After two days of work during Golden Week, I took a night bus from Shinjuku station to Osaka on Wednesday night. I used the Willer express bus service. It was much cheaper than the train. Basically, I paid 13,900 yen for my tickets down to Osaka and back. My bus left Tokyo around 10pm and I arrived in Osaka around 8 am. I was beat when I arrived, so I just sat in a café, slumped over the counter for over an hour, and waited for Ariel to arrive.
When she came to Osaka station we hugged and took a bit of time to catch up before we walked over to the Umeda Sky Building. I placed my duffle bag in a coin locker so that I didn’t have to lug it around everywhere. Even though Ariel has been in the Osaka area since January, she told me that this was her first time really taking the time to sightsee around Osaka.
The Umeda Sky building was just a 10 minute walk from Osaka station. It took Ariel and I awhile to figure out which way we needed to go to go up the tower. The Umeda Sky building is actually two towers, connected at the top by a courtyard and garden. The building itself is pretty, and we got a cool view from the top.
Bottom view of Umeda Sky Building
After that, Ariel and I went to get lunch. I insisted that we get okonomiyaki or takoyaki if we could, since I was told those were the two things I needed to eat in Osaka. We found an okonomiyaki place where we ordered mixed seafood okonomiyaki, and had to cook it ourselves. This was my first time cooking it myself, and it turned out to be some of the best okonomiyaki I’ve had.
Ariel cooking up her okonomiyaki
After lunch, we went to Osaka-jo castle. There were large crowds when we walked from the train station to the castle. It turns out that Osakajo hall was nearby, and the majority of the crowd were girls waiting for a Kpop concert. Ariel and I tried to rush to the Castle, because it started to sprinkle, and we wanted to be inside before it started pouring. We made it just in time to. It was five o-clock, and they were going to close the castle at six.
Osaka-jo castle was beautiful, but the inside was converted into a modern museum. There wasn’t much set up in the original layout, but the view from the 8th floor was pretty cool.
Close-up view of Osaka-jo castle
After leaving Osaka-jo, Ariel and I were both pretty beat, so I decided to get my duffle back from the coin locker and head to my hotel. My hotel wasn’t that far away, but when we exited the station, I couldn’t figure out where exactly it was, and I didn’t feel like taking the time to explore on foot to find it, so we got a taxi. When we told the cab driver which hotel to go to, he gave us a funny look, and kept telling us “chikai chikai” which is slang for “short.” We told him to just go anyway. He was right though, the hotel wasn’t even a whole block away from Shin-Osaka station. It’s just as well, it was raining, and neither Ariel or I wanted to walk much. I especially didn’t want to continue carrying all of my stuff.
I got a single room at the ShinOsaka Washington Plaza Hotel. It was around $93 a night, which is a pretty good deal considering it was Golden Week, and I pretty much got the reservations last minute. I could have just gone to a hostel, but I wanted to make sure I was close to a train station, and in a safe area.
The inside of my hotel room. Not too bad actually.
After settling into my room, Ariel and I wondered what to do for dinner. We looked in the information book in my hotel room to see if it listed any restaurants nearby, but didn’t see anything. Then we decided to just go back to the train station, since the large stations in Japan are just filled with restaurants and food courts anyway. We found a small ramen shop down in the bottom floor of Shin Osaka station, and then later got some Haagen-Daazs ice cream for dessert at a conbini. Since there weren’t any benches inside the station, we just sat near the railings of a large staircase to eat out ice cream. Basically, you just do a lot of eating in Osaka.
After finishing the ice cream, Ariel and I parted ways after deciding that we would go to Nara the next day. In hindsight, we should have had a more definite plan of meeting up the next day.
Basically, I found out how to get to the JR Nara station from where I was staying in Osaka. Ariel said she’d meet me at Nara, but then ended up leaving her house later than expected, then went to the wrong station. We finally met at the Kintetsu-Nara station, the one that’s closest to the park, at around 12:30. I had already eaten lunch during the time I was waiting for Ariel, but she hadn’t eaten yet. Instead of getting lunch at a restaurant, she just grabbed something from a conbini, ate as we walked around Nara park.
We didn’t have to walk very far into the park before we saw deer. We bought some “deer crackers” to feed them, but since they had been fed almost all day, they weren’t very interested. However, as we walked further into the park and the crowds thinned out, we found some deer who were hungry. They ate some of my deer crackers, but then they started to swarm Ariel. When she ran out of crackers, we thought they were going to start chewing on her bag of food, but they were smart enough to just move on past us when they realized we ran out of food.
Ariel getting swarmed by deer.
After feeding the deer, we headed towards Todaiji temple, which is one of the biggest temples in Nara park. It also has one of the biggest Buddha statues inside. I was blown away when I saw it, because it is so large and ornate.
The giant Buddha statue inside Todaiji temple.
There was also delicious street food vendors right outside of the temple, and that’s where I finally got my taste of fresh Osaka takoyaki. I’ve had takoyaki before at street fairs in Saitama and Tokyo, but this was the best takoyaki I’ve had in Japan so far! It was really hard to slow down, and keep from burning my tongue.
Takoyaki!
The third day, instead of sightseeing, I met with Ariel and some of her friends from Kansai Gaidai. Ariel meets with a Japanese Sign Language club at Kansai Gaidai about once a week, so her friend from this club was having us meet with his deaf friends. We went to the house of Shiori, a young, deaf, Japanese woman. I was the only one who showed up who didn’t know any JSL, but Shiori understood enough American Sign Language when I signed my name.
