April 3rd:
The dorm room is pretty minimalistic, and a little bit run down. I am not complaining though. It's not like I will be spending too much time in here anyways. I spent the morning taking care of my insurance situation at the post office. The folks working there were very quick, and taught me a little bit of Kansai-ben, the dialect of Japanese spoken here in Osaka. Instead of Arigatou, I learned to say Ookini for "thank you". I spend the rest of the afternoon exploring the local area, including this park.
We were blessed with beautiful weather.
The Japanese tradition of 花見"Hanami" (Flower watch) is when you enjoy a picnic with some sake under the blooming sakura tree.
Happy to be here this week. It is the one time of year that the sakura is in full bloom.
We even stopped at this local Toys R Us. Such a colorful place..
Later at that night, we headed to the heart of Osaka, Shinsaibashi! The first thing we saw coming out of the train station was this crazy rock climbing wall built into the side of a building.
Epic.
Osaka's celebrated Glico man. My friend Emilio and I posing.
We were walking down a street like this...
when the night got crazy. We were feeling hungry so we stopped by this small たこ焼き Takoyaki stand (fried pancake batter with octopus inside). As a side note, Osaka is very famous for its Takoyaki and I can see why. It is becoming my one my favorite Japanese dishes. Anyways, so we were checking out the menu of this stand, when it started to rain. There were already 4 middle-aged salarymen under the stand's limited canopy, but when we struck up conversation with them they drunkenly insisted on buying us beers and Takoyaki, Osaka's specialty. "三十分間ビールはただやわ”Sanjuupunkan beer wa tada yawa. The beer is free for the next thirty minutes. We had a great time teaching each other our respective languages and laughing at our cultural differences. If there is one thing they seemed to be entertained by, it was trying to pronounce English words. "Water." I would enunciate. "Wah-tah!"they would say. After several tries I would just tell them they sounded great, and we all yelled "乾杯！"Kanpai! Cheers! That's the beauty in communication, you don't need to speak the same language to do it (Sorry, a little bit cheesy there).
The night didn't end there though. Next they insisted on going to Karaoke together, another staple to the Japanese culture. We agreed to go for an hour over some more drinks. I never expected to hear the voices I heard coming from them. It was hilarious, and spectacular at the same time. Here are some pictures and videos:
Had to read those characters pretty quickly...
Striking a pose.
I got a little lost... He stole the show.
Here are next season's American Idol contestants. Straight out of Osaka, Japan:
I say video 3 takes the cake. Their harmonies were just too good. After an hour of taking turns singing together, a couple more drinks, and a broken glass, we decided to head out. On the way out, they unsuccessfully tried to set us up with three Japanese girls coming into the Karaoke bar. I felt bad, but it was flattering to hear them rave about us. We left, grabbed some dinner since we didn't get the chance to actually eat much over the drinks, and caught the train home.
Just when we thought the night was over, however, we came across this guy in the train.
Passed out guy lying on the floor.
That's right, a drunken salaryman passed out on the train, mind you a very crowded train. I offered to help pick him up and set him on the chair, but the folks around me seemed to just laugh at the idea. We decided to just let him be. What an introduction to Osaka. So much personality. おおきに大阪市for the great first impression. It is going to be a great time here.
No comments:
Post a Comment