You have joined us here: inside one of the rooms of the Big Echo karaoke joint in downtown Osaka. A large table dominates the regular-size room; on top of it are microphones and an LCD panel straight out of Blade Runner where singers (or at least their reasonable facsimile) punch in the codes for their song choices. Something by Bonnie Tyler, perhaps. Or the Eagles. This being Haruki Murakami country — with streets, subways and storylines that are charming and confusing, beautiful and baffling at the same time — you’d half-expect the Sheepman to be in another room, singing a Beatles tune. Let me guess. Norwegian Wood? In our own echo-y room someone is singing: our tour guide from the Osaka Convention & Tourism Bureau (OCTB), Shinichiro Takeuchi, a likeable chap and a dead ringer for what actor Chuckie Dreyfus might look like now.
Takeuchi is certainly feeling it. He belts out a number with impossibly infectious grooves called Osaka Strut. A large flat-screen shows Osaka streetscapes and — oh look, the Dotombori Bridge! — while our very own concert king is belting out lines about (I would find out later on) buying a ticket to Umeda, meeting up in Kinokuniya and partaking of udon noodles, punctuated with the chorus “Just keep on…. Osaka… Strut!” We, the other people in the room, feel it, too. Makes me think for a moment, while Chuckie plays air guitar, about what really makes this Japanese city strut.
This is our third and last night in Osaka. My tour-mates — Philippine Airlines (PAL) corporate sales manager Mayette Casanova, fellow journalists Vangie Reyes, Stef Juan and Kristel Dacumos — are headed back to Manila the next day, while I will get on a plane bound for Haneda Airport and take bus No. 10 to Yokohama to protract my Hard-boiled Wonderland-like adventures (Sapporo beer and Beatles; pachinko games and being smitten with an earring saleslady; ruminating, walking, more ruminating — more about this in a future article).
Philippine Airlines — with the support of OCTB, Ana Crowne Plaza Osaka, and Swissotel Osaka — invited The STAR to check out the PAL Swingaround Osaka offering. Swingaround is PAL’s international tour program which, according to PAL VP for marketing support Felix Cruz, “continues to overwhelm the traveling public with its convenient one-stop-shop concept and attractive tour package prices.” Thus, for a two-day/three-night travel package (or with an extra night), guests can have a weekend stay in Japan’s “City of Water,” the nation’s kitchen, the second largest city in Nippon, and one of the most alluring places on the planet — Osaka.
According to Casanova, PAL and another airline are the only ones that fly from Manila to Osaka and vice versa, but only PAL has a business class section, flying daily from Kansai Airport to Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
A digression: the Kansai Airport itself is quite an attraction already, what with it resting on a manmade island, its roof built like an airfoil and its passenger terminal looking like the spine of an elegant dinosaur.
Swingaround Osaka is a DIY-type trip. No grueling schedules to stick to. Those who will avail of the package have the chance to discover Osaka for themselves. Whatever rocks their world. Go crazy at the 100 Yen Store, or eat takoyaki (balls of flour thinned with fish stock and filled with chopped octopus inside) — although I am not too stoked about eating World Cup Paul the oracular octopus’s cousin. In one joint there is such a thing as Russian Roulette Takoyaki — eight pieces, one laced with industrial-strength wasabi. You’ll feel like Christopher Walken with his tongue on fire for sure.
By the end of the trip, Casanova will enthuse about the sum of little things that make Osaka totally wonderful: “(I love the) food, the culture, and how very clean (the city) is, as well as the courteous, warm and very polite people.”
When we flew into Kansai Airport via the afternoon PAL flight, it was the start of a swimmingly good swing-around. From the late-evening dinner in a restaurant in the KitaShinchi dining and entertainment district with tasty, generous servings of udon and katsudon, as well as with a name in Kanji no one could even translate into English, to the late-evening karaoke session at Big Echo, to everything in between. It truly is a strutting adventure.
So keep on…
Crowne and glory
For our digs, we are billeted at the Ana Crowne Plaza Osaka, which is PAL’s partner hotel in this venture. The hotel rests on the Yodoyabashi business district, overlooking the Dojima River and the Nakanoshima Park. Talk about easy access to every major place in the city. You could walk 10 to 15 minutes to the Umeda shopping area. Shinsaibashi — the famous Dotombori with all the fashion boutiques (YSL, LV) as well as specialty shops (don’t ever leave Japan without checking out a Tokyu Hands store) — is three stops away by subway. Since Osaka is a gateway of sorts, visitors could travel from the city to other key cities in Japan — Kyoto, Kobe and Nara — within an hour. They could also take the bullet train to Tokyo (two and a half hours, tops); just remember to program Jesus & Mary Chain or Roxy Music tracks on your iPod.
