Osaka + teamLab Botanical Garden … Mind-blowing!
Hi everyone. Welcome back to part two of our Osaka adventures. Uh if you’re just tuning in for the first time, we are the no-fly zone nomads. We are a couple of Gen X retired Canadians who are slow traveling the world without stepping foot into an airport. In our last video, uh we cut it a bit short. We uh it was Osaka was a lot and we did a lot of amazing things and one of them was visiting a team lab. So we wanted to have a separate video for that. Um so we didn’t want to make that video too too long. So you’re the viewer in the comments if you are okay with longer form videos or you like to keep it short and sweet, please let us know. Uh I aired on the side of making the last one a bit shorter so we have some more time to talk about the team lab uh uh experience on this video. So let me know if that works for you. And uh Andrea, tell us a bit about introduce the second half of this video on team lab. So this is about our last day in Osaka. We didn’t do much during the day cuz we knew we had this event that we had planned to do in the evening. So, we went by metro to the botanical gardens and team lab uh which is an audiovisisual um presentation company uh has an installation there and I had seen information about it and I thought it looked really interesting so we decided to go and do that. Um it’s in a beautiful park uh that you have to walk a bit to get to team lab or to the team lab installation but it’s a beautiful walk as well. So, it’s totally worth visiting. You buy your tickets online. Um, and like everything in Japan, it’s super organized. Once you get there, they tell you what to do, what not to do. And we loved it. When you first walk in, it’s uh um there’s this long sort of open road with these gorgeously lit trees down it. There’s some shots. You’ll see the full moon again that night. What? Full moon. It’s perfect. Beautiful. Uh, and I’ll forget about it later, but there’s this place is about the visuals. The audio in this experience is that every there’s speakers everywhere. You can’t see them. They’re but each tree is making a different sound or has a different instrument from the orchestra playing through it. It is abs is constantly changing as you’re walking anywhere in this environment. So you walk through this row of trees and then you can sort of see this lovely lake with some lights off in the distance that you’ll be getting to. And then you just walk through this forest that is all it’s just it’s on paper. It’s colored uplit trees with LED lights. That’s all it is. And it’s so mindblowingly well done and constantly changing and you just you most attractions you you start rushing through them to see them all. This is the one that you just slow right down. There is an app by the way uh um we did use it that you can uh that that takes you on a guided tour. It gives you all the explanation of what’s happening here. Um visual audio that’s enough for me. I’ll just I’ll see and I’ll experience it. So, we walk through this forest area, which then brings you into this other area where it’s these colored orbs. Uh, and you see these, you’ll see these photos. They look like jelly beans. They’re about 3 feet tall. They’re constantly changing colors. Two parts of it. as you as you touch the the in they tell you actually in all the signs please don’t abuse but you know it’s okay to touch the the balloons and the the the some of the structures because as you touch them they either make different sounds or they change in colors. Uh it’s very interesting and you start seeing these orbs and they’re kind of cool and the uplet trees and you start come around quarters and you realize that there’s a couple hundred of these along the path and out into the woods that ones you can’t even get to but you can still see and they’re all in concert with their music and they’re changing of colors. It is just it’s really hard to describe. I’ve never taken psychedelics but I imagine this is pretty close to what it is. Yeah, it was very cool. Like it was they went so far into the woods. Like I mean you you would be seeing these things right in front of you and they were probably about 3 ft tall and then you’d see them way off in the distance and and then suddenly they would like almost like a wave all go all go red and then they would just start randomly changing color. But they were they were beautiful. Like they were these just sort of amoeba shaped things and some of them almost the way they’d been created almost had like a glitter on the inside. So they would, some of them would sparkle and it was just absolutely beautiful. And then you walked past that and you were in this other part of it was a bit of a clearing in the woods. There were still trees around. They were basically I don’t know some of them were like balloons. They were like vinyl eggshaped balloons that were lit up. Exercise balls that were between three andu tall. Yeah. Again, you’ll be seeing lots of the videos. walk in between them and you can push on them and you can bang on them and and the lights change and the noises change. Like it was Yeah, it was just fun. Like I I think I commented to Keith at one point, you’d have to be dead inside to not think this was awesome. Like it’s just Yeah, it’s it’s visually amazing and uh the sound was amazing and you’re just sort of Yeah, it’s like being a kid. you just transported into this other peaceful yet