My Japan Trip - Visiting Osaka Castle

Hello there! It's my 14th post in the new World Map Pin community! Trying to do the tag as well! If you haven't read about them, please take a look at this link.

As background, I have done a few overseas trips last year, as some of my friends here would know, and I have been wanting to share some of the interesting places that I have visited. However, life has been busy and I have been procrastinating penning these entries and recently, I revisited this target of mine and finally broke the inertia!

One of my memorable trips in 2023 was to Tokyo, Japan, and during that trip, I did quite a few day trips to nearby cities and towns. This included trips to Karuizawa, Atami, Nikko, Kamakura, of course, Tokyo itself.

In 2024, which was earlier this year, I was back at Japan once more. This time, it was to Osaka, Japan. After a trip to the surrouding places like Arashiyama Bamboo Forest, Kyoto, Nara, and Kobe, we are back at Osaka itself!

As always, to everyone who is reading, thanks for all the positive comments of my previous post! It really amazed me how the Hive community and Worldmappin community were so encouraging with my travel sharings. And it meant a lot to me - whether it's in the form of comments, reblogs, or upvotes. Thanks for all the engagement and appreciation!

Within the Osaka city itself, there are quite a few attractions and one of my favourite ones is Osaka Castle! Because it's something that I don't get to see in many countries. This was actually the entrance at one of the gates as we made our way to the castle.

Going through the gate, we managed to see the castle some distance away (can you spot it?) as we were still at the outer area of the compound.

Just like what I remembered about castles, there was a moat too! As most of you would know, the moat acts as a protection for the castle against incoming intruders.

Finally, we reached the bridge to cross the moat and the castle started to look bigger. :)

Some interesting sights from the bridge. Even the pathway was generally quite flat, it was actually ascending as you would realised by now, we looked so much higher on the bridge compared to the outer ring of the moat.

It's pretty amazing and therapeutic that amidst the bustling city, they had a green space where there's a lot of greenery, as well as calming waters of the moat, in this attraction.

And we were reaching!

There you have it! The full Osaka castle from far! After snapping the photos, we ventured a little closer to get some close up photos too!

This was the final shot of the Osaka Castle. It looked like gathering ground or meeting point as many tourists and students were waiting around. There was also the ticket counter where one could buy tickets to go inside the castle. The queue was extremely long so we gave it a miss.

So that's my trip to Osaka Castle. It was pretty convenient to get to and I thought it was interesting to see how castles in Japan look like, and having the moat was so realistic too! While I am not a fan of history, seeing these historical buildings alone is an eye opener and it's amazing how they managed to build such stuff in the past.

Have you been to Osaka or Osaka Castle? Let me know in the comments if you have been here too, and what are your thoughts about this place?

Finally, thanks for reading my post in the community under World Map Pin! More to come I promise! :)

P.S. I have also tried to document my posts in one table so it's easy to reference too!