Japan - Day 11

6am arrived. An epicly early start for us. We had to rise in time to view the morning ceremonies of the monks in the temple we were staying in. Missing this would be very disrespectful so we had made sure of an early night and that our alarms were set! After a breakfast which seemed very much the same as last nights dinner (soups, noodles, rice, tofu, weird vegetarian things..) we threw on some clothes, head out the front door onto the gravel courtyard and up some jagged stone steps to the temples shrine where the rest of the guests were also making their way to. As we reached the shrine we were instructed to take off our shoes and kneel on the wooden flooring inside. Inside this room was a statue of Bhudda with candles lit all around it along with burning incense. Golden plates, trinkets and engravings on the walls also decorated the room. Three monks were kneeling facing away from us as the guests of the temple quietly knelt down. When everyone had arrived the room fell silent and the ceremony began.

" EEEEEEEEEEEAAARRRRRRRSEEEPPOOOOO GINGGGGGGGGG WAAA DOOOOOOO!"

All three monks burst into a monsterously loud chant as part of the cemerony. One monk started smashing a gong while the others continued chanting. Their voices began to overlap each other and when one stopped, another carried on with only very few complete pauses from all of them. This chanting went on for at least 20 minutes or so. I can't lie and have to say I was looking forward to the end as I had no idea what they were doing or saying. It was a bloody good wakeup call though!
Once the ceremony ended we were taken out of the temple, outside the front gate and into a small hut just outside the temple. In here would take place the fire ceremony. In the center of this room was a kneeling monk next to a small pit. We all sat down around the outside of this in a circle so we could all see the centre of the room. When we had all sat down the monk next to the pit lit the fire. Flames erupted! Light filled the room. The monk threw something onto the fire to make it burn brighter and the relentless chanting began once more again. The chanting wasn't so bad this time as the dancing flames and fire was awesome to look at. I took some pictures and a small video and got a couple of good ones :) Once the ceremony was over we were led out, ears ringing and we head back to our rooms to fetch our luggage for our trip out of Mt Koya and down to Osaka. Aka, civilization
.

I can't remember our journey to Osaka all that clearly but it probably involved Bish and I engaging in a game of chess (and me winning obviously) and snacking on Japanese food. (p.s. i definitely didn't fall asleep and Bish definitely didn't take a photo...)

We pulled into Osaka station and made our way to our hotel/hostel. This one I had booked was more of a hotel and sat on the edge of the river that ran through Osaka. We checked into our room (another Japanese style room with tatami flooring and pachinko ball bearing pillows - groan!), dumped our stuff and made plans for the day. Osaka is known for its food and outgoing culture so I had planned to see some of the various foodie sights such as the Dotonburi street and a massive gaming arcade with a ferris wheel on top called Joypolis. Our hotel was actually right next to Dotonburi street so naturally this would be our first port of call!

The street wasn't hard to miss. Across the road from our hotel and a giant crab with DOTONBURI written on it arched over the street. We head over to check it out. The street was entirely pedestrianised. Various stalls selling Takoyaki and Okonomiyaki (the cities most famous dishes as they are said to originate here) lined the street along with restaurants and coffee houses. The stall owners shouted at oncoming tourists/locals to try their food offering free samples. Aside from Okonomiyaki I noticed an outstanding amount of places serving

pancakes which is never a bad thing in my books! Bish and I spotted a cool coffee place that was done out like a Hawaiian joint selling Macadamia nut coffee (delicious by the way) along side massive pancakes covered in all sorts of awesome toppings such as Macadamia nut cream, coffee, chocolate, strawberries etc. We didn't feel like coffee at this moment but made a vow to come back here before we left the city. Instead we had stomachs for something more savoury. Across the street we found a cafe on the 2nd floor of a building serving eggs and steak (I wanted eggs, Bish wanted steak) so we went here and ate before making our way down the rest of the street and onto our next stop... the gaming arcade Joypolis!

