea, but kept himself strong. While it was the Battle of Sekigahara that solidified Tokugawa Ieyasu’s power in the Shogunate, the siege of Osaka Castle marked the end of the Toyotomi resistance. Tokugawa Ieyasu burned down Osaka Castle and rebuilt it even taller.
Tokugawa Ieyasu was the third “Great Unifier” of Japan and his reign would end with the Meiji Restoration as the Emperor regained power. Japan is the only country with a person currently holding the title of Emperor.
Amanda here with those crazy Tokugawa Tigers and the Imperial Seal of a chrysanthemum.
I’m almost certain I am misreporting some elements of this story and the errors are all mine, not our guide’s. There is so much to learn about and I kept thinking how cool it must be for Japanese kids to have this be the history they get to learn.
We got a quick coffee and blood orange juice for me. This gave me a chance to try something I had been seeing around all trip — the baum kuchen.
This little cake is baked on a spit! The layers make the cake look like the rings of a tree. It has a fascinating tale of its own, but I need to get packed.
Our journey back to the hotel was a bit much. We got lost trying to find the right exit from the subway a few times and Google Maps can not give us accurate location data in this area so we took a lot longer than we wanted to take just to get back to the hotel. We are over it! Ready to be done navigating new places!
We were wiped out and the sun was setting when we got back to our room, so we ordered room service, which was delicious and I ran to the conbini to grab a couple of treats for dessert.
I got Amanda a catalana, kind of like a crème brûlée, but colder and with slightly different ingredients. We will be recreating these for our next dinner parties. I had an item I have been eyeing for awhile in conbini here and there. The Mont Blanc can be a fancy dessert in a restaurant, but these are fine.
The Mont Blanc starts with a sponge cake and includes a whipped cream filling or topping to make it into a half sphere, but what sets it apart is a chestnut puree piped into successive lines across the top of the dessert. I don’t think I will try this one at home, but I enjoyed it.
One more long partial day in Osaka and heading home!
