It is our final day in Osaka, that is, until we return for a few days at the end of this trip. We always enjoy our time in Osaka and it feels like a warm hug to return to Hotel the Lutheran. We will have lunch at the hotel and then head out on our trikes to go for an onsen experience at Spaworld and then do what we do best…explore areas of the city on our trikes and find new treasures to explore.
Our hotel offers a Japanese breakfast buffet and Italian style lunch options. Barry’s choice for lunch is a Japanese entree, omelet rice, with a yummy Italian sauce.
Mary Ellen’s choice is also an Italian dish with Japanese touches. The tomato sauce is delicious and benefits from the addition of burdock root, a popular Japanese root vegetable.
We enjoyed visiting with Kentaro, the owner of Hutte Bike Shop. We were able to get a much needed extra bike lock and some items to maintain and clean our trikes. He sells beautiful custom and hand built bikes.
We both love going to onsens while in Japan. Spaworld is on a different level with international based themed hot spring pools based on ancient locations in Europe for men and Asia for women. Mary Ellen loved soaking in a Japanese open air stream bath, a traditional Turkish Hamman, a pool inspired by thePersian Persepolis Palace, a Japanese wooden cypress bath. Barry enjoyed a Roman bathing spired by the Trevi Fountain.
The setting for these baths was quite beautiful with intricate tile work and attention to detail making the space feel authentic. Barry also got the chance to experience several different types of saunas, including a salt sauna where he coated his body with salt to open his pores as well as a Finnish sauna and a steam sauna. After a couple of hours, we were both blissed out, but we still had a number of shrines and temples to visit.
People with tattoos are forbidden from using an onsen. As we understand it, this exclusion is due to the connection of tattoos with the Yakusa.
Each month, the men’s and women’s floors are switched. Each floor in this building has a circular opening in the middle which makes for an interesting design.
It is very poor etiquette to take photos in an onsen. These photos of the women’s hot spring are taken from the internet. Apologies for the poor picture quality.
The Shinsekai area of Osaka is a razzle-dazzle glitz overload of an experience. Shinsekai means “ New World” in English. The neighborhood was created in 1912 with New York’s Coney Island as its inspiration for the southern half and Paris for its northern half
Beware…this area is always full to overflowing with visitors and Japanese young people. We had some difficulty tiding our trikes through the area. The crush of people is crazy.
The Tsutemkaku Tower, also known as the Hitachi Tower was constructed in 1912, based on the Eiffel Tower. It is 300 feet high. It offers an open air deck on the main observatory level and 180 ft slide is an optional way to descend. It take 10seconds.
The Isshinji Temple was founded in the 12th century. It’s entrance is completely unique and modern, not appearing at all like any other gate at temples in Japan.
The last shrine we visited was the Ikutami Shrine. We really just stumbled onto this shrine. We were on our way back to our hotel when Barry spotted the shrine. It is the oldest shrine in Osaka.
This features Japan’s largest wooden sculpture of Buddha.
For dinner we went to one of favourite restaurants that is just around the corner from our hotel. All of the set meals comes with a large bowl of miso soup that is filled with pork and vegetables.
