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There’s going to be another street festival along the Midosuji Boulevard this Sunday (11th May). It will be between the Nagahoridori and Sennichimaedori. Roughly between Sogo and Namba if you are not familiar with the road names.

It’s from 2pm to 5pm (opening ceremony at 1.45pm close to the Sogo end) and there will be different theme areas. Starting at the Sogo end, the areas are Art, Fashion, Sports, Jazz and Dance. Highlights include appearances of Osaka Evessa at the Sports Area and the 3 Jazz stages. I do hope that they have made the stages raised after the viewing problems of the last time.

There’s also going to be a guest appearance of the popular comedy duo 藤崎マーケット best known for their La-La-La-Lai Taiso act.

Some other info, if it rains (which is likely) the event will still go ahead.   If you have a baby or toddler and need changing or feeding facilities Sogo’s 9F has a very good mother and baby area.  Finally I haven’t been able to find a web site with information in either English or Japanese!

Have fun if you go, and send us some photos!

There’s been a lot of hype and publicity about the Kobe IKEA store that opened in April. It definitely lives up to its hype, being massive, fairly good value and with a huge range. I’m eyeing a bean bag tray for my laptop.

Strangely, what hasn’t been publicised is that IKEA will be opening up a store in Osaka. Not far from where I work in fact. I guess they don’t want to steal the thunder of the Kobe store so soon after its grand opening. I found out by chance when I was talking to a friend who works at IKEA. Here’s a link to the Osaka store place-holder page on the IKEA site. It has a map but no details of opening date or opening hours.

Word is that it will open sometime in August so there’s only another few months to wait. I’ll post more information when it is released.  I’m really looking forward to shopping (or just window shopping) there.

BTW. Don’t be mislead be the map, it is quite far from Taisho station and the Osaka Dome.

As I mentioned in the comments in this post I was thinking of adding the web cams to the side bar if I ever found or received links to others.  Just yesterday I came across the one in the Expo Park so now I’ve added the list to the right side bar under the Osaka Photos links.

The web cams are best during the day time and the Takatsuki one is my favourite.  As always if there are any others (I’m sure there are more than 3), please leave us a comment.  Thanks!

As I mentioned in my previous post, Universal Studios Japan are running a special offer for their yearly passes (until 31st Jan). They are called the Gold Pass and the Platinum Pass. They let you get into the attraction park as many times as you like for a year but there are some exception dates for the gold pass. There are no exceptions for the Platinum Pass.

Here are the prices (regular prices are in square brackets)

• Gold Pass Adult: 11500 Yen [22000 Yen]
• Gold Pass Children: 8200 Yen [16000 Yen]
• Platinum Pass Adult: 17300 Yen [28000 Yen]
• Platinum Pass Children: 11500 Yen [20000 Yen]

Since USJ haven’t bothered to update their page on their English site, here are the days you can’t use the USJ Gold Pass in Japanese. You can only order online if you can understand Japanese, so the best way is probably to go there directly or to ask a friend who can to order for you.

This was going to be a short post about the special offer of yearly pass tickets of Universal Studios Japan (USJ) but incredibly their site is so poor I feel like ranting a bit.  (I’ll post details of the offer in a separate post)

• First of all, they don’t mention the offer on their English site at all.
• Second, their info seems not to have been updated for at least a year.  For example the regular price is still listed as 18,000 Yen not 22,000Yen.  More importantly there are some exception dates but the English version is still  last year’s info  vs the Japanese up-to-date info.
• Third, you can’t actually buy the tickets on-line unless you use the Japanese site.
• Bonus sad points are the information pages for the special events and attractions.  Example, this is the info page for Universal Valentine in English vs Universal Valentine in Japanese.

I can’t believe an organisation with the money and resources like Universal Studios are building such disfunctional sites for their non-Japanese speaking customers.

If you feel similarly please leave a comment or pass on a link to this post to friends.

I got an email asking about places around the Hyatt are within walking distance (apart from the ATC and WTC). I can’t find the mail so I thought I would post my reply here.

The only places I can think of are the Outlet Shops, the bird park and the Wine Museum. There are also some events that are held at Intex just on the doorstep of the Hyatt. Close but not walking distance are the places around Osakako (Kaiyukan, Suntory Musuem with IMAX cinema and the big ferris wheel.

If anyone has other suggestions, please leave a comment on this post.  Thanks!

I would just like to wish every who reads this blog a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!  (even if you are working today) (like me) :p

Only 5 more days until Christmas and you know what that means, right? It means that the Osaka Immigration Office (actually called the Osaka Regional Immigration Bureau) is moving. It is moving to the Nanko area, and the closest station will be Cosmosquare on the Chuo Subway Line. I tried to find a site with details in English but couldn’t. So I went to the immigration office and picked up a leaflet and scanned it in. The PDF is below and it is about 1.5MB in size. (in Japanese, English, Chinese, Korean, Spanish and Portuguese) Tell me if there are any problems with opening it.

PDF of New Osaka Immigration Office

A couple of months back, all the park swings in Osaka were taken away because of safety issues.  There had been accidents involving the swings and although safety checks were promised they weren’t carried out.  After another accident and a public outcry, all the swings were taken away for checks.  Word at the time was that they wouldn’t be back until every one was checked for defects.  That was sometime in the summer, so does anyone have any idea when they are due to return?

There must be more than one but I haven’t found any others.  It is located at the end of DenDen Town and points to the area around the Tsutenkaku Tower. No, it won’t be any use if you are hoping to spot cute girls around Osaka but it is controllable and it is live.  You’ll need Java to see and control the web-cam.

Here’s the  official and original page (controls are in Japanese):

http://www.us-tec.com/live/index.html

and here is the same cam with the controls in English:

http://webcams.gajda.cz/asia/osaka/osaka.html

If you read Japanese then the original page has some information on the weather forecast as indicated by the colours displayed by the Tsutenkaku Tower.

If you know of any other web cams of the Osaka area please post a comment to tell us about it.