It’s time for Chuseok 추석 in Korea, which is often described as Korean Thanksgiving. It occurs on the full moon (usually) in September and is a major national holiday. To give you an idea, Koreans work the most hours per capita than any developed country in the world. Saturdays are routinely considered normal working days of the week. Chuseok is 3 full days off of work so people can go home to visit their families. There is feasting, jesa 재사 (paying respect to ancestors) and other festivities where the center of the action occurs at the oldest son’s home. Shannon and I used this holiday to cobble together a 10 day trip to Japan. First stop: Osaka

We walked around the Tennoji area and grab some takoyaki (fried octopus snacks)

We walked over to the Dotombori area for some sushi and sake

Shannon getting comfy in her kimono in the hotel

At night we went back to Dotombori to check out the action

There’s lots of bars, clubs, restaurants and good people watching

We ate some okonomiyaki (I would describe it as a dinner pancake)

The next day we awoke to discover a typhoon was hitting the area and there would be massive amounts of rain and wind! We checked out the main castle in Osaka (built by Hideyoshi – who invaded Korea in the 1590’s).

Inside on the various floor levels was a nice museum.

We happened to be in town for the Kishiwada Danjiri festival. Danjiri are these huge floats (weighing over 3000 kg) that are hauled through the streets by ropes and people pulling them.

As they approach certain corners, they run and pull the floats as hard as they can – sometimes dangerous and sometimes deadly.

These guys are in the float playing music

Here’s some other pics from around town

Beer vending machine – The grey box (right center) checks your eye to determine if you are old enough

Look at all that sake in the grocery store

Shannon in front of a boy-host poster (I call them emo-hosts)