Osaka II

Osaka was definitely an interesting place.

We took an overnight bus from Shinjuku Station in Tokyo to Osaka Station. It was actually rather unpleasant. If anybody out there ever decides to do that, don't use the Orion company. The seats are crowded, like regular tour buses, and they turn the heat way up. I suppose they were trying to get us to sleep, but it was really rather uncomfortable. My travel companion mentioned once that she felt like she was being baked.

Well, we arrived at Osaka Station at about 7:00 AM and tried to find the JR Line. We became EXPERTS at train stations during this trip. In Osaka there is a train that basically makes a big circle through the city. So we had arrived at 7:00 AM and we couldn't check into the youth hostel until 10. And we were sooo tired. We had gotten on the train and when our stop came up we decided to just sit on the train. We figured, "hey, this train goes in a circle, let's just sit here for a couple of hours." Sadly enough the train was more relaxing than the night bus we took. Eventually we had to get off, though, because the train was ending its circuit. So we got on another one and rode on it until we got hungry.

After that we FINALLY got off at our stop and could not find our youth hostel because the directions we were given were worthless. Thankfully we had exited the station at the correct exit, though. We went into a police box to ask for directions, but nobody was there...it was kind of unsettling. We waited awhile but nobody came, so we left and decided to just look around this strip of hotels we could see on the other side of the tracks. It turns out that it was, indeed, over there. But unfortunately it was kind of a seedy part of town. Lots of homeless people were lounging around. Thankfully none of them decided to talk to us, probably because they thought we couldn't speak Japanese. Sometimes being a foreigner here has it's advantages. The crazy people usually don't try to talk to you.

Well, we still had some time to kill, so we back-tracked to this convenience store ("konbini" in Japanese, just a shortened form on "convenience") and looked around for breakfast. Most restaurants here only serve Japanese breakfasts that usually consist of salad, miso soup and other assorted Japanese foods. We wanted something slightly familiar so we chose konbini food, since they usually sell bread and yogurt and whatnot. We got our breakfast and headed back over to the hostel. When we got there it was still 5 minutes to 10, but we decided to just go ahead and try then.

We checked in, and went up to our rooms. The man behind the desk actually mixed up our names. So for four days I was Jennifer, and my companion was Stephanie. We really didn't think it was worth it to correct him, especially since he was so nice. Well, the rooms as you can see from my first Osaka entry, were quite small. But we had them to ourselves so it was ok. The bathrooms, however, were a completely different story.

Every floor (5 floors) had community bathrooms. Unfortunately, they were not separated by gender. So in every one of these bathrooms there were at least 4 urinals. I can't tell you how many times I walked in on somebody using one of those. It was quite embarrassing. And in the entire building there was only 1 western toilet. I think I almost died right then. The rest of the toilets were the Japanese style (basically a porcelain hole in the ground). And then there was only one shower room for the whole building. And the shower room was only open from 6:00-10:00 and 16:00-22:00. And if you wanted to take a shower and you were a girl you had to let the front desk know so they could stick a sign up on the door that said "Ladies are showering, please wait a moment."

And our rooms had no air conditioning. Thankfully, though they provided us with bed warmers which are the loveliest things in the world. And we had a TV as well, so at least we could check the weather. We stayed at this hostel for 4 nights. We made day trips to Kyoto and Nara during that time and we left at around 6:00 AM on the morning of the 13th which proved to be a horrific day, but more on that later.

Our first day in Osaka we spent at a Plum Festival at the Tenmangu shrine and at the Osaka Museum of Housing and Living.

The Plum Festival was lovely. Lots of white and pink plum trees in bloom all around as you can see in the photos I've posted. However, we came to this building where people were going inside and we stood in front of it for a bit wondering what was going on inside. Then this random stranger came up to us and gave us two tickets that were apparently for getting inside the building we were standing in front of. She said that she didn't want to see it, so she was giving them to us. We were quite grateful and so after she left we immediately went into the building. Inside they had a special exhibition of plum blossoms. All of the pictures that you see of blossoms inside are from that exhibition. And not only did they have blossoms, they had ancient artwork of Japanese people appreciating plum blossoms. It was quite interesting.

And then we went to the museum. Usually, I'm not too keen on museums, but this one had seemed pretty interesting. Inside of the museum they had built a real-size reproduction of an Osaka neighborhood from the 1830s. (I have a video that I took when we walked through the neighborhood, but it's rather large, so I'll post it next time.) And then they also had a bunch of miniature neighborhoods in another room from the 20th century.

Afterwards we walked around and window-shopped and then went to a really small restaurant near our hostel for dinner. Since we were in Osaka we wanted to eat what Osaka is famous for, okonomiyaki, which is known as the Japanese pancake. But it's not like American pancakes, that's for sure. They put cabbage in the batter...and then they fry it with all sorts of sea food or meat. (We both had shrimp) and then they put tons of sauces and fish flakes on top. Usually you cook it yourself. But we went into a really small restaurant. We sort of felt like intruders because the owner (a lady) seemed to be very familiar her customers...all three of them. They were having conversations that only friends could have, which is probably what they were. But she made our okonomiyaki for us and we watched some sumo on TV.

Then we went back to the hostel, since we hadn't slept well on the bus the previous night, and went to sleep.

To be continued...