April 23

The next morning, we went out to Hirakata Park, which is a local amusement park just outside of Osaka. The good thing was that it was a little sprinkly outside, so we were pretty much the only people in the park. The downside was that the roller coasters weren't too exciting... fortunately there was a bunch of other really random stuff there too.


There were these funny guys all over the park... we couldn't figure out who they were supposed to be, but they were pretty rad:



Strangely enough, they had 3 different zoo animals there kind of intermixed with the rides. These lesser pandas were really cute!


They also had this super cute rip off of Disneyland's teacups.


True to most places in Japan that we'd been, they had at least 2 different arcades with quite unique video games. This one was an arm wrestling game:


This was a very... um... interesting ride. It never seemed to have anyone on it, and the guy operating the ride would stand atop is ride tower looking forlornedly out across the park, hoping someone would come and ride his ride. Seeing that there was no line, Erik and I tried it out... we found out the reason that no one was riding it. You have to PEDAL. That's right, YOU propel the coaster. It was low on the thrill scale, and high on the discomfort scale, but it was certainly unique... this little girl seemed to be getting a kick out of it, but I think that little boy is doing all the pedaling for her


They had a ferris wheel there as well, and although I don't like ferris wheels (especially after my previous experience), Erik convinced me to go so that he could get some good pictures. I was rewarded with this guy:


And Erik was rewarded with a pretty nice view:


Finally, the had a little section called "Hug Hug Town" where you could go in and pet all sorts of different animals, including dogs and cats! Now, I was on serious Selphie withdrawl by this point, and desperately wanted to cuddle some animals. Sadly, Erik didn't want to go in because it was stinky. I told him it was just the smell of farm (they had llamas and ducks and stuff like that in there too), but he still wouldn't let me go in *sob*.

We spent the evening at a place called "Spa World." It is basically an onsen turned amusment park. It's about 7 floors filled with different spas, relaxation and beauty services, and restauarants. The onsens were themed: the womens baths were Asian themed and had baths decorated in the style of "Islam", Japan, Persia, Bali, as well as several onsen with special additives with medicinal effects. The mens onsen were European: Roman, Mediterranean, Greek, Finnish, Italian, Spanish and "Atlantis." I obviously couldn't take any pictures within the onsen itself, but the website has some pretty cool pictures of the onsen:

Let me tell you, they need NEED to have something like this in the US. A few hours of soaking and I felt like I could do ANYTHING. After a nap.