Osaka day 3

Still in Osaka, woke up late today, visit a couple of Shrines today, have been pouring today, and we are stuck in the Shinnoen-jo, This is a big shrine with many small temples around.Its 445pm and the rain feels like it will go on for a long time.

Terrain pool, memorials, graveyards and huge Buddhist statues. The shrines are more modest compared to the golden temples that the Chinese built in Mount Ermei. The Chinese tend to construct and paint their statues gold while the Japanese have their statues carved out of stone.

Japan has longer days and it is still bright at 8pm. Comparatively, Japan time is one hour faster than in Singapore.

Language

To me, the Japanese government has done a good job in granting foreigners' Visas, the only minor twitch is that there is a huge language barrier. Japanese only speak their language and they do not bother to pick up another language. There is a huge number of tourist in the city here and businesses may be missed because of a miscommunication.

Considering the many countries, many tourist attractions will put up notices and explanation boards in 3 main languages namely Chinese, English and Japanese. They are pampering the Japanese and putting them in their comfort zone.

Nevertheless, we had a Japanese, a Kyoto native, who speaks English coming up to us and speak to us. That was because Stuart was holding his 'trusty' Lonely Planet Japanese Phrasebook. Now, this is one of the few Japanese that could speak good English. He had stayed in a few english-speaking countries before. His view was that Japanese are shy and afraid to converse or take up another language.

We met fellow travelers who have differing views, some had picked up Japanese and are looking forward to learning mandarin. Well, I say picking up any other language will be useful.

Signed off
Marco