LETS GO TO OSAKA! I go into the city of Osaka every weekend. I'll clarify this a bit for people who might not know-- although I live in the prefecture of Osaka, I don't live in the city, I live in a suburb. So, to get to Osaka, I take a train for about 30 minutes or so. I then switch to the subway and ride a few stops to get to an area called "Umeda". Here's some pictures!
This is the famous HEP building. It has two parts, one is the HEP FIVE, the other is the HEP NAVIO. It's famous because, as you can see, it has a huge red ferris wheel on top of the building. The buidling itself is monumental. I had to do a backbend just to get a picture of it. The bad thing about trying to take pictures in the deep city is that you can't get far enough away from building to take a nice pictures, because the buildings are too close together. I haven't ridden the wheel yet, but I plan to!
Mom wrote in a comment earlier that Japan looked empty compared to how she imagined it. My pictures so far have been pretty deceptive. The area I live in is pretty 'empty', but if you get into a city area, it's definitely not the case. Here's a crosswalk in Umeda. I was standing on an elevated crosswalk, so I was able to get a good shot.
On that elevated walkway, there are musicians performing and people watching. The typical things you see near commuter areas, anywhere in the world.
Nighttime! Here's the entrance to one of the covered bar areas. I'm not sure exactly how to explain these areas.. they're still considered streets and everything, but there's a roof. It's nice because you can walk around in these areas without an umbrella open, which gets really cumbersome in tight crowds. Some of the big streets here are so wide that pedestrians get stuck in the middle during crossing times, so they have to wait for the next green light there.
Blurry shot inside the covered bar area. Random people I don't know. Sorry for the blur, but it's hard to hold a camera steady while walking around. The bars seem to cater to any sort of interest you could possibly have, with plenty of small restaurant stalls packed close together for late night eating.
In Japan, you always eat bread or rice, pretty much. It's common for people to snack on some sort of tasty bread with juice. Here's an example of such tasty bread! It's a super-moist green tea bread. It's delicious. It's strange-- before living in Japan, I didn't particularly like the bitter taste of green tea, but now I do. You basically learn to love it, because people drink it like water here.
Pretty shot of my campus! The weather here, so far, has been really dreary. Mostly overcast days, frequent rain and some snow... not very pretty! So luckily, I had my camera with me on a rare sunny day and got this picture of the main administrative building.
Back in my lonely town! On my way to the supermarket, "Sanko", I walk along a looong pedestrian street. It's nice to not worry about cars. The pedestrian street runs along a river. Here's the cute neighborhood I pass when I go shopping!
SO I WENT ON AN ADVENTURE. One afternoon, I was sitting around feeling bored, when my friend Heidi said, "I'm bored!" So, we decided to go on an adventure to the station, to explore.
We ended up in a strange enclosed market-- it looked like a street market, except that it was completely inside of a building. You could buy anything you wanted here, from fine alcohols to home-pickled vegetables. Heidi and I ended up buying some incredibly delicious Mochi desserts. Mochi is made from pounded rice, and turns into a semi-gelatinous substance that is sweetened and sticky. It's so delicious! Usually it's stuffed with something-- often red bean, a sweet bean that's mashed into a thick paste. The mochi we ate was so fresh and flavorful! I'll post some mochi pictures soon.
We found a KFC near the station. So far the american chains I've seen here are KFC and McDonalds, both seeming pretty popular. I snapped a picture with THE COLONEL, of course. (Notice how I managed to idiotically button my coat wrong.) In that yellow bag, I have about 7 comic books, all for sale for 100 yen-- about 1 dollar each. Never even been read! Comics here get marked down to RIDICULOUS sale prices, it's awesome. I can read the comics, more or less, but it takes a lot of effort.
Heidi and I found an Italian restaurant! We'd both been craving pizza, so it was an omen. We had to try Japanese pictures, and take idiotic pictures of eachother.
Yum! This pizza had garlic, onions, black olives, and ANCHOVIES on it! It was so good. It's lucky for me that I like thin pizza. If you like thick pizza, JAPAN IS NOT THE PLACE FOR YOU. At this restaurant I had another fun "foreigner experience". There were no other foreigners in this restaurant, which isn't that strange for US, but seemed to be strange for some of the other customers. A little girl stood on her chair to look over her privacy barrier (that low wall they put between booths so people can have some privacy while they eat), and stared at me for about an hour. It was pretty fun.
UH OH SOMEBODY WENT OVERBOARD AT THE CAPSULE MACHINES! In Japan, there are these magical machines. They're like those crappy gumball machines near grocery stores in the US, where you can get a STICKY HAND, except that they have all sorts of awesome things. Mostly the things for sale are on straps-- to be connected to cellphones or backpacks, or whatever. But some are just small toys. In my selection, I have cute decorative straps, TINY WII-MOTES that project a picture of mario if you press one of the buttons. There's of course 5 different projections, so the idea is that you collect them all. Those red teardrop-shaped items are "sound drops". If you press the big button, you hear a sound effect or character's voice. These are popular with nerds, so I got a few. Haha! Also-- if you look carefully you can see a toy that looks like a toilet with a blue poop on it. The Japanese like cartoonish poop, because the word for it "unchi" is similar for the word for luck--"unki". So, it's a superstitious and silly thing. MORE ON THAT BELOW THE NEXT IMAGE!
Another example of cute-poop-love. This is a memopad with different designs of poop on the front, and writing space on the back. It's a bit hard to wrap your head around the concept of CUTE POOP at first, but eventually it starts to seem normal.
Okay, how was that? I tried to include some bizarre things for the people who've been bugging me about that, as well as some cool city stuff. BLAH BLAH! I'm tired from writing this out.
If you wanna know about anything in particular or want me to write more about something in particular, let me know. I just don't know what to really say when I have to address so many different people at once and end up rambling stupidly.
EDIT: I forgot to include the MINI JAPANESE LESSON! Well, here we go, let's try to think of something good this time..
One of the most useful phrases I've learned since I've been in Japan is the very simple "betsu betsu". What it basically means is "separately." When you eat a restaurant, the check will almost always be on one check-- when you go to the register, if you don't say anything, they'll assume that it's just one ticket, regardless of how many people are in the group. So when you go to the register with the ticket, you must say "Betsu betsu". If you say just that, they'll understand what you mean. But if you know a bit more Japanese, it's probably better to say "Betsu betsu de, onegai shimasu" which translates roughly to "Separately, please." Cashiers are happy to split the check up so it's not a problem to ask for this. The service industry in Japan, actually, is excellent. I should make a note to write more about it next time.
