Osaka: Trip 2

november 10, 2005

my second trip to osaka (pronounced "OH-saka") consisted of seeing the church of light by tadao ando. apparently he's a national hero over here and has done A LOT of buildings. some of them cool, some of them, well, just alright. after seeing the "alright" buildings i start to wonder, how and why did he build this? but then it hits me, you don't produce great works out of thin air, they are the result of going through a process, producing iteration after iteration and learning different things from each one. i guess that's what architecture school is all about....

anyways the church of light is really a spectacular place. you look at books and see pictures, but i guess you aren't really prepared for actually seeing the real thing. i walked into the church and my breath was taken away. i don't think my heart dropped, but it was just so cool. we also saw this pencil building, just a tall and skinny building by waro kishi. i'm still amazed how the japanese just build...

view of the alter

loafing around in osaka across from the waro kishi buidling

after wards, we walked around and saw the sites of osaka. one of the things that we saw were "love hotels." these are basically spaces were people go and "make love" or do whatever, probably b/c doing stuff like that at home would be kinda weird especially if your rooms are just separated by shoji screens and are made of thin sheets of rice. at these places you can rent rooms for the night or by the hour! the only way that you usually can tell that it's a love hotel by it's neoclassical columns in the front, (which are pretty ugly, this building looks pretty cool if they didn't add those classical columns in). so basically you enter, pay, go to one of the themed rooms, do your business and then exit through a private exit, so nobody sees you. i was actually looking to see if anybody walked out of it, but i wasn't so lucky. anyways, we were walking by the river and i think i saw a dead fish. kinda gross, and kinda random...

the arched doorway, and tiling at the top messed up this buidling (all of this stuff was added after the building was finished and the owner changed...)


the love hotel

having more fun with minami