The Ultimate Train Layout in an Amazing Race

Ever since we watched Chrissy’s favorite show, The Amazing Race, on the internet last year, Chrissy has wanted to visit Umeda Sky Building. This is one of the landmark buildings in Osaka that the contestants of the Amazing Race visited while they were in Japan. I have resisted only because there was always something else to do. We eventually got to go on Matt’s second to last night in Japan. It proved to be one of the best things that we have seen.

The Umeda Sky Building is two 41 story buildings linked at only the top two floors. Escalators, enclosed in glass, run the last five or six floors up to the top floors between two buildings. The view of the Kansai region from the top is extraordinary. I only regret that Chrissy and I didn’t visit it during one of the drier and less hazy days of winter.

There are few, if any, buildings in Osaka of equal or greater height. Below the tower, the mishmash of streets none of which run at right angles to the others, are filled with traffic. Sounds of the passing trains below are almost the only sound that we could hear from the roof. The Hankyu rolled in from the north, the JR from the south. In the distance toward Osaka Bay, the Hanshin Railway was only visible as it crossed the river bridge. To the north and west, the Shinkansen revealed itself as it left Shin-Osaka station and disappeared again as it traveled westward through Itami and Amagasaki.

The view below was really the ultimate train layout.