I’ve been feeling blue; well, how about you?

It doesn’t seem like it based on my previous post, but I did make an itinerary for Osaka. Shops and exhibitions, places to eat, even specific spots I wanted to photograph—I just ended up managing to cross them all off in the first three days. I’d even penciled in day trips to Kyoto and Kishi Station and considered a day at Universal Studios just to ride Jaws again, but again, I honestly fumbled my planning somewhat and it ended up a little too cold for me to even fathom them.

But I set out for and sought after what I could, and I really had quite the perfect few days.  

My first order of business was another pilgrimage. A nondescript little tunnel next to an automated parking lot in a chic little neighborhood where university students gather in Americana-themed bars blasting Michael Jackson and whimsical cafes. It looks like nothing unless you recognize it from j-hope’s Hope on the Street docuseries, in which he spent his downtime in Osaka (where he’d gone for an award show) doing a few popping performances in various locations, one of which was this very spot. 

It was a fun little excursion, even if I spent most of it trying not to get lost in the massive underground mall in Umeda. 

Visiting a shooting location I’d only seen on my screen is always a little fantastic, but it was only made more surreal when two days later, a gigantic underground pipe rose 30 feet from the ground in Umeda. I saw a video on Twitter and immediately checked my gallery for a photo I’d taken, which depicted the exact same area. What were the odds? Roads were closed and it looked pretty scary to witness in person, so I was glad I made this my priority.   

Also: here I go with my Sophie Tajan crates again. 

The next day I walked through Minamihorie to visit two shops I’d learned about when I went looking for places to buy prints and zines. It was such a nice day. I turned a corner from the street of my hotel and the storefronts began morphing into something more and more offbeat. I love how accessible it was and how there was so much to see.

At Art House I went crazy picking out all the postcards I wanted, and I also got two zines. There was also a lot of original art, from drawings and paintings to handmade crafts like wood carvings, clay pieces, tiny plushies, and miniatures. The woman running the store was very nice, and one of the artists sitting at a table (I wasn’t sure if there was an event going on) gave me a chocolate cookie. Definitely a place I would’ve loved to become a regular at, and it reminds me of Cubao X the way it was in my memories.

It was quite a longish and intimidating walk to the second shop, but I found it calming. For the first time on any of the trips I’ve been on, I finally put my wool gloves to use. 

I passed this little community store selling vegetables in partnership with farmers, and I found it so wonderful that people of all ages were really stopping by and carefully choosing their veggies. 

It was nice to meander around the side streets of Osaka on a quiet weekday afternoon while everyone was busy at school or work. I passed two community parks on my way. There was a pretty large group of young women beautifully made up and all dressed up in kimonos, smiling and laughing as they held hands on the sidewalk.  

Book of Days is a pretty small room on the second floor of a walk-up, the shelves and tables lined with countless books and independent publishing on art and photography. I got a zine and a book and wistfully browsed the heavier one-of-a-kind publications that I couldn’t take with me.

I’d downloaded Uber and was considering taking one to my next stop, but when I went to check how to get there from where I was, I saw that the nearest subway station was five minutes away, and from there it was only one stop. 

 

When I got to Higobashi Station, I found it so cool, the way it was lined with these comfy seats so passengers could rest while they waited. Silly, but I thought I wouldn’t mind spending some time just in the station reading while it bustled around me. There were trains on both tracks, but by the time I thought to take a picture, they were already pulling away. 

I had gone to the Nakanoshima Kosetsu Museum to view their current exhibit “Journey to Masterpieces: Torajiro’s Dream, from the collection of the Ohara Museum of Art.” I felt so lucky to be able to catch it, especially when I learned of the works I would get to see, curated before his passing by Western-style painter Torajiro Kojima, whose own paintings were also on display.

When I got there I didn’t realize the true scope of what I would be in the presence of. It was overwhelming and magical. All these painters I only ever thought I would read about or see on a screen: El Greco, Raffaëlli, Pissarro, Cézanne, Degas, Matisse, Picasso. Name drops so unbelievable I sound like a character on a sitcom being written to sound cultured and smart. I didn’t know that “starstruck” could ever apply to inanimate objects, but that’s exactly what I was. 

The piece that really gripped me was this lithograph version of Edvard Munch’s Madonna.

And then there was Monet’s Water Lilies, seen on the poster for the exhibition and the only piece I really knew to expect. I was so emotional, there’s just no other way to describe it. Like with most of the paintings, I stepped as close as I could and examined every detail, trying to grasp the fact that these artists, these human beings, had once created every stroke of the brush with their own hands. They jumped off the canvas, their textures so real and so clear to me for the very first time that I could almost feel them at my fingertips.

I put on the piano version of “Fake Plastic Trees” from the Westworld soundtrack and just lost myself in that room until I had to go.

I bought postcards of my favorite paintings at the gift shop. (No prints of the Munch, sadly.) Also: I love this shot so much. 

I took a short walk by the river before finally letting myself have that Uber ride back to my hotel.