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Published: December 13th 2007
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Good-day faithful blog readers, good-day,
First and foremost I'd like to offer an apology for the lack of blog activity over the past few weeks. The communist regime in China didn't let us actually access our website the whole time we were there (along with several other key websites like Wikipedia, BBC News etc...) and we've been pretty busy in Thailand the past few days. Up until now that is, now you have my undivided attention and I'll try to follow Ross' sterling effort with the first blog entry with one of my own.
I believe Ross left you with a taster that we we're on our way out for his 24th Birthday in Osaka, Japan. I'll get to that in a mo but first I'd like to paint you a little picture of the place we were staying. We affectionately named it Bumtown, and for good reason ('Bum' being the colloquial American term for a homeless fellow). There were LOADS of homeless people around, but unlike some of the other places we've been these were a veritable 'upper class' of bums. They rarely begged and they never bothered or hassled us while we ambled around. There was absolutely
no intimidation or the like at all, which is probably why the hobos were the best thing about Bumtown! Good old bums, you've gotta love 'em. Anyway, the hotels around Bumtown weren't the greatest (as you'd expect) but at least they were clean on the inside if not on the exterior.
On to Ross's birthday then. We set out from Bumtown to our usual Osaka haunt of Shinsaibashi by way of the efficient Japanese subway. We wandered around a few bars until we found one that served free unshelled peanuts and the allure of the de-shelling novelty proved too much. It was strange to see people just eating the nuts and then just tossing the shells all over the floor (which was absolutely covered); it was like drinking in a barn! We had a few drinks there and made a move to a bar we'd never been to before. They had these electronic dart boards set up, 200 yen a time bought you a game for two people (501, 301, round the clock, etc.) and the board automatically totaled up the scores for you. We've been thinking about setting these up in the pubs back home when we're back
- we'd make a mint! We also met an absolute legend called Steve in this bar. He was in his fifties, came form Hong Kong and was one of the most awesome people we've met to date. One of the problems we had in Japan was the language barrier but Steve sorted us out there, he spoke really good English and Japanese so our beer buying was made all the easier! We settled ourselves down and drank with Steve and some of the locals until the bar kicked us out at closing time (about 4 o'clock I seem to remember through the haze). We then proceeded to get incredibly lost (the subway being closed some 4 hours beforehand) and didn't wander through our hotel reception until about two hours later. Not good as we had to check out at 12.... All in all a very pleasant evening though not without it's casualties, Ross' camera decided it'd had enough and decided to break two weeks into out tour. Lucklly we still had mine so we ended up taking about twice as many photos on that to compensate.
We also managed to do some activities that didn't involve drinking in Osaka
too. For a special treat for Ross' birthday we took a trip to Osaka Aquarium. It was pretty impressive; some of the animals in there were crazy! Others were just massive, like the famous Whale Shark that inhabited the biggest tank in the building. We also took a day trip over to Kyoto, which is a bit more rural than Osaka with some great scenery and traditional buildings. Whilst there we were lucky enough to catch a rare glimpse of some Geishas as we walked around. Apparently there's only about 300 in the whole of Japan so we took a quick snap to prove our achievement.
The time came to leave Osaka on the 16th of November and we left Bumtown with a doleful wave - we were gonna miss those tramps. Onwards and upwards though, we had to get the two day ferry across to Shanghai.
To be quite honest I wasn't really looking forward to the prospect of a 2 day ferry trip, my main concerns were that the food and drink would be really expensive and that there'd be very little to do. Boy was I wrong! The food was really nice, traditional Japanese and
Chinese food and (most importantly) the Beers were under a pound, which was a massive result! We met some really great fellow mariners too, mostly westerners, who we had a rather large drinking session with on the first night. Yet more Karaoke featured (Oasis again) as well as drinking games using a deck of playing cards and lots and lots of Sake. The second day was mostly spent in bed sleeping off the drink, which I was perfectly happy with as we'd pretty much exhausted the ship's entertainment ruling the roost the night before. We docked in Shanghai the following day after cruising through the busy traffic on the River Huangpu. Ross' next entry will detail our first Chinese adventures but for now I bid you adieu.
Best Wishes,
Sean
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