Facing north-west:
Facing south-east:
These pictures were taken from the top of the Umeda Sky Building, a twin 40-storey skyscraper near one of Osaka's two major business districts. Unlike at Tokyo's Skytree building, it is possible to go outside and take pictures in the open air. There was a distinctly couply theme to proceedings. Near the top of the escalator can be found a big pink cardboard plaque with a heart cut out of it, available for young lovers to have their pictures taken through (although I also saw a middle-aged Latin American tourist posing with it).
Out on the roof there is a small corner, where couples can attach heart-shaped padlocks with their names etched into them. I was there at dusk. The scene reminded me of an old Roger Sanchez video.
Osaka was, on first impressions at least, like Tokyo in that it was an enormous, dazzling beast of a city with as many different districts as there are colours on the average neon-infested street. I struggled to get under its surface, and spent hours wandering lost under ring road overpasses and through brightly lit shopping centres and narrow arcades.
