EXPLORING JAPAN’S ICONIC : OSAKA CASTLE

“Revisited this charming OSAKA city with new experience, as I have started to pay more attention on my feeling from what, how and why the surrounding capture my attention and interest, because I am not just a guest, I am also an attraction designer!

I DESIGN TO CREATE IMMERSIVE GUEST EXPERIENCE~ ”

By: FangShe Lim

September 08, 2020

Osaka City, it was my 2nd time traveling in this charming and amazing city since 3 years ago. I was a solo traveler then, but this time I was accompanied with my colleagues who mostly are the first time visiting Osaka, made me become the planner for this whole trip. Because of the short schedule, I tried to pick some of my favorites destination from my previous experience for the plan, and Osaka Castle is one of them.

However, because I have just joined this industry a year ago, I found that how lucky I am be able to enjoy 2 types of journey experience both as a tourist and an attraction designer. I found that I have started to pay attention to those interesting details that a normal tourist wouldn’t found.




REASONS WHY I THINK IT’S WORTH A VISIT

Osaka Castle is a very precious and historical valuable asset to Osaka-ians, and the very famous landmarks to tourists. It is now a historical museum and resident’s daily life activities park. The giant was surrounded with moats as the castle main’s defenses and located at the centre on a raised rock foundation. The Osaka Castle Garden is also a pleasant and relaxing walk for the visitors, which has different appearance in the four seasons. I was amazed by the great restoration level of this old and massive castle, also the breath-taking view from the top level view deck.

The castle’s interior layout is a square plan with vertical access at the centre of it. The visitors will be leaded to the lift to upper floors once entering the castle. After the enjoyable eye’s candy city view on the observation deck, you will then walk down the castle by stairs. Each floor of the castle is telling the history of the castle with unique content.





THE HIGHLIGHT OF GOING INSIDE THE CASTLE

You can tell that the whole visiting journey is smooth and enjoyable, even though it’s a historical museum, which seems boring to some of the people, yet surprisingly it doesn’t bored you at all. Besides the amazing artifacts displaying in the museum, they also implement modern technology such as Pepper Ghost effect to recreate historical scenes to catch the eyes of visitors which achieve the edutainment (educational & entertainment) purpose. We could still enjoy the whole journey even though we are not familiar with Japanese’s history.

Moreover, I would say the important thing is, they have a very well designated guest circulation. While walking down from the top part of castle, the visitor will be following the leading arrow circulating each floor and then walk to the lower level. All of the museum displays are placed closely to the wall while visitor walking at the inner side, and they will be able to enjoy the historical display at the same time effectively on their way walking down to the exit. Plus, with leading arrows, you won’t be disturbed with crossing visitor who might have different direction from you.

It is both a great experience to the visitors and effectively way for the operator to maximize the capacity, especially for a narrow space like this. It makes Osaka Castle a very lively and visitor’s most favorites destination in Osaka. I have been to many museum from different countries and cities, and some of them are like a maze for the visitors which will consume us a lot of times to finish the whole journey, and time is weighted as gold for a traveler. For sure I will choose not to enter them again in my next visit.

I remember I enjoy the visit 3 years ago, and I didn’t figure out the reason. Until now, I understand the importance of having a good visiting flow that could bring back the visitors. I will definitely visit it again for the third time, when the sakura blooms.