On the first day, Ana Crowne Plaza Osaka senior sales manager for international markets Jeremy Nam took us on a morning tour of the hotel and its facilities. The hotel has undergone major renovations in 2008, and more upgrades are underway. “We are spending $30 million on renovations — guestrooms, lobby, restaurants, pretty much everything in the hotel.”
Other hotels in Japan charge guests for the use of the swimming pool; not in the case of Ana Crowne Plaza. There are other complimentary items and services that the hotel offers. Free Internet, essential especially for tourists with pending articles (ahem, ahem). The Sleep Advantage pack (eye-warmers, relaxing mint and roasted green tea, bath powders, three bottled aromas), essential for hardcore insomniacs (like yours unruly and the character in Murakami’s Sleep) or simply for those who want to get a good night’s rest before they brave the throng at Shinsaibashi or Don Quixote all for the holy grail of consumer items.
“This is unique to our hotel,” informed Nam. “We get great feedback from our guests.”
The Ana boasts restaurants such as Café in the Park, The Dining Room (French fusion cuisine), Karin (Chinese cuisine), Dojima (teppanyaki restaurant), Tankuma Kitamise (traditional Kyoto-style Japanese cuisine), and — for cold or hot sake — The Library Bar.
He explained that the hotel has been rated as a four-star one, but because of how proud Jeremy and the rest of the gang are of Ana Crowne Plaza Osaka, he considers it a “4.5 star hotel.”
It’s about exceeding expectations.
“Madonna was here, 10 years ago,” said a smiling Nam. “So was Gorbachev.”
Swiss connection
Swissotel Nankai Osaka executives — Michiko Fujikawa and Hyejin Jin — also took time out to have lunch with our group. We had the
shokado benoto lunch (with a bento box of Japanese goodies — ox tongue, soft-braised octopus, rolled conger eel) at Hana-Goyomi. This Japanese restaurant purveys traditional Japanese cuisine through its kaiseki. True, true: sushi is more often than not sushi anywhere, but the ones I had at Hana-Goyomi had a fine texture I’ve never encountered anywhere. There are also private rooms in Hana-Goyomi where you could eat cross-legged on tatami mats.
The hotel towers above Midosuji Boulevard, one of the most happening places in Osaka. It boasts 548 rooms built following the contemporary design aesthetics — uncluttered, understated and with clean lines. Fujikawa informed us that the hotel is directly connected to Kansai Airport by train, and there is a courtesy phone at platform no. 9, which is a hotline to Swissotel’s guest services. Guests can have their baggage picked up, no sweat.
We made a visit to the hotel’s Tavola36 Italian Restaurant and Sky Bar, an amphitheater-style joint that offers a majestic view of Osaka. Oh, and I read that the martinis are excellent.
I could just imagine going straight to Swissotel from Kansai Airport, letting the concierge worry about my suitcase, and just having a frosty bottle of Sapporo (Kirin or Asahi or whatever) at Tavola36 and just soaking in the layout of the city — the snaking tracks of the Keihan line, the buildings, the towers, the soup of stories down below. And maybe, just maybe, write something.
A kind of blue
The Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan at the Tempozan Harbor Village is one of the largest in the world, what with its 580 different species of marine life and 30,000 specimens. You start at the eighth floor and walk the downward spiral to see the tanks representing the Japan Forest (where otters and trout thrive), Aleutian Islands, Monterey Bay (seals), Gulf of Panama (tortoise, porcupine fish), Ecuador Rain Forest (capybara), Antarctica (penguin, The Riddler, The Joker, Two-Face — just kidding), Tasman Sea (dolphin), Great Barrier Reef (butterfly-fish, angelfish), Seto Inland Sea (octopus, lobster), Coast of Chile (Japanese anchovy), Cook Strait (porcupine fish), Japan Deeps (giant spider crab), and the Pacific Ocean (the mother load teeming with whale sharks, manta rays and their admiring posse of fans with fins).
Thirty-centimeter-thick acrylic glass is used for the Pacific Ocean tank, which contains 5,400 tons of water with a depth of nine meters. All in all the Osaka Aquarium uses 103 acrylic glass panes weighing a total of 314 tons. That’s what you call a glass act.
Metro Society’s Stef Juan was one excellent guide at the Kaiyukan, annotating each fish (“That’s a sun fish, that’s a guitar fish, and those crabs look like the aliens in Starship Trooper!”) and infecting me with her enthusiasm for the creatures of the deep. Plus, we were able to get hearty stares at the massive whale shark (two of them?) swimming in the monolithic tanks, and fondle a manta ray in the touch pool. The sunfish is my favorite. If H.R. Giger were to design marine life, it would be the sunfish. Elsewhere is the floor that contains different varieties of jellyfishes — from the Moon Jelly to Tima Formosa. Stef said the jellies remind her of Olivia d’Aboville’s sculptures. I agreed.
