Osaka Castle.

Thursday 4th October. Day 70. Fine and warm. Full moon tonight.

We came downstairs at a civilized hour and found Akihiro and Masako dashing between the kitchen and the dining room.
The dining room table was laden with an incredible brunch.
Sliced ham, broccoli, asparagus, sliced tomatoes, sliced apple, orange segments, nashi pear, hard-boiled eggs, micro-waved potatoes, slices of toast, three jams, yoghurt, coffee, and tomato juice.

Some time later, we set off to visit Osaka Castle. In a little over an hour from Sakai, Akihiro was parking in the International Market Place near the elegant city centre. The castle itself is in a large park with attractive gardens and a moat.
We walked through an elegant shopping arcade, then through the gardens towards the castle.
Osaka castle is a multi-storeyed building. It has a gabled roof (because Japan is a very rainy country), and the foundations included the most enormous stones. Some foundation stones looked to be half the size of a railway carriage. We wanted to know how people moved and placed these huge stones, but we never found out.
The castle was first built by Hideyoshi Toyotomi in 1585. It has been burned down several times, twice due to civil wars,in 1615 and 1868,and again during World War II.
The current eight-story tower of reinforced concrete structure was reconstructed in 1931, and has been recently renovated.
The newly improved Exhibition room displays the life of Hideyoshi as well as the history of the Castle.

Before we went into the castle we paused at a cafe and ate soft serve ice creams, called "sofuto kureemu" in Japanese.
Six months earlier, Akihiro told us, Ian Thorpe's famous feet were under a table in the very same cafe, while his mouth was ingesting a meal of soba noodles. Some Australians had visited Japan for an international swimming competition earlier in the year, in April, and when not swimming had found time to visit Osaka Castle. Sofuto kureemu is very popular in Japan and so is Ian Thorpe.

The tour of the castle begins on the third floor. We had scarcely begun looking at the extremely well presented exhibits of the history of the castle when Akihiro became very excited, and we found ourselves shaking hands with Mr. Akashi, vice-secretary of the Japanese delegation to the United Nations. Mr. Akashi's secretary took a photograph of us all which like all the other photographs that were taken you can't see because of the demise of our scanner; but there are lots of Osaka Castle pictures available on the internet.
Mr. Akashi asked us where we were from, and on being told, "near Melbourne," he kindly told us Melbourne was his favourite Australian city; he much preferred it to Sydney.
I thought he had such an outstanding presence - meeting him practically overshadowed the rest of the day which itself was entirely wonderful.

After leaving the castle, we walked to a tempura restaurant in one of Osaka's twin towers.
Green tea all round, beer for Colin and Barbara, then hot towels (for the diner's hands).
After these preliminaries, the table was set for a tempura meal.
There was a salad, a dipping sauce, some lemon in a squeezer, a piece of lime, and small bowls of salt and powdered coriander. The tempura itself came item by item each with an individual accompaniment. First there were shrimp tails, followed by scallops, then an eel-like fish, next a vegetable, then two pieces of mushroom (matsutake), finally the shrimps' heads.
After the tempura the waiters brought us miso soup and tendon (crumbed pork with a little vegetable something on a bed of rice) and pickles (radish, cucumber), and seaweed.
Hot green tea, hot towels and nashi-flavoured ice cream concluded this meal, which was a triumph of presentation and of taste.

After along and sleepy drive back to Shiro Niwa, we drank green tea and coffee, and met Noriko, the daughter of the house. She is about twenty five years old and works as a paediatric nurse. We presented our gifts, and showed some pictures of our almost brand new grand daughter, Sacha. The next day we were surprised by a visit to Kabuki Theatre.