Joypolis was a bit of a mission to find. We had a local map and found a building on it with a ferris wheel on top which we assumed was Joypolis so tried to make sense of the map and took the metro line to the nearest place to get there. After wondering around, getting lost and probably asking locals where to find the place (Joypolis wa doku desu ka?) we managed to find it. An 8 floor building of wonder filled to the brim with all types of games. There really was every type of game possible here; crane games, slot machines, coin toss games, Street Fighter, Tekken, Rock Band, there were even online games that you could play with other people in different arcades. I watched some of the locals destroy games on expert setting with ease. One kid was playing through a Dragonforce song on expert on the drums - he literally didn't miss a beat. I had never seen a kid move so fast on a game before. Other games even included an online card game that you had to bring your own physical deck and scan in on the machine to play it. Crazy. There were even suped up 10p machines that let you fire up to 6 coins out of a turret thing at a time which was cool. This same machine also had a slot machine feature where if you got a 10p into a certain slot it would spin the slots giving you an opportunity to win again which made the machine fire more 10ps (tokens) onto the first layer. I saw a guy here win the jackpot and this machine spewed out over 1000 coins into the machine causing the rest of the coins to waterfall spectacularly into the prize tray. My first port of call however was a game I can never resist... the crane games. I spotted one where all the prizes were all Pokemon dolls.. I had to win something from this. I spotted aa loose polywraith that I felt I could grab so I put in my 300yen and had a go...I failed miserably. However! In the corner of my eye I notice one of the workers of the arcade coming over to me. He asks me using a mixture of broken English and hand gestures which Pokemon I am trying to catch. I point out the polywraith and he nods his head, pulls out a bunch of keys and opens the machine up. He then grabs the polywraith and moves it into an easy position to pick up and tells me to have another go. I laugh and though I was done and wanted to save money I felt obliged to from this kind gesture. I stick in another 300 yen and pull the lever... yep you guessed it.. I fail again! He shakes his head.. pulls out his keys and this time places it right on the edge of the prize draw so all I have to do is hit it to win.. again I am forced to fork out another 300 yen and have a go..... SUCCESS! I win (if you can call it winning) and the Japanese worker also shouts for joy. He then whips out an air horn and starts tooting it loudly to indicate someone has won a prize. I found this hilarious since I didn't really win rather than him practically give it to me. However I am now the proud owner of a Pokemon polywraith doll. I decide to stay away from trying to win another prize at the expense of my wallet and head up to the second floor to get pwned by some Japanese at Street Fighter/Tekken.

After our gaming needs were satisfied we decided to check out the massive ferris wheel that stood atop of the building. We got into the lift and head for the top floor and walked out into the lobby where the ferris wheel was. A gigantic red wheel with red pods was spinning slowly, very much like the London eye back home.. but at only a fraction of the cost! I think it was just over 1000 yen which is about 6-7 pounds. Unbeatable value that we had to give in to so we bought our tickets., walked through the queue lane (there was no queue) and into a pod. The pods themselves were quite small, only enough room for about 2 people so Dan and I sat opposite each other and we looked out at the city beneath us as the wheel slowly turned. It was at this moment we noticed the pods had ipod docks in them so you could listen to your own music. What a genius idea! I put on the halo 3 soundtrack for lol's which is basically epic battle music which I felt suited the situation! Huge billboards and skyscrapers fell beneath us. We could see the Osaka JR line right below us and the rest of city living on the ground. A good experience not to be forgotten. I tried to take some good photos but the glass on the pods made this a little difficult.

After this Dan and I were not too sure what else to do. We'd read about a cool aquariam but wanted to save money and didn't think we'd have the time to see it all. So we decided to head back to the hostel and think about dinner. The obvious choice for dinner was the cities favourite.. okonomiyaki...again! The dish was said to originate on the streets here. However we'd eaten so much Japanese food we wanted something a little more familiar. We set out from our hotel towards the river and found a nice little Japanese "Italian" place serving up beers and pizza. Winner. After some confusion with the Japanese server about whether we'd ordered one pizza to share or two separate pizzas each (which is what we wanted) - we finally took a bite out of cheesy doughy goodness. Much needed after all the crazy food we'd eaten along the way! After dinner we roamed along the river for a bit and walked around the streets before heading back for a good nights rest.