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| Osaka Castle | The moat around the castle | The larger moat around the outer walls | Here we're still in the park around the castle | |||
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| At one of the entrances | Truly huge stones! | Dry moat inside the walls around the inner castle area | Martial arts training center - there were 16 local schools there training that morning | |||
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| Bike parked outside, with equipment, no locks anywhere... | Warming up | stretching | I wish I were that flexible! | |||
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| The posts in the road go up and down (lock up) to allow or prevent car traffic | Entrance into the inner castle area | Another moat here, but dry now | Massive entrance and doors | The old musuem of Natural History | ||
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| The imposing castle | Bushes are manicured by hand | Building was convered in gold leaf | After going up the stone steps, the building is 8 stories high | |||
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| Signal gun | Again huge entry doors, in gold leaf and laquer | From the 8th floor, view of the new Museum of Natural History | ||||
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| Closeup of the fish up top of the building | Looking out over Osaka | View of the martial arts building | Osaka skyline | Moat from above | ||
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| Inside the building is a museum/gallery. This is many of the banners of the generals when the castle was built and fought over | Folding screen painting of one of the wars, beseiging the castle | Excavations when rebuilding the castle - some of the huge stones are only 3 feet thick! | ||||
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| Mysteries of how was the castle built, re-built.... | The critical well inside the castle | Inside the inner castle walls... "unopened until 6970" wow! | On each side along the walls around the entrance, notice the small holes under the eaves for shooting at invaders | |||
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| My car! I've been looking and in almost 2 weeks have seen only two... and zero of the older Prius' cars. I'd thought they'd be everywhere here... | Subway in Osaka, saw several of these...??? | Vee! | We've had almost every kind of Japanese food, time to try Japanese pizza... thin crust and pretty good! | View from hotel room in Yokohama | ||
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| The ship is pretty neat - there's a sign there that they teach how to sail | Hugely tall buidling. They wanted 1000 yen ($10) to ride the elevator to the top... maybe on a clear day... | |||||
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| Way too dark but it's a curving escalator! | ||