it has been a weekend of excesses, somewhat.
saturday was a great day filled with singlish, cycling around, discovering new places, good food and new friends. and today, was spent leisurely and wonderously in tsurumi ryokuchi expo ‘90 park and having greek food for dinner. awesome. this has definitely been the best weekend in the longest while, partly because i havent been doing much for the past many weekends, but more so because of the extremely enjoyable events that i’ve been engaged in these 2 days.
it just feels so wonderful when you’re outside feeling the sun and the wind and breathing in fresh air and moving about. and i love the fact that we’re out trying food from a different country each week, cos it means great food, new experiences and a lovely time spent together :)
as usual, i ate too much this weekend.. amazing bukkake udon with glorious pieces of juicy, friend chicken (website here); cake and coffee, shio ramen (cold version, which was surprisingly nice!), fried tofu and croquette, and greek food. yumyum. we almost didnt want to try greek food cos we only found 1 place in osaka, and the food on their website looked ok but not to the point of being appetising. but we went in the end – decided to just try everything once – and it was good! it’s called Alla Pace and the website can be found here. we had hummus – which is so so amazingly delicious, and always reminds me of my time on exchange in london – delicious meatballs, pita bread and very well done fish. yum. the cyprus beer and greek beer we ordered were delicious too! it was a very homely place too, and it was comfy sitting there :)
here’s a pic of the bukkake udon, which i thought of taking a picture of only after i’d mixed in the chives and shredded radish:
as mentioned above, we went to the tsurumi ryokuchi expo ‘90 park. it’s all the way near the end of the lime green line in osaka, so it was nice and quiet and spacious out there further from the city centre.
the subway station had this great mosaic mural on the wall, and this is my favourite section of it due to the extremely cute creatures with tulip hats:
these creatures were on the manhole covers in the park too. designed manhole covers in japan is one thing i like about this country, as it simply makes things more interesting. kobe, osaka and nara all have their own special manhole cover designs. i’m not sure about the other places as i havent really noticed though..
first, we went up this observation tower, which gave a good enough view of the surrounding park but was otherwise pretty crap for 200yen:
next was the main reason why i was in the park – the Sakuyakonohana Kan, or this flower museum featuring flowers from different climatic zones.
there were some huge lily pads in that place:
and these have thorns on the underside of the leaves too!
and here are more pictures of the flowers in there:
i think the above are interesting as i dont think i’ve ever seen orchids clustered like that before.
this hibiscus is interesting too, as it seems more like a rose than a hibiscus. i even saw lychees on a tree, but unfortunately the picture came out blur..
i love cacti with flowers! i think they’re just so cute.
a part of the park also contained the exhibits from various countries during the expo 19 years ago. they were a sorry sight however, as many had fallen into disrepair. there were no flowers, many plants had died, fountains were turned off and ponds and other water bodies havent been cleaned in a while and smelled.
the austrian exhibit was one of the few that were still nice:
the statue is of johann strauss, which i think looked rather comical:
the korean exhibit looked nice from the outside:
but unfortunately wasnt too impressive on the inside, and even had pple sleeping in the pavillion:
the irish one was nice, partly because it’s just all rock:
then, we climbed up this hill, only to be greeted by an awesome view of nothing at all:
that’s one thing i definitely dont understand about japan. we encountered the same thing in yokohama too, where there were viewing areas and benches facing out somewhere that was potentially pretty (like the yokohama harbour), only to have some form of vegetation obstructing the view.
finally, we reached the windmill that appears in all advertising for the park. it certainly wasnt as impressive as it was made out to be though:
it was probably meant to look more like this, with a greater variety of flowers:
an interesting part was this mini rice field, where we stood taking pictures of this little boy cos he made a good subject for the backdrop:
we sort of felt like paedophiles though, standing in the shade and taking shots of a kid.. :P
and at the of the park, this sight of greeted us:
young punks who had climbed atop this structure, despite a notice saying that climbing is not allowed:
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