Tsutentaku was actually reconstructed for a couple of times and this tower, THIS FREAKING TOWER. This FRIGGIN' TOWER tries to suck your money as much as possible by all the Pocky and gacha machines and photo-taking services like ugh I spent extra money over here too.

Tsutenkaku from Shinsekai

Upon getting your entrance tickets, you will be guided to an elevator ride and you could see the mascot of Osaka's god in the elevator beautifully illuminated! Upon your exit, you'll begin to see a lot of money-sucking activities lol

Glicoman

Tsutenkaku

Gacha Gacha

Touken Ranbu mini files _(:3J

You can go all the way above the observatory and view the entire Osaka and stamping your stamp collection books with different stamps available in different corners. There's also a corner where you can watch the history of how Shinsekai and Tsutenkaku reformed. The short clip I watched was in Japanese though.

aye have some view

more views

If you cheat in the system you get cursed

Beneath this statue there's a stamp

How is that a secret though

I never knew what you'd get if you can hit 11.11 though.

A place to waste your time

Isn't he saying "COME TO ME, YOUR MONEY!" ?

After the observatory, you can go all the way down and find yourself a series of places talking about the history of Pocky, a Glico cafe and more souvenir stores. Money-sucker indeed lol. I wouldn't say that their Pocky is cheaper than places in Japan (Donquijote, for example) but there are definitely some versions of Pocky that you don't really see in convenience stores very frequently.

The illumination changes!

"What purpose does this serve when I'm here by my own?"

The base of Tsutenkaku

I actually spent more time than I thought I'd be in Tsutenkaku because of the video-viewing and reading some Pocky history. So after visiting Tsutenkaku and got out of the building, I looked around for kushikatsu. My friend living near Umeda told me to visit Daruma's place but it took me ages to know which one is the actual restaurant because there are just SO MANY uwu

I found Daruma regardless.

They have an English menu!

Before that, you are also served with cabbage. You can eat it with the sauce or along with the dishes.

Add-ons

From left: Kushikatsu (beef), Ebi (prawn), Maguro (bluefin tuna), Renkon (lotus root), Tsukune (chicken meatball)

To eat this, you dip the food into the sauce once (only do it ONCE per stick for hygiene purposes) and eat it. It's crispy and the sauce is salty-sweet and very delicious. I was served the above five types first, and later on I'm served with the other three sticks.

Left: Kisu (Japanese whiting fish), Right: Tonkatsu (pork cutlet)

Left: Kisu (Japanese whiting fish), Right: Mochi (rice cake)

You eat the mochi piece with this, not the sauce!

And there goes 1050 yen + 8% of tax. Also, don't forget to take a photo with the mascot in front of their door!

The mascot \o/

I also saw a lot of other stores with many signature boards too. I don't know them, but maybe you can recognize a few signatures? uwu

Daimaru takoyaki

I actually past by Daimaru on my way to Shittenouji Temple, but the words 明太子 (Mentaiko /Pollock roe) attracted me so much because I absolutely love them. So I thought of just giving it a try!

The store operates based on a ticket machine - you buy a ticket using the machine and pass it to the staff, and it'll be prepared in no time! It costed me 360 yen, if memory served me right.

Though I think that it isn't the best takoyaki available in market I had because it is actually too soft - to the extent where the inner part feels rather liquidy rather than being soft, but eating here certainly gave me a really special memory for my travel in Japan.

I felt hungrier just by looking at these uwu

Museum of Fine Arts Closed on Mondays

On my way to Shitennouji, I walked past Isshin-ji, got curious and walked in to see a series of tombs. The temple is further up, so I simply left my prayers and continued walking to Shitennouji.

The pagoda from outside

Golden lanterns

The outer areas of Shitennouji are free, but to have a better view inside the pagoda, you will need to pay a fee. I used my pass and climbed my way up in the pagoda (shoes off before climbing up!) and in the pagoda, there are many golden plates of Buddha on the walls, which resembles a lot with the Chinese Buddhist temples.

On my way to Osaka Castle

After my visit to Shitennouji, I headed to Osaka castle! On my way, I found the Osaka castle museum instead and had a super short trip there. I absolutely did not realize that my scarf had leaves caught on it and the staff kindly removed them (also disposed them) for me ;w;

On my way down to the exit, I was told by another staff that the view to Osaka castle can be really nice from the windows, and it really is! :D

The famous Osaka castle!

The Osaka castle has multiple floors and you can go all the way up to the observatory! Though the 6th floor is off-limits. Besides, the surrounding gardens are also stunningly beautiful! On each floor there were displays of historical items. There's also a theater on the first floor showing programs on the life of Hideyoshi Toyotomi (with subtitles this time, unlike Tsuteknaku lol). There are also many displays and replicas as you go up. Cameras are also off limits on the 3rd and 4th floors. 

