While I could post pictures and videos of all that is great about my trip to Osaka, Japan. I decided to share one of the scariest moments of my life..
For those that don't know Japan has a typhoon season with September being the peak... which is when I was there.
The day started like any other day when you're backpacking. Waking up from a shitty nights sleep in a 10 person dorm but still happy to be in a completely new place, happy to be young and mobile, happy to be unemployed, happy to just wander aimlessly in an exciting city. My friend and I make the last 5 minutes of the 'breakfast' provided by our hostel and scoff down whatever food is left. A quick shower and brush of the teeth and off we went for another day of exploring.
The shy receptionist tries to catch our attention as we are heading out the door. "Maybe Typhoon come" he tried to communicate. Standing in the door way with one foot in the hostel and the other out I look up at the sky and it's not looking good, but "Ok, thank you, Arigato, see you later" we reply.
We make our way to the must see aquarium and spend a couple of hours there. Right next to that is the Tempozan mall. We decide to head in there to escape the growing wind and grab some lunch.
After we eat and walk around the mall we stumble across the entrance/ticket desk to the ferris wheel. No one is in sight. No one is behind the desk and no body is interested to go on this thing today. We toy around with the idea of going on it since there's nothing like that where we are from and any other place we'd have to wait in line for a long time. We keep loitering around and finally a young employee shows up with no English. We signal that we want to ride the wheel but he shakes his head and hands in disapproval. He talks into his walkie talkie. From what I gathered he's asking if the wheel is operating today or not because of the high winds. We wait a minute for a response and he get's the ok and we wait for another 20 minutes before we ride.
We're indoors and clueless to how strong the winds are getting. Our time is up. We enter our Ferris wheel pod. We start rising and there's no going back. Wind and rain lashing our pod but we are just going along for the ride. We are about 90% to the highest point on the ride and our pod is swaying from left to right and we start hearing metal screech and then........the whole ride comes to a halt!! The sound it made when it came to a stop alone made me nervous. It sounded like the whole thing had an internal power failure. Lights and other electrics in the pod, poof, gone!
So there we are, pretty much at the top, not moving and still swaying. 20 minutes pass and it starts dawning in on us that we could be in trouble and here for a very long time. Another 20 minutes and nothing has changed. We try to stay calm but the increasing wind, rain, metal screeching and how grim the weather is looking is making us feel very uneasy. I start sweating profusely, can feel my heart pounding and mouth getting dryer and dryer. Looking around we can see a Heli-Pad one the roof of one of the buildings under us making us realise how high up we really are adding to the intensity of it all. More time passes and I'm unsure whether to try and get in touch with my family or not.
We cross the 50 minute mark and the negative thoughts start to kick in. Is this it? Surely not? What's Japan's Ferris wheel safety record? What's the chance of the pod detaching? I go into worst case scenario mode and picture the whole wheel tipping over, my body getting crushed and my face in the news the next morning. As I start to question how stupid I am for going into this mess we hear three beeps and a tick. At last we are moving again!!!
I'm not even going to try and express how relieved I was. I could finally breath normally again. We make our descent and spot a group of Japanese people in Hi-Vis at the bottom waving at us. The ride is over and they usher us out of the pod with a group of them patting us on the back and asking "You ok!?, you ok!?"
I try to walk but my legs are complete jelly. We sit down to take deep breaths and just digest it all. We hop on the train back to the hostel. We enter and the shy receptionist greets us with "Hope you didn't experience Typhoon"
Now the hard question, which city to travel to next?