Shiori showed us photograph albums, with hundreds of pictures her grandfather had taken. Most of them were from before World War 2! It was interesting to se these photographs of old Japanese towns, and old Japanese fashions. Many of the photos still showed women and men wearing kimono as everyday clothing. It also had photos of school children, and from looking at those photos, I can tell you that, unless a Japanese high school has blazers, the uniforms haven’t really changed that much.
Even though the photos were very old, they were in very good condition, and were very clear and detailed. They looked like professional quality. Shiori pointed out the photos that were of her grandmother, her father, and aunt. We asked Shiori if her grandfather just did photography as a hobby, or if he was a professional photographer for a newspaper. She told us that she didn’t know. Apparently no one in her family knew that her grandfather had taken all of these photos until after he had died, and they found the albums after going through his possessions.
It was very interesting to have conversations with a mix of English, Japanese, and JSL. We had paper and pens to write and draw things out to make things easier to understand. I learned a little bit of JSL myself for the time that I spent there. The two I remember the most are the signs for Sugoi! and Hyogo or Soldier.
The Japanese people who were there would ask me and Ariel questions about what we thought of Japan, and they asked me if I noticed any big difference between the Kansai and Kanto region during my stay in Osaka. I think I can safely say that I think the people in the Kansai region are much more laid back and friendly than the people around the Tokyo area. Not that people in Tokyo aren’t friendly, but the people in Tokyo are definitely more stiff in their interactions with foreigners, whereas the people in Osaka just take it in stride.
Shiori, Yamato, and everyone there, were very interested to learn that I was a “Navy Brat” born in Japan. They asked me how many countries I’ve been to, what I thought about them compared to Japan. Ariel said she had fun learning about me too, because she had never heard many of my stories from Europe before. I was actually surprised by that, because I thought I had peppered in stories about living in Italy during all four years of high school. I guess I sometimes forget which stories I tell to which people.
We left Shiori’s house around 4 o’clock, and went back to the Hirakata area, and just walked around and talked. Ariel showed me a Japanese craft store. It was amazing. It was like a Japanese version of Michael’s, but a lot of the craft accessories were much cuter, and there was much better quality origami paper. I also got a roll of washi paper for only 400 yen! This is when Ariel and I realized why we’re such good friends, because we can each blow more than 3,000 yen just at a craft store, have a good time, and not judge each other about it. Ariel said she hasn’t been doing as much crafting here in Japan as she does at home, because she needs to save her money for just going around Japan, but some of her friends call her “Obaachan” or “grandmother” because of her crafting habits.
Afterwards, I decided we get dinner at a Mos Burger, since Ariel said she hadn’t eaten there yet. Mos Burger isn’t necessarily the best thing in the world, but it’s something that gaijin suggest to other gaijin. Basically, it’s like McDonald’s if it were more delicious, and had a little more class. It has a fast food feel, but they serve you on dishes, and give you actual glasses for your drinks. They were also serving “naan tacos” so we decided to try those after finishing our burgers. It looked like a weird fusion food that only the Japanese could think of, but it luckily it turned out to be delicious!
Mos Burger Naan Tacos
After dinner, Ariel and I found a purikura machine, and got some purikura pictures taken. Even though we found a big purikura booth, we had to stand very far away from the camera and squat down just to get into the camera frame. I guess we’re both just ridiculously tall by Japanese standards.
Then we went to karaoke. I decided we go for two hours. Ariel wasn’t so sure at first, but when we realized that it was taking us awhile to figure out the machine to choose the songs we wanted, it turned out to be worth it to pay for two hours. Also, we got on a roll singing all of the songs we loved from high school. Ariel said she had awesome time at karaoke with me, because it was the first time she wasn’t judged for choosing “non genki” songs. We definitely had the same, alternative, pacific northwest taste in music. It was nostalgic to sing the songs we loved from high school, especially the ones by Evanesence, AFI, and Fall Out Boy.
After Karaoke, we just walked around a bit, and Ariel showed me the path she takes to get to school. We then found a park close by to the station, and just sat down and talked before I had to catch my last train to get back to my hotel. It was good to catch up. I invited Ariel to sleep on the floor in my apartment if she ever makes it up to Tokyo, and Ariel filled me in on what some people from Anacortes were doing, since she keeps in better contact with them than I do.
A little after 11pm, I realized it was time for me to go, so we took one last photo before we split ways.
Together in Japan!
I ended making it back to my hotel just before the train lines all closed down, and I was up early enough to make it back to the Umeda Sky Building and catch my bus back to Tokyo. We hit crazy weather on the ride up to Tokyo. the bus made a few rest stops, and it started to hail during one of them. Good thing it didn’t last too long. The bus had to stay at the stop longer than scheduled, since not everyone was able to rush out from the restrooms and make it to the bus without getting hit. Then the skies cleared up for awhile, before it started thundering. Apparently the crazy weather all stemmed from a tornado in Chiba prefecture, which I didn’t know about until I reached Tokyo. Yet despite the crazy weather and traffic, the bus reached Shinjuku station ahead of schedule. Good thing too, since being on a cramped, Japanese tour bus was really hurting my legs and back.
It felt like my Golden Week vacation was a little too short, but I can’t wait for Ariel to come up and visit Tokyo in June!
Jet Set Victoria 