The Osaka Exhibition Park

Goodness but it’s been a long time since I last posted! Let’s see, what was I going to write about…

On Saturday, May 7th we had a school trip to the site of the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka. After the fair ended most of the pavilions etc. were demolished to make space for an extensive and very nice park with a couple museums and other attractions which is now called the ‘Osaka Exhibition Memorial Park’. I accidentally called it the ‘Osaka Explosion Park’ once and was quickly corrected.

I had never been on a fieldtrip like this before, but while we were required to come our only obligation was that we had to show up for the class picture at the end of the day. This left us all about 5 hours to wander around the park grounds and museums at our leisure, so luckily the weather was nice. The park has several areas dedicated to specific types of plants, such as a lavender field, a hill covered in hydrangeas (which were sadly not in bloom) and a camellia garden, as well as wading pools, a suspended walkway over a forest-like area and large open areas for games or picnics.

One thing we discovered pretty quickly was that all of the museums required an entry fee in addition to the park entry fee, which was a little annoying, but after wandering through several gardens in the full heat of our clear, sunny Saturday afternoon we decided to just choose one of them to kill some time and get into some air conditioning. We ended up paying student admission to the Osaka Museum of Ethnology, which turned out to be extremely interesting. The interior of the museum was divided up by geographical region, starting in the Americas and ending up in Japan, and contained a wide variety of national costumes, artwork, religious items and even a fully-furnished yurt. It was *really* cool, and my only regret is that I didn’t realize that it was okay to take pictures until about halfway through. One thing that I found especially interesting was that the Japan section dedicated significant space to the Ainu, a people native to Japan but not considered racially ‘Japanese’. I guess their aim was to show a piece of Japan’s ethnological makeup that would be unfamiliar to most visitors, but I’m certainly no expert on the subject.

By the time we assembled for our class picture we were tired and very ready to go home, and I at least was sweaty and footsore. As soon as we were dismissed the whole group headed for the exit, saying goodbye to ‘Tarou’, the sun tower that stands near the gates (I think it looks like a chicken or maybe like one of the gods from ‘Princess Mononoke’) and hopped back on the monorail for home.

A Donut of a Different Colour

Well! For all my promises of upcoming updates I certainly have kept you all waiting! Since moving into my apartment I have slowly but surely added to my furniture collection, and am by now pretty much squared away. J has been staying with me almost every weekend and it is nice to have someone to speak English to. Together we have seen two shows at the Takarazuka Grand Theatre and one at a theatre in Osaka. One of the shows that we went to see in Takarazuka was what they call a ‘Shinjin Kouen’, a sort of understudy performance where the actresses who have been in the troupe for 6 years or fewer fill all the roles in a one-act version of the troupe’s current play. I had never been to one before, so it was an exciting opportunity. While the actresses were necessarily less skilled than their main-performance counterparts, every person onstage was bursting with enthusiasm, clearly giving every line and dance move their all. The energy was contagious and more than made up for the occasional mistake or sour note.


The reason that I could go to a play in the middle of the week was that this was what they call “Golden Week”, a 7-day period where several national holidays converge. Because there are so many holidays some schools and even businesses shut their doors for the whole week, which makes it a very popular time to travel. I, unfortunately, only had the actual holidays themselves off, which meant that I had last Friday, my usual Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday off with class as usual on Saturday and Monday. On Wednesday J and I dressed up in kimono and hakama and met a friend of J’s at a park in Tenouji, which was quite beautiful even if it was a little hot out. Afterwards we had lunch in a nice café near the station and then J and I went in search of a special donut shop in Shinsaibashi. Lately Krispy Kreme has opened several locations in Japan, including one in Shinsaibashi, but the donut shop that J and I set out to find was far more special. Instead of being fried, these donuts are steamed and use traditional Japanese ingredients to make Japanese-style donuts. After some wandering around and fighting with J’s iPhone we finally found the place and calmly waited in line for about half an hour before ordering at the counter and getting our donuts. I had a cherry-blossom flavoured donut with glutinous rice and walnuts in it topped with black sesame seeds, a steamed strawberry cake filled with strawberry cream, and a roasted green tea iced latte. J had a cherry-blossom flavoured one like mine only with actual cherry blossoms on top as well as an Okinawan brown sugar donut with candied citron peel in it topped with apple. They were beautiful and delicious, absolutely worth the wait and even worth the 200yen apiece. I think what I liked best about them, and about Japanese sweets in general, was that they were not really very sweet at all; the flavours were subtle and would have been eclipsed by too much sugar.

After looking around a couple of the stores in the area we headed back to my apartment where I made a simple dinner (a post about cooking will follow) before getting some much-needed rest. Tomorrow I have class again, and starting next week it will be back to business as usual.