Osaka Temmangu Shrine (大阪天満宮)

Osaka Temmangu Shrine (大阪天満宮) http://tenjinsan.com/

From Shitennō-ji, we moved towards Tennoji station to get to Osaka Temangu Shrine via the Tanimachi line to Minamimorimachi station (Exit 4B).

Osaka Temmangu Shrine is the most famous Tenjin shrine in Japan. Sugawara no Michizane, a famous 10th century scholar and warrior is enshrined there as the principal deity, as the god of scholarship and fine arts.

Saw this outside the shrine and thought that it resembles our chinese "fan tai sui" chart.

Here you can see many people wishing to get into various university. I guess it must because of its popularity, the shrine's ema and charms are more expensive compared to other shrines. A closer look into other people's ema, you can see that they have written their name together with the name of the university that they would like to enter. Well, I did visit the temple in March and April is when the new school term starts, so I guess many people are wishing that they would have pass the entrance exam to the university of their choice.

This might be a good place to visit for those who are gonna sit for their exams soon or wishing to get acceptance into a certain university.

Just a few steps away from the shrine is the Tenjinbashi-suji shopping street (http://www.tenjin123.com/) which is the longest in Japan (2.6km). There we walked past this okonomiyaki shop and decided to try their mix seafood okonomiyaki. Super good~!!!

You can see that at different stretches along the shopping arcade, the decorative items were different.

The Osaka Museum of Housing and Living is also located within the shopping district.

Walked past this pretty flower pot on the way to the station, wonder what's the tall one is called.

On the return trip, we had to change subway at Umeda station. Walked past Hankyu Umeda and decided to just buy dinner from their department store. The whole lower ground level is filled with food stalls selling various food.......we were spoilt for choice.

Outside the department store, spring must be their theme because there were flowers everywhere.

In the end we bought 2 small boxes of premium salad from a stall that specialises in salad at a premium price of almost 350yen for 100g. Then we got also bought a pretty bento and potato and seafood croquettes.

The salads were good as expected due to their expensive price.

Wakame salada

Ebi salada.....forgot to put flash for this pic

The bento was yummy too~

The croquettes were a let down because we had left them in the cold air for too long before enjoying them. Hence, they have turned cold, hard and no longer crunchy. Otherwise the taste is pretty good.

Met a nice person on the very first day. I asked the uncle for directions and he brought us all the way to the destination while talking to us. Asking us where are we from and telling us about the shopping district. The most 'kam dong' part is that, the place that we wanted to go to is not even along his way. Really nice~ :D