The Sky Observatory

During our stay in Fukushima, we had some good sight-seeing slots. I've already posted about the Tempozan Giant Wheel(tm) - Largest in the World! - but on the next day, a group of us went to the Sky Observatory. It looks like this from the bottom:



Here's another, a little closer in.



The intervening foliage is from a lovely garden through which we ambled on our way to the Observatory. Here's Ben sitting on a little bridge in the garden:



You enter on the East side (obviously, the are two buildings). Then you take an indoor escalator up two floors, after which you cross over on a moving walkway between the buildings (the horizontal bar on the lower part of the picture). After that, it's up a glass elevator to the 35th floor. Finally, you hop on a glass escalator for the trip up the final five floors. These are the diagonal tubes in the middle of the above picture. Here's what it looks like from inside:





Unfortunately, it was a fairly cloudy day, so it wasn't all that thrilling a view from the top. Still, it was a heckuva lot of fun *getting* there. :) Here's a scale model of the building:



We had a great time jumping into a photo booth and getting all six of us on a picture. Diana has a copy of it, and when I get it I'll post it here.



After that trip began our concerts at the most spectacular halls. My next post will be of our wonderful venues!

Until then, I'll leave with an utterly bizarre advertizement on a wall housing multiple hot drink vending machines. These four pictures represent the bizarre text on the wall (sorta "faux-graffiti"). We found them at the main Osaka JR station while waiting for the bullet train ("Shinkansen"). Weird.






Here's the whole text:

Somtimes a cup of coffee makes you SMILE.
You know why?
It's not because you're just addicted to caffeine, or just thirsty.
Well, the ANSWER is...
you might know by
now much better
than I do. The answer
DOES
exist in the heaRts of
each one of you.
For me?
Mm... why I've got to tell
YOU that here, on a
BIG panel
of a station!!
Remember?
WheN you
had YOUR FIRST
cup of coffee
in your LIFE,
who were there right beside YOU?
You still remember
when you felt like
a gentleman or a lady?
I DO remember!
when I start
drinking my coffee
without
milk & sugar,
yeah - it's just a
couple of days ago!
(^_^)

Uh... yeah.

---Jason