Osaka-Jo aka Osaka Castle

With the ground covers an approximate 60,000 square meters (roughly about 2 square kilometers) it's one of the widest covered areas for a historic structure in Osaka. Welcome to Osaka-Jo or greatly known as the Osaka Castle.

Getting there was not easy as I have to take the JR West Osaka Loop Line and stopped at the Osakajokoen station and another long 30-40 minutes walk just to reach to the main structure of the castle itself! It's a pretty good exercise especially after having a heavy breakfast earlier. The walk includes a few long streches of roads and a few flight of steps.

Built in 1583 by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Osaka Castle was built on the former site of the Ishiyama Honganji Temple which was destroyed by Oda Nobunaga earlier. Hideyoshi was a Daimyo or known as the powerful territorial lord during his ruling period. Under his rule, he intends to put the castle as the center of a new, unified Japan. As the construction of the castle nearly completes in 1597, Hideyoshi passed away and passed on to his son Toyotomi Hideyori.

During Hideyori's ruling of Osakajo, the castle was sieged again and again by Tokugawa Ieyasu (Japan's first shogun). By 1615, the castle fell into Tokugawa's hands and that spells the end of the Toyotomi's line. Tokugawa's new heir, Tokugawa Hidetada reconstruct the castle again after much damage that has been done to the castle in the past war. However, the castle did not survive for long as it was struck by lightning in 1665 and the castle was burnt down.

The Osaka castle went through a few more decades of rebuild and torn due to war within its own countrymen, it was finally being restored by the Osaka's Government in the 1990's. To this day, the Castle is a famous and most visited landmark in Osaka City that sees so much history and what was rebuilt and restored was an Edo-era version of Osaka Castle.

The castle tower is surrounded by secondary citadels, gates, turrets, impressive stone walls and moats. The castle, it is made of a steel-framed reinforced concrete structure.

Inside the castle itself, is a museum. It costs 600Yen per entry/person and it opens from 9am until 5pm everyday. The Osaka Castle Museum has a large variety of historical materials and the screen displays which houses a collection of approximately 10,000 historical materials, including artifacts from this period as part of the main collection.

There's a total of 8 levels inside the castle. The 3rd and 4th floor where all the artifacts are located, no photography are allowed... which leaves me puzzling why it's preserved to the utmost secrecy? Perhaps it's just business oriented reasons or perhaps it's for political reasons. The miniature figures and the panoramic screens on the 5th floor show the scenes from the folding screen depicting the Summer War of Osaka.

The diorama on the 7th floor contains 19 scenes from the life of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, karakuri Taikoki, his image shown and moved around by high technology.

On the 8th floor, it is an observation deck where the view of the spacious Osaka Castle Park, modern high-rise buildings, the Osaka plain, and the mountains in the distance are visible from the top.

As the spring season is coming to an end, there's plenty of the locals hanging around the area to enjoy the weather and the sunshine. It's a good way for them to release their minds from the daily stress with plenty of fresh air that surrounds the castle's park area itself. As for myself, all I ever think was how long will it take for me to walk back to the train station yet again? It's just another agonizingly long walk back from I started.