Osaka was the last stop in Japan for the three of us. I stayed in Japan for a bit longer but Katie was going to Vietnam to meet up with some friends and Em had to go back to the states.
We got to our hostel in Osaka kinda late in the day so we had a quick convience store dinner and go up the next day to explore some. The first thing we did was go to the Osaka castle. You can go all the way up to the top and on the way down, each floor tells part of the story of the castle. While we were waiting outside the castle we saw several school groups and on the walk up to the castle grounds we saw kids in their P.E. classes running around the grounds for class. At least that’s what we assumed cause they were all in uniforms and looked to be school age. If I could have run around a beautiful castle for P.E. rather than a brown field, I might’ve liked running a bit more in middle school.
The next day we took a train down to Hiroshima which is a place that probably needs no introduction. On the way to the A-bomb dome we met another traveler, Anton, who was headed the same way so our trio added one more for the day. Walking around the A-bomb dome and the surrounding Peace Park was sobering. The building is maintained to look how it did immediately after the bomb struck and its hard to imagine the entire city center of Hiroshima looking like that.
The museum that we went to was not really about the history of events leading up to the event but was full of the remains of clothes belonging to those who were lost because of the bomb. Most of the clothes were child sized.It explained what happened when the bomb went off and how destructive it was. We touched roof tiles that had been scorched and glass cups that had melted together because the temperature was so great. Now imagine that on your skin. I said it before after seeing the killing fields in Cambodia, we need to learn from history so that things like these don’t happen again. Our group definitely had enough to discuss for the rest of the afternoon but we had another place to see before heading back to Osaka for the night.
After an educational start to the day we went to Miyajima island which has a giant torii gate that looks like its floating when its high tide. We visited at low tide so while it wasn’t ‘floating’ we did get to see it up close and boy was this thing huge!
We spent the rest of the day wandering around the island which kinda reminded me a little of Lamma Island in Hong Kong. A very relaxed, small island town that is populated by many deer. Don’t worry we kept a wide berth if we had food. It was nice to walk around the island and absorb everything we had seen that morning. Overall, it was a good day and as it turned out, our new friend, Anton, was going to be in Tokyo the same time I was so he and I planned to meet up there sometime.
One of the last things we did while in Osaka was a visit a public bath which is where you are completely naked and chilling in hot springs with everybody else. Don’t worry, its separated by genders. So yeah, it was Katie, Em and me with a lot of very naked Japanese women chilling in the baths. After the initial awkwardness it was kinda empowering. There is a lot of stuff going around the interweb about negative body image and how we need to encourage young people, especially young women to appreciate their bodies. Doing this and seeing other women confident about their bodies made me feel more confident about my own. If you ever have the opportunity to try something like this, do it and see what you take away. So, Katie and Em had already done it and told me about the no tattoo rule so I just stuck some band aids on my small tattoo. However, I had forgotten about the temporary tattoo Katie drew on my earlier so while I had covered up the real tattoo the temporary one was out in the open for everyone to see! Luckily, no one mentioned it but I didn’t mean to be culturally insensitive.
Osaka had many things for us to do but my favorite thing had to be spending with Em and Katie at our hostel watching Youtube videos late at night. It reminded me of being roommates at university and we even got the hostel cat, Wolf, to stay in our room a couple of the nights. 
I didn’t realize how much I missed these ladies and when it was time for each of us to go our own way it was tough. After a final dinner at our sushi place we sent Katie off to Vietnam and Em and I stayed one more night in Osaka before I left to Mt. Fuji and she went back to the states. From now on, it’s just going to be one monkey in Japan.
In a Shenzhen Minute 
great post
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