Koyasan and Osaka - Remix

I have taken the gross posting down... I think my mother was horrified... sorry. Seriously, how gross are these things? I mean, ick. I guess they are just overgrown karp, but look at those nasty lips?! They were in the pond in front of the most incredible temples and shrines in Koyasan and we were so horrified that we had to photograph them.

OK. Onto more mature things. We just got back from two nights in Osaka and two nights in Koyasan - supposedly the holiest mountain in Japan. I will go more into the trip later in the week, but we had a ball.

Osaka is incredible. It is what I expected Tokyo to be. We took the Shinkansen train from Nagoya to Osaka on Saturday. Osaka was crammed with people. It was like Mardi Gras or after the Yankees win a World Series (which they will do again!). And people are so aggressive. The old and infirm go arm in arm like ruthless gangsters happy to trample you if you are in their way. BUT what a cool city. Amazing architecture...













































The red building is the aquarium... it is this fancy schmantzy aquarium that costs twenty whole dollars per person and they cram as many people in as possible. We went on Sunday and figured out that the Japanese do not believe in fire codes. Again... Yankees after winning world series/Mardi Gras. Not fun. The building was crazy and we did peek at a few cool fish (but only over the heads of 50,000 people. The bottom building is the Suntory museum. We didn't go into the exhibit (Disney, no thanks) just did a diaper change (David's diaper was dirty) and checked out the building. The architect is Tadao Ando, a famous Japanese architect. The whole thing is on the port, so the juxtaposition of the buildings with the water and all of the ships made the architecture even more incredible.

Then, we just ran around Osaka with crazy Carlos. We walked through Amerimura (a Greenwich village-like neighborhood) and through the long shopping arcades. We went on this huge ferris wheel and finally collapsed in our mediocre, but perfectly adequate, hotel.



















More on everything next week. Not that we haven't mentioned this before, but Carlos is seriously hysterical. We do this little routine with him where he hides (always been a big hide and seek guy) and we say... "is it...." and ask who it might be (anything from a noodle to mama) and he says no. But we say... "is it Morty Finklestein?" and he says "From Boca?" So funny.

We got some bad ass toys, so we will be putting them together and showing them off once we do. Japan is great.

Jenny
p.s. stole all the photos off the web except for the vagina fish