So arrived in Osaka and you can already feel the energy of the city. Very genki and a stark contrast to the more chilled atmosphere of Kyoto.

I checked into the j-hopper hostel which was a little difficult to find from the station. A pretty eccentric guy with a bow tie and a bike found me wondering the streets with my backpack near by who just so happened to work at the hostel and pointed me in the right direction.

Pretty basic compact hostel with a backpacker vibe which was a reality check to what hostels are normally like when comparing to piece hostel in Kyoto.

I had arranged to do a cycle tour through Cycle Osaka the following day which was run by Sam, an old school friend of mine. Unfortunately the forecast for tomorrow was rain so we postponed the tour to another day, but I gave him a call and caught up over a beer. Been a good 15 years since I saw him so it was nice to see peoples journey from the deepest darkest depths of old Saint Benedict, Derby.

A friend had recommended a place to go and try the local variation of Okonomiyaki. As per usual there was a queue and the queue was made up of local salary men and other Japanese tourists.

While queuing I noticed some kids shouting at each other. Kids here are generally extremely well behaved and hardly ever saw a tantrum being thrown. I would regularly see kids as young as 5 or 6 navigating the train networks by themselves to get to or from school. Despite what crazy stories you hear of the extreme mad people there is always a level of comfort that Japan is a safe place. So to see a couple of boys hooting at each other was a surprise. Seems the Osakans are a little less reserved than the rest of Japan and aren’t afraid to express their opinions. Although still in a relatively respectful manner. Transpired these boys were a 3-5 year old brothers and they were getting a little competitive about who was stronger. All very cute.

Onto the actual food. The place sat no more than 12 people around the main grill with just enough space for someone to stand behind and wait patiently for others to finish eating. The okonomiyaki was much thinner than normal and various choices of filling. As per usual walked out absolutely stuffed

Next morning I moved to another hostel closer to the hustle and bustle of the center of Osaka. Joys of hosteling is general availability of rooms. All the places I had inquired did not have spare rooms for the duration of my stay in Osaka. The second hostel was Hana hostel which was a lovely place with extremely helpful and chatty staff. The day I arrived there was a takoyaki (octopus balls) party where fellow guests would sit down together and chat whilst making takoyaki. Met interesting group of people from all over the world. A large number from Taiwan, but others from Malaysia, Switzerland, Spain as well as Japan.

The next day I walk around the shopping district and see the distinctive characters that litter the shop frontages to advertise what kind of food they serve

Cycle Osaka

Sam was a couple of years below me at school and I had heard he was living and working in Osaka

Turns out it was a cycle tour company: http://cycleosaka.com/

He was extremely well versed on the history of Osaka and gave a little bit of everything on the tour.

There was a journey through Osaka’s change in architecture, imperial history, an insight into cultural comparisons, views into it’s infrastructural and political changes and generally lots of little nuggets of information you would be hard pressed to find any other way. He stopped at regular intervals to check on the group and provided a flip book with pictures and information and how things have changed over time.

He took us to places you just would not discover by yourself or with any guidebook. The bikes were in excellent condition and the ride itself was a pretty easy ride, suitable for all abilities.

The tour was accommodating with each individuals in the group. He also went as far as to help some of the group organise some of their next days activities with absolutely no benefit to himself.

Cycle Osaka were extremely professional and best of all it was all delivered with a good sense of (pretty British) humour.

I felt it was great value for money and learnt so much about Osaka in fun medium. Highly recommend to anyone visiting Osaka.

Sumo

Turns out the Sumo tournament was in town that week and with Sam’s help I managed to buy some tickets from a convenience store.

Wasn’t really sure what to expect, but the whole thing was very different to most sporting events I’ve been to.

So many people in such a small arena with families taking up little areas with nothing but a tatami mat and cushions to sit on. My tickets were for the main stand. Pretty typical Japanese compact seating.

The event lasted a few hours which was predominately with sumo wrestlers paraded around, doing a little dance, throwing some salt, throwing a bit more salt, getting ready battle, trying to catch the other guy out with a false start multiple times and finally about 3-10 seconds of one big guy throwing the other big guy out the ring.

Now anyone like me would have seen one documentary or other that these guys go through a life long hell in terms of conditioning and training. All for a short cuddle and push. Big respect to these guys. Not an easy life.

Some pretty epic thrown downs in the middle of it all. Ones where judges had to jump out of their seated position for fear of getting squashed.

On my final night in Osaka I thought I’d give a capsule hotel a whirl. Pretty interesting experience. Capsules weren’t as small as I thought and they had power sockets etc available inside. Some even had TVs too. The capsules were just a plastic fascia shell and had pull down blinds for doors.

It was a cool thing to try and a pretty comfortable option for those that had missed their last train home. Much more than the street pavement which is where I seen on more than once occasion “salary men” decide to lay their head for the evening..

I bid farewell to Osaka the next morning heading back to Tokyo and get a glimpse of the beautiful Mt Fuji on the shinkansen.

Ok so I’m a little bit behind on my posts. 3 months after leaving Tokyo I have returned. But this time to work!

I had meant to, but did not get round to finishing my last post which was Osaka (which I will finish soon).

Been pretty tough to write whilst having a full time job but will persist. Being on an assignment here and been mainly in Tokyo.

Focus of my posts will continue to be food and other activities I’ve done in my time in Japan and specifically posts on eats in Tokyo (which seems to be of most value to my friends visiting from out town)

Keep exploring, seeking thrills and most of all eating x

Given how much I have to write about Miyakojima, I’m splitting it into 2 posts: Diving and then the rest.

