Osaka

I'm in the hotel lobby waiting for our load of laundry to finish. It's going to be super nice to finally have some clean clothes. We've been here about a week and a half now and our clothes are really beginning to reek. I feel like a filthy stupid lumbering oaf a lot of the time here. Japan is designed for short small people and has a lot of weird little steps so I am always banging my head on doorways or tripping on the various doorway entries. I have caused a lot of Japanese people to giggle at my clumsiness or my cultural misunderstandings. If I'm not twisting my ankles over some artfully arranged rocks in a garden I am wandering around with my mouth open in total confusion. Eh well. I have to give the Japanese credit for being incredibly patient with us.

Yesterday we took the Shinkansen to Osaka. It was about a 15 minute ride- unbelievably fast. Compared to Tokyo and Kyoto, Osaka is rather drab appearance wise. It is not as fiercely extreme or culturally rich as the aforementioned cities, but the people there seem a bit more down to earth, youthful, and gaijin friendly. I noticed they all jaywalk there too. In Kyoto and Tokyo people always silently queue up and wait at intersections, no matter if there is traffic or not.

We got around the city by subway. For once I knew what was going on! It was a refreshing feeling after always feeling perplexed by the various transit systems Tokyo and Kyoto. The charts on the wall were very easy to figure out since they used a lot of Roman numerals and color coding. We found the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium very easily and bought presale reserve tickets. The major matches didn't go on until about 3 so we had the day to explore the city.

We took a subway to the Kaiyukan Aquarium. It was huge and very impressive. I particularly liked the jellyfish section. What fascinating creatures! The aquarium was situated in an area that seemed to be targeted towards families with small children. We wandered around the shopping arcade and found a store that was full of ninja paraphernalia. Michael played a game there where you had to toss throwing stars at targets for prizes. He should be posting a video of it soon.

Then it was time for the sumo competition. This particular tourney stretches for two weeks and has just begun, so it wasn't hard to get tickets nor was the arena full. Our seats were pretty far up but we could still see pretty well. It was really interesting to watch. There's a lot of ritual to the spectacle- salt throwing, ring sweeping, flags, singing, spiritually cleansing, appeasing the gods, stomping. Each match lasts a max of 4 minutes. The first 3 minutes and 30 seconds seem to be devoted to psyching each other out and the last 30 to actual wrestling (if you can call it that.) Two mountains of flesh pushing and pulling at each other for about 10 seconds before someone gets pushed off or out of the small ring.

After that we wandered around the downtown Osaka district of Namba. It was a lot like Tokyo in that it was full of neon and stores. Osaka seems to really come alive at night. We found a karaoke room building but couldn't figure out how to work the karaoke rooms since everything was in Japanese. At least we got pictures. We ate dinner at a conveyor belt sushi bar. I loved it. You sit down and watch a conveyor belt go by with plate after plate of mysterious sushi. Pick whatever looks good to you, grab it and eat it. I couldn't figure out what most of it was so I stuck to the tuna, grilled eel, sweet egg, and some sort of leafy greens. I wish we had conveyor belt food places at home!

After that we saw a band called "The Amateur" playing near the subway station entrance. Apparently Osaka is famous for having bands set up in a random places and play live. I wish we had more time in Osaka since it seems like a fun place.

Today I think we're going to rent bikes again and check out central Kyoto. I haven't done any souvenir shopping yet and our trip is almost over. I don't want this vacation to end! I love Japan...we're having so much fun. It's going to be such a culture shock to be back after this.