Osaka Maritime Museum
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Day 19 (Sunday): New photos at the album. Still on the hunt for a peaceful place to relax in Osaka, I decided to head down to the Osaka Bay, where I figured I’d catch the maritime museum and then find a place to rest beside the ocean or in the nearby bird sanctuary. This time the subway fee was totally worth it: 270 yen for what was about 40 minutes from Namba to Suminoekoen on the Yotsubashi Line, and then from Suminoekoen to Trade Center-mae on the Nanko Port Town Line, a nice, clean little tram elevated over the bay area that offers a pleasant ride through this primarily industrial part of Osaka.
Convenient English-language signage led from the tram station down to a canal walk that leads past the Osaka Foods Outlet — which deceptively promises dining opportunities that I later discovered it didn’t offer, at least not on a Sunday afternoon — to the bay. I looked left and right and saw about two other people and a long, smooth stretch of walkway and ocean water around me. Everything was quiet except for the splashing of the waves and the bellow of a ship’s horn once in a while. Ahhhh! That’s what my little introverted soul required, after two-plus weeks of nonstop rushing around with other people! I sank into a bench seat and gazed at the water for a long time.
Eventually I wandered over to the striking maritime museum, a geodesic dome set in the water of the bay that is entered via underwater tunnel from a building on the shore. The elevator dropped me off in the dark tunnel right next to the most stunning ceramic sculpture of a fantasy city-ship that I’ve ever seen in my life — check out the Osaka photo album for a couple of the many, many photos I took of this magnificent piece, which is definitely going to figure into one of my stories someday.
It was difficult to drag myself away and through the dark tunnel to the museum, but that was also a visually amazing experience, rising up the escalator beneath a full-sized higaki kaisen ship, the Naniwa Maru, towering ninety feet high with its mast nearly touching the top of the dome.
The museum doesn’t offer a lot of displays, but what it has is fascinating … at least to a tall ship fan like me, who can happily spend several hours knocking around maritime museums. What I thought was particularly interesting about this museum was that all of the other maritime museums I’ve visited before now have been very Eurocentric, so an Asian-centric museum concentrating on the trading vessels of China and Japan was an intriguing and educational new experience. I enjoyed the hands-on displays, like how to use an astrolabe and sextant (conclusion: never trust me to navigate!), and I watched all of the movies, even though they weren’t translated, because most were self-explanatory: working on a tall ship, constructing the Naniwa Maru, and so forth. The museum did, to my surprise, offer some English and Korean translation sheets at most of the displays, which was a bonus.
After killing several hours in the museum, which didn’t have many other visitors in it, I wandered back out to my bench by the bay and enjoyed the cool sea breeze — Osaka is in the muggy, humid 80s right now, so the waterfront was refreshing — and watched the lively bay fish jumping and the freight ships and Japanese Coast Guard running back and forth. At one point I walked off to see if the Osaka Foods Outlet offered anything to buy for lunch, only to find it closed; instead, I visited the museum lobby to pick up an ice cream and soda from Japan’s handy and ubiquitous vending machines. Hardly anybody was around; just a few bicyclists and joggers, and one picnicking family. Heaven! I didn’t even bother with the bird sanctuary.
Today I’m headed out to Koya-San; just wrapping this up before check-out time. I won’t update for a day!
drupagliassotti @ June 6, 2010