The more you go up, it's all about Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the person that is responsible in this castle's construction, and how he's the reason that unifies the Japanese people. It's a little sad that I am not excellent in Japanese to understand everything written and it'd be really informative if they have English translations. 

I left Osaka castle and walked towards the bus stop to meet my local friend, Yuu-tan! Then as the skies turned dark, I could see the illumination on the Osaka castle, but my phone is acting up that I could not take a clear photo of it. I think it was also because of how I dressed on the day, I was mistaken as a local student by a tourist from Hong Kong that I also thought she's a local until she spoke lol 

We talked a lot in mixed languages - starting with (broken) Japanese, then Cantonese, Mandarin and English until we were dropped off in front of Umeda station. :D

Initially, I plan to go to the floating garden observatory and only meet her after my visit, but I missed the bus from Umeda station to the observatory and got a little lost, and even my GPS is acting up so I didn't know what to do. I ended up lurking around Umeda station and waited for Yuu-tan to come to my rescue,  meanwhile I had some food to snack on and got a huge bottle of water from Family Mart at 98 yen and when Yuu-tan arrived she was like "HOLY SH*T YOU BOUGHT SUCH A HUGE BOTTLE I THOUGHT YOU SAID YOU ONLY FELT A BIT THIRSTY" lolololol

The rink is so small that Yuri can't even perform Eros on it

Cacti illumination on water

I wonder what they are made of. :O

While queueing to enter the observatory

Upon exiting the observatory, Yuu-tan and I had a short moment thinking of whether we should visit HEP FIVE ferris wheel first, or to have dinner before taking the ferris wheel because we are both confused about the closing time, but we ended up having dinner in Yamamoto's Negiyaki!

It's 980 yen for my negiyaki, and it tastes good! They also sell yakisoba too. I was hoping to get mustard sauce because I've been doing that to my okonomiyaki, but Yamamoto's place doesn't provide it and my friend was like "Huh why would you put mustard" lol (but I really love putting mustard on my okonomiyaki ;w;)

Pork (more like Bacon) Negiyaki

After eating on Yamamoto's place, we walked to HEP FIVE and hopped on it. The ride is rather short, and we were trying our best to take decent pictures but nothing came out great lolol. The ride was 500 yen if you aren't going on by the pass, but you certainly can see a lot around Umeda. :)

Got off from the ferris wheel :D

And right after our Ferris Wheel ride, we went to the 8th floor of the Hep Five building for purikura! :D

The machine that I choose is rather different from other machines. Usually, for purikura, the output has a couple of photos. However, for the machine I chose, I paid 400 yen to receive a postcard-sized photo with one main shot and other shots placed the corners, which are shrunk in size ; w;

The machine is called Princess Time! It's a collaboration with 2D characters voiced by Junichi Suwabe (as Luca), Hatano Wataru (as Ren) and Kishio Daisuke (as Yura). There are more characters that will be added soon too! At the time I used the machine, they had a promotion where I'll be able to get one random badge (out of the three characters) for every try in the machine. I had Suwabe-san's character, Luca as my 'escort' throughout the purikura experience because I love his voice so much. 

One main tip: LOOK INTO THE CAMERA. 

Second tip: Be fast and know WTF you are doing lol

Third tip: Enter your e-mail address quickly and correctly so you get a digital copy of the photo 

I was all confused at the first place so I wasn't looking into the camera for one of the shots I had lolololol 

But taking photos aren't the tiring part, the most tiring part is the decoration part. Yuu-tan and I partner-up so hard to decorate all photos and it took us more than 15 minutes to decorate all photos lol 

Once we are done with decorating the pictures, which was almost 11pm by the time we realized, we waited for the postcard to be printed out and very soon a staff approached us and informed us that we could collect a badge.

I tried asking the staff if I can pick a character instead of having it random and she's like "I'm sorry, it's all sealed so I don't know which is which either, but I wish you the best of luck" and I was like amitofo guanyinma honey buddha jesus please don't get me the purple hair and boom!!

I didn't get Luca's.

But my badge was ending up as Ren's, which wasn't bad because I like Waccha too. :D

The staff was like "how was it?" and I was like "Not my favorite, but this is good too" and she was like pheeeew lololol




Then, our day ends with the giant whale where Yuu-tan will go home via the Hankyu line and I go home via the Yotsubashi line, and there goes our day!

In my next post, I'll talk about my entire day in Namba's Den Den town! Though I don't think I have very much to say because I was there for an event and we are supposed to keep quiet about the details, and the later part of the day I was shopping for second-hand goods but got chased out at 9pm and ended up buying NOTHING because I wasn't done shopping. T_T

Until next time! ☆