Thankfully there wasn’t any seafood restaurant inside the building, within the premises or thereabouts, unlike you know where. Let me have a plate of Dory and a side order of Sebastian.
Nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
Together with the amiable Tomoyuki Nagao, PAL Osaka district sales office manager, we headed for the Floating Garden Observatory at the Umeda Sky Building. There, we got high — uh, I mean we climbed the donut-shaped roof (the Lumi Sky Walk) of the observation platform, 170 meters above the ground, and got a 360-degree-view of the city (and, we were told, even as far away as Awaji Island). Oh yeah, we met the mascot, the rainbow-haired Sorara. Look! The Pias Tower, the Tenpozan Ferris Wheel — hey, Nagao, I could see your house from here.
Back on Earth, we made our way to the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, which features the Ataka Collection (mainly Chinese and Korean artifacts) plus Japanese ceramic wonders — two of them are National Treasures of Japan, a tea bowl from the Southern Song Dynasty and the celadon bottle from the Yuan Dynasty.
I like those Chinese snuff bottles. And, oh, the Narcissus basin. Why an oriental artifact bears the name of a character from Greek mythology is beyond me.
The lions, the sword and the wardrobes
Call it Japanese castle magic, to rephrase a Jimi Hendrix song. We headed for the iconic Osaka Castle. It was built at the end of the 16th century by the warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi who unified the whole of Japan (feuding warlords, warring samurais) under his rule. The fortifications of the castle are impressive; one could just imagine how impenetrable the stones walls (perimetered by moats) are. The castle is cordoned off magnificently by the Otemon Gate, which along with the Sengan Turret and 11 other structures, are important cultural properties of Japan. Past the takoishi (a cousin of Paul the octopus etched by nature on a wall), and inside the museum itself are awe-inspiring 10,000 historical materials — swords, surcoats, armors, fan-shaped hanging scrolls, and letters written by the great daimyo himself, among other items. The centerpieces (literally) are the folding panoramic screen illustrating the “Summer War of Osaka” and the toy soldiers which depict in minute detail the clashes between the armies of Toyotomi and Tokugawa, as well as the hellish repercussions of war. There is also a high-tech diorama featuring 19 scenes from the life of Hideyoshi.
By late afternoon, we made our way to a good, good spot to watch the Tenjin Matsuri Festival procession (one by land or Rikutogyo, the other by water or Funatogyo).
It all starts with the halberd, a 15th-century weapon, carried by Shindo (a child carrying the halberd), which is set afloat accompanied by prayers for the prosperity of the city.
We were just in time to hear thundering war-drum; men in scarlet caps called Ganji beat the war-drum, creating much ruckus. This heralded the procession of the holy shrines (Mikoshi), participants in imperial Japan outfits, handsome horses, lion puppets, the Kasa Odori dance group with tiny colorful umbrellas, and the showdown if you will between “the two great stars of the festival” — the Ohtori Mikoshi and the Tama Mikoshi.
At first we didn’t believe Nagao when he claimed that a million people take part in the festival. From the guest area, all we could see were a hundred at best, but when we made our way to the subway station toward the riverside area to watch the barges and the fireworks display, it was like the scene in 2012 when John Cusack and company went to the dock of arks. We had to hold hands not to lose each other in the sea of humanity. I grabbed the bag of Philippine Department of Tourism (DOT) Osaka administrative officer Lorelai Cruz because she was pleasant company and, besides, she spoke fluent Japanese.
We got to the guest area with a great view of the Tenjinbashi Bridge. Minutes later we saw the floats go downriver as the Osaka skyline blossomed with fireworks.
Big echo park
You have joined us here: inside one of the rooms of the Big Echo karaoke joint in downtown Osaka. Chuckie is winding down his air guitar solo. So cue tracks by Diana Ross (“[Strut] in the name of love…”), ABBA (“Getting in the swing[around]…”) or even Oasis (“And all the lights that light the way…”).
Oh, Osaka. This city doesn’t just strut. It rocks.
Chuckie takes a bow.
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The PAL Swingaround Osaka Lite package, which go for as low as $508, includes round-trip Fiesta Class airfare, three-night hotel accommodation at Ana Crowne Plaza Osaka, two breakfast coupons, a cool welcome drink upon arrival, and 10-percent on food & beverage at the hotel. The offer is until Sept. 15.
For information, call 855-7777 or visit www.philippineairlines.com.
For more information about Osaka, visit http://www.osaka-etoko.ne.jp/en/.