Osaka, Japan Day 3

Today is day 3 in our Journey through Osaka, Japan. Today we explored the Osaka Castle. Our first order of business, however, before going to the castle was somewhat frustrating, but I knew God would bring us the desired outcome. Our first order of business (after eating breakfast) was to find an ATM that would give us Yen, the problem we found is that you had to have a Japanese credit card. After walking around for a good hour or so we went back to the hotel to ask our front desk attendant (who doesn't speak much English) where we should go. He drew us a map with some banks on it, but when we got to the banks they were all closed for some reason... I'm still not sure why. After my wife had bouts of sadness to our predicament and I comforted her, we walked into Tennoji Station (a really large train station) and found an info desk. Luckily they told us where an ATM was that could give us Yen from our credit card. We promptly went to get cash and then came back to the info desk to purchase what is called a two-day "Thru Pass" (which is only available to non-native visitors). The Thru Pass is good for private bus lines and private trains in Osaka and surrounding areas. Up until this moment we had been using what is called the JR loop line (a line of trains that circles the city). This pass will allow us to travel to Kyoto tomorrow for half the price it would using the JR trains. This pass is also good for buses! The loop line is just convenient to use for stuff in Osaka but this two day pass will work well for us and will save us money when traveling to and from Kyoto, we may even go two days in a row if we enjoy it tomorrow (more on that later). After purchasing this pass we decided to eat at an Italian restaurant titled "Pasta de Pasta," (don't ask me why it is called Pasta of Pasta) and it turned out to be really good. The picture on the blog is of the meal art in circles with price listed below for passersby to drool over. Now, on to the Osaka Castle experience.
Osaka Castle's first Shogun was Hideyoshi Toyotomi. I read of the history on the wall and can share a brief synopsis. Toyotomi was from what I read a good ruler and when he came to power in 1583 he tried to carry out the original mantra for building the castle, which was to unite the country. He and his wise wife did not have any children, but he did have a couple sons and daughters through his concubines. One adopted son named Hidetsugu (in actuality he was a nephew) fell from Hideyoshi's graces for reasons that are unclear and was sent away and forced to commit suicide all of Hidetsugu's family were brutally murdered when they didn't follow suit, some 31 women and many infant sons and daughters. Hideyoshi's second son (and favorite) Hideyori was 5 years old when Hideyoshi became ill and died. His father asked his vassals to be loyal to his young son and they were so until his son came of age. When he came of age the council was broken and they continued to support Hideyori, but after two large battle campaigns against Osaka castle, Hideyori's forces were defeated by Tokugawa. Hideyori committed suicide out of honor. This ended the Toyotomi line of any future descendants. The rest is history.
Osaka Castle would be even more beautiful in the spring and summer, but it was great to visit. The only other sad thing about the castle is that you couldn't take photos of any of the cool artifacts on levels 3 and 4... so we don't have as many photos of our trip today. We learned a lot about the history and enjoyed learning more about Japan.
I hope you enjoyed reading about adventure and we will write more tomorrow about our visit to Kyoto, Japan. This is Grant signing off!

p.s. OH and today I have to APOLOGIZE to Hotel Taiyo as we figured out today that the air conditioning unit also has a heat setting but we didn't know because it was in Japanese, so our room IS nice and TOASTY, thank you Hotel Taiyo!

Pictures are: The circles on the wall next to the Pasta de Pasta restaurant, KJ and I at Osaka Castle, Kara in flowers at the castle, and one of the battles that Toyatomi's son Hideyori faced in the summer.