exhilarating to look at world of it was beautiful like I just loved it the whole thing and there’s a bunch of other as you continue on through the woods there’s other installations uh the next one won’t go through them all the next one sort of blew our minds I was coming around and it’s the um uh it’s these long ribbons again for our North American uh uh viewers here as you go by a used car lot or something like that. You had those inflatable or a Canadian tire, attention getters where it’s inflatable and it’s that long tube with the the guy with the arms and actually looks a little bit like me in some ways. Um, you know, and and he just keeps inflating and deflating and all those things. So now take one of those, make it about 150 ft tall, uh about 3 feet around diameter at the base, put colors to it, have about 40 of them, and put music to it. Mhm. And it was just this this again, you stop and you just you stand there with your jaw open looking up and it’s it’s so cool. It’s just a tube of plastic. It’s a tube of plastic with a fan and some lights and it turns into this beautiful art installation that uh and thankfully at this uh uh um at this I can only imagine what this garden looks like in the daytime. It’s it’s absolutely stunning. But some smart person thought, you know what, this place would be pretty rocking at night. Uh there’s benches everywhere. So you just sit and you just enjoy again the stars and the full moon and these light you just and there’s a lake there. So there was part of the installation was actually within the lake. So when you’re on the other side of the lake it looks like floating lanterns but then when you get to it it’s just really more sort of colored orbs that are out in the lake and just beautiful. At the start of this thing, it was like, you know, it takes the average person maybe an hour to two hour to go through it and blah blah. And so again, you know, you’re thinking walking and you’re 57 years old, so when’s you where are the bathrooms and how long is this going to take? Uh like 2 and 1/2 hours later, we’re still sort of rocking through this place and it’s just time disappears. It’s uh again, hopefully the the videos and the shots that you’re seeing now do it justice. We’re going to try and do some other team lab things like there’s a there’s I think there might be one in Kyoto and there are two in Tokyo. Yeah, we’re we’re we’re hooked up. This is And there’s one in Singapore. This is an audiovisisual like uh uh feast feast. It’s like Yeah. Disneyland for the senses. Anyway, so that was that night. Uh we were very exhausted into that. We took we uh like smart grown-ups, we took the train all the way back to the hotel. We were too late to have any free drinks, which was fine. We were drunk on lights and sound. Um and then the next morning, we got up. We It was our going to be our travel day. off to our next uh uh our next port of call. Uh so we got our bags packed up. We headed out um to the main trade station, the uh we didn’t take the bullet train to Kobe. We’re going to get into that in our next video. Uh but just a pro tip as you’re leaving Osaka, when you go to the the regional train station, get there bit early. There’s a there’s a big mall there. There’s an amazing food court. Uh I don’t even know. Was it a mall? I don’t know what it was. It was like a giant 10story building of food court. It was amazing. So anyway, when you when you leave, it’s not like you got to zip to the train station and get to your next destination cuz at your next destination, you might not be able to check in yet, right? So, um, but take advantage of the city. Go, it’s not hard. You take you roll your luggage there and there are places you can hang out to in and around the train stations. Um, and even walking everywhere with our luggage. Like, not that we did a lot of walking with our luggage, but we walked probably 10 minutes or 15 minutes to that station. And the sidewalks here are are spectacular. They’re flat. Uh, the crossings all give you plenty of time. They’re all clearly marked, so walking with your luggage isn’t even a struggle here. No. So, we did roll our luggage to the station, and this time we didn’t take the bullet train. We took the local uh um transit, the train uh between cities. Um took a little bit longer, but super inexpensive and and still very very comfortable. Um and we then went to the second leg of this journey in Coobe, which is where the next video is going to pick up, which you’ll hopefully see shortly. Um thanks again for watching this video. Uh again, let us know in the comments if if having shorter forms is something that uh you would prefer. Um, and to keep up with us on the dailies, we’re posting on Facebook and Instagram as regularly as we can. So, that’s where you’re going to see what we’re happening in a minute. Um, anything else that I’ve missed, Andrea? Bye. Bye. Bye. See you in the next one.
Part 2 of our 4 Days In Osaka video.
We spent the last night at teamLab Botanical Gardens and wanted to share our thoughts and experiences.
Up next in our video tour of Japan is Kobe, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Tokyo, and Kawasaki … stay tuned!!!
We are retired GenX Canadians who are setting off to slow-travel the world without setting foot in an airport. Join us on our journey and share in our adventure!
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1 Comment
I like the 15 minute podcasts.