Hiroshi Abe (Osaka III)

.
On my last day in Osaka, Teru and I dediced to go to the Floating Garden Observatory on top of the Umeda Sky Building 梅田スカイビル , a modern and sleek looking arch, almost like La Defense in Paris. The point is that there is no garden. One should apparently look out over Osaka and think of Osaka as a garden (if I understood the Kanji correctly). It offers a stunning 360 degree view over Osaka.

There is an exhibition about a new movie by Bruno Ganz called baruto no gakuen バルトの楽園, literally translated from the German "Musikgarten der Bärte" or in English "music garden of the beards". There was a POW for german soldiers during WW I in Japan and they created a small orchestra. The main Japanese character Iko is played by Hiroshi Abe ... a very good looking Japanese guy. He's 42, not married so there is a lot of speculation about him.
What do you think... straight or gay...?

In the Museum of Modern Art in Osaka, which is an underground museum with just an architectural piece sticking out, there is apart from the Picassos and Anselm Kiefers also a lot of Japanese modern art and the one person who in my view really stands out is Yasumasu Morimura. He inserts his own face into photographic copies of the paintings of fundamental icons of Western art such as the Mona Lisa and Vincent van Gogh's self portrait where he's just cut off his ear.

Like everything else all good things come to an end so after a late lunch I went back to Nagasaki by Shinkansen and regular express. There is an enormous tunnel connecting Honshu and Kyushu and the train takes about 10 minutes to get through it.
Can only say what a great town. Will definitely go again.

p.s.
Last year during a religious anthropology lecture by Margarita Winkel at Leiden University we talked about a little temple in the Hanyaku Station in Osaka and how it was preserved despite the railway company wanting to destroy it. And I actually saw it. It's tiny and now it is used mainly by commuters since the locals have moved away to the outskirts of town.