christmas in osaka

is pretty cos there’re lots of bright lights! i suppose singapore’s the same too, but perhaps it’s a bit nicer here cos it actually feels like winter!

there’s a german Christmas market every year at the umeda sky building, my favourite place in osaka. there’re always duicy and delicious german sausages. german christmas decorations, sweets and so on. apparently the german food that most of the world is famous with is from south germany – north german food is rather different, and there isnt anything that can be considered a signature dish.

the main attraction of the christmas market is the amazing mulled wine though. i was there for that, hence these are all the pictures i’ve got:

those are the stalls at the bottom of the pic, and below, is the stand where they were offering some photo-taking service.

kobe has their illuminarie event in early december, which is in commemoration of the great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. i went for that last year, but missed Osaka’s Hikari Renaissance event – a light-up of several areas in Nakanoshima, the island on which the City Hall – and my BOE – is located. managed to catch it this year though; i believe it’s purely for christmas.

the first of which is the west side of the island, where the osaka university of art is located, as well as one of the art museums.

these are made out of PET bottles and were kinda cool, even though i didnt think they were the most attractive exhibit

there was a sand exhibit too

that little penguin is so adorable

so cute!!

this is the art museum. it looked really nice from afar, but it wasnt as nice seeing it up close. i didnt take this picture, but it makes the museum more attractive than it actually was:

this is city hall, where i work every monday and on days when i have no school. this was the central section and was much busier, because it’s more accessible. i’d never seen so many people at city hall ever!

the colours also change to yellow, and blue.

midosuji avenue is the main street that runs through central osaka city. it connects the centres of umeda and namba/shinsaibashi, and city hall is along it.

right outside my BOE:

more snowmen

this kid was really cute; i saw him jump up on the polar bear. this was put up by tennoji zoo, and i think the only reason why it was there is because polar bears = white = snow = christmas.

this was by a french lighting company, and i believe they might have been the same people who did lighting work for the Singapore National Museum about 2 years ago. they made this building very pretty :)

next to the central section was the east section, where little light-dolls were displayed among the rose garden. i’m not sure why they didnt light up the roses too; i really wanted to see the roses and they would have made everything even prettier.

i like this time of year :) merry christmas everyone!