So I was pretty keen to do some diving having heard stories from my expat friends of the vast marine life in the southern islands of Japan. I opted to go to Miyakojima rather than the bigger main island of Okinawa as Miyako was 300km further south and this time of year was still going to be a bit of lottery with the weather and wanted to give myself every chance possible of some sun.

The journey there was interesting. I had to head back to Fukuoka and catch a plane to Naha, Okinawa airport and then a connecting flight to Miyakojima. Sky Mark had decided to cancel my connecting flight to Miyako, but had put me on a later JTB flight. More sitting around at the airport.

There didn’t appear to be that many diving centres that had English speaking staff. It wasn’t so important in the diving itself as its pretty much hand signals anyway. However given it had been 10 years since I did my Open Water PADI qualification I thought I had better find one that spoke English to do a bit of a refresher on the gear. Given the budget and time constraints I was under previously, I couldn’t do the Advanced Open Water (AOW) Qualification so restricted from the deeper or night dives.   I thought I would kill two birds with one stone and do the AOW course and hopefully a few fun dives.

The diving centre I had booked with had sorted me out some accommodation which would be covered any day I dived and cost me $30 if i didn’t. There were a few options but the first was a studio apartment not far from the town centre. Its own bathroom, a little kitchen, TV, air con and most importantly wifi! Wouldn’t meet many people this way but given I planned to be diving most days it didn’t really matter too much.

The first morning it had been raining a little so the dive company took us to a dive spot accessible from the shore. I was surprised how beautifully turquoise the water was. The beach itself looked fairly unused and we had it to ourselves.

I thought I would just do some drills and tick the boxes required to get the qualification. However I was astounded by the free time to see the vast quantity of colourful marine life that was so close to shore. I saw more clown fish than ever before just on a short dive. I think I had only seen one before on a dive in Thailand and that wasn’t such great visibility. I floated over various anemone coral where the Disney famed Nemo fish lived. As you swam over they would often pop their head out and give you some eye to eye contact as if to say what are you looking at keep out of my yard. A vast collection of other fish with some insanely vivid colours, from blacks and yellows moorish idol and angel fish and neon like blues sparrow fish, some seductive red snappers to rainbow coloured parrot and wrasse fish.

I had managed to tick off both the Fish Identification and the Underwater Photography modules in 2 dives and get reacquainted with all the dive gear. Pretty spectacular day. It had been colder than I had expected and manage to catch a bit of a cold which for those that don’t know is a problem when diving. Not so for the sneezing which I had managed to accomplish without any issues. But having the equalise the pressure in your ears when getting to depths where the water pressure increases similar to that when you take off and land on a plane. Being slightly bunged up may cause problems equalising a cause a halt to the dive. Decided to play safe and not dive the next day.

On day 3 we headed out to finish off my AOW course and had been told to study the course book on Deep water diving, Navigation and Buoyancy control which I did. I was hoping to leave the Deep water part until last to give me a bit more time to get used to diving again, but I was in a manner of speaking dropped in the deep end with that up first. Previously I had only ever been qualified to dive to 18m so this was potentially going to be interesting. We only dived to 25m, but the AOW qualification will allow me to dive to 40m. I was kind of relieved but also wondered what would happen if I wanted to dive deeper another time. Anyway we observed the power of the pressure at that dept with a sealed empty coffee can. Koyoshi San, my instructor pulled it out from behind me (he had attached it to me without me knowing). Shocking to see it pretty much crushed with all the air inside appeared to be sucked out. In fact all that did happen was the air inside was compressed to a much small volume causing the can to invert. Was also interesting to see how reds became much more like browns at such depths.

Next dive covered the navigation element where I had to count kick cycles for a set 30m distance. Then navigate a triangle with my kick cycle count and compass.   The third dive that day was to do the buoyancy control module which was pretty easy deeper down as the waves and currents didn’t have much affect. Using your lungs as the main variable to you floating or sinking and the your breathing pattern just to hover is pretty cool.

I did another three fun dives on my 5th day in Miyakojima which were basically exploring and observing without the exercises so more time to play.   On each of those dives Koyoshi San took me to such cool areas to explore be it tunnels under huge rocks/reefs, overhangs which marine life hiding under, areas of reef where only a few holes let the light in so as the waves moved the light refracted differently as if to make the sun dance on the sea bed, hidden underwater cave air pockets that spray a mist due pressure in them. I had forgotten how beautiful the underwater world was. From one point where I was floating effortless over a reef observing the various marine life to reaching its edge and seeing a 50m drop, but still floating over it as if I was superman flying in the sky. Absolutely accelerating.

Ironically Koyoshi San took me to 34m after the navigation exercise to see some cool stuff. His spoken English was better than he let on. I think because he was shy more than anything. Anyway didn’t matter much as we were underwater and he took me to a small hole under a reef. He started writing on his board “White Tip Reef…” and showed it to me. I was like. Oh cool thats what type of reef this is. Then he finished writing his sentence “….Shark” SHARK? WTF! I assumed as he was taking his time writing they weren’t much of a danger. Turns out they are nocturnal and are no harm to humans. Though how was I suppose to know! Pretty daunting at the time, but cool at the same time. Guess they probably didn’t like Koyoshi San and I shining our torches in there too much.

I saw blowflow, lion fish, a turtle, sleeping white tip reef sharks and so many other species of fish I’m still desperately trying to find out the names for. At one point I had a face to face with a fish as big as my torso. It was pretty risk adverse though and swam off pretty soon after the encounter. Often seeing fish swim in isolation or in small groups, but seeing a big school of them is pretty special.

For those that have sky dived and loved it, or those that would love to see marine life close up you need to try diving!