Golden Week Part 2

Asia » Japan
May 3rd 2005

Published: July 27th 2005

Edit Blog Post

duy

Show

Free show. A bit chilly, but music was good.

Tuesday 3 May 2005 - Hello Osaka!
It's been so long, I think I've forgotten what we've done. We checked into Sumo Backpackers, which is the coolest guest house ever! 25 bucks a night, and there's free internet access on their computer, and a tv with dvd, and a 100 inch projection screen and projector, and a kitchen and fridge for use. It was cleaner than Uno House, but still a little dusty. Still, the sheets were all white and stuff. The location is pretty convenient, since it's a 2 minute walk from a station. I say "a station," since its not really on the popular train line, but it's really easy to transfer anyway. So after we checked in, we met up with Ari and Tom and Tom's friend, Yoshi. We walked around Dotombori, which is a famous street. It has lots of restaurants, and I loved the people watching there. There's not really anything special, but if you take pictures of yourself and the random "dolls" (like a guy with a drum set), then your Japanese friends will recognize instantly where you are. I guess it's really popular for the natives here. Don't know why. I wanted to go

Interesting

We didn't eat here, but it was a cool statue.

to the Namba Garden Park too, which was like a rooftop garden. It wasn't that great, but there was a free SHOW at the amphitheatre at the very top. The guys were pretty good. We walked around the place (the garden has mainly a lot of restaurants), and we saw an INTERESTING statue. That night, we had the special Osaka okonomiyaki... I forgot the name, but basically, there are soba noodles fried along with the normal "pancake." It was pretty good, but I'm still not an okonomiyaki fan. Sorry for the crappy update... shoulda done it while my memory was still fresh. I did spend 4900 yen that day though, if you want to have hint of my budget. (Remember, just drop 2 zeroes off the end to convert to dollars).

Wednesday 4 May 2005 - Osaka Castle and Cosmo Square
In the morning, we went to meet up with Ari and Tom in front of Osaka CASTLE. (But we were late, so we met up with them after). The castle looks really nice from the outside (well, the inside is nice too), but that's because it was rebuilt a number of times due to its destruction by fire.

Castle1

Osaka Castle, that is

The moat is really cool. The inside is basically a museum, and it details Hideyoshi's life (read about him - he's pretty cool). The view from the topmost floor is also pretty cool. On one floor, you can dress up with some SAMURAI apparel and take a picture. I don't think it costed too much (I didn't do it though). After the castle, our group split with Ari's. He wanted to go to a big aquarium, but I opted to save some money. We decided to hit up a random station just 2 stops away, called Cosmo Square. It turned out to be pretty nice. It's a mall right by the harbor. The harbor was nothing much to look at, but the mall was pretty nice. I went into the Capcom game place and set my sights on winning some toys. I did pretty well (I think I spent about 1500 yen) trying to get a Disney toy thingy, but there was a stupid claw machine to get a really really weird looking Pooh toy that I couldn't figure out. It was realllly hard, and I spent another 1500 yen failing. The Pooh doll was like a mummy, with red

Castle2

We are so insignificant...

eyes, but the box said something like "I love you." Anyway, we didn't do anything much after. Oh yea, but there was this POKEMON show outside, where there were like 100 little kids! The host played a game where a big card with a pokemon on it was held up, and the kids were all to shout out the pokemon's name -- Gengar! Dang, it was real cute, and cool. After that, we headed home. Showered. I had a pretty nice dinner that night, and ate Camembert cheese for the first time -- it's amazing! I spent 7,550 yen that day.

NOTE: Shoot, I'm missing like 300 megs worth of the GW pictures somehow... so you guys are just going to have to miss out. I want to get Okinawa pictures up already too.

Thursday 5 May 2005 - Nara
So we woke up a little late on this day. Robby had already been to Nara park, so he skipped out. I was a MESS, and slept on the train. I was really tired, for some reason. Nara park is known for its DEER, which roam freely. You can pay 100 yen for some little wafer thingies to

Castle3

Wait wait... there aren't female samurai are there?!

feed the deer, and that's cool for the kids. The TODAIJI temple there is also pretty darn cool. It was Cedric's favorite thing from the trip, thus far. I had some of Nara's famous "tako yaki," which is like a little bread ball with octopus... I didn't dig it too much, and thought there was too much sauce. That night, I forced Cedric to go to a live house event with me at Fandango. Live house is where bands play live music -- it's usually a smallish room with a stage and sound system and bar. It only cost 25 bucks, and it was well worth it. The first performance was some reggae thing, and it was ok, but I wouldn't pay to see reggae. Next was a really really interesting and cool show. The musicians were pretty cool, and the singer was... how do I describe this... the show is unique. When he sings, he acts out the lyrics, so I kinda understood what he was singing about. I wish I coulda gotten the dvd, but we settled for a cd at the end of the show instead. That performance alone was worth going there. Then, the main event

Castle4

Another pic of Osaka Castle

was a rock band called Horo Horo Dori with an electric shamisen. The band members all wore yukata, and they looked pretty cool. The music was pretty cool, and Ced bought a cd and dvd. Good times. This night was 15,100 yen.

Friday 6 May 2005 - Chillin in Osaka
It rained today. We were supposed to go to Kobe, but we were all broke. I guess I'll save it for my next visit, when I'll have more money to splurge on some goooood steak and food. I studied for a bit in the morning, then we headed out to a mall. This mall was super duper freakin cool. There were an unbelievable amount of cute girls! I really wish I coulda taken pictures... We also went on a Fatal Frame 4D amusement ride. It was pretty cool, and made me want to play the game. But yea, I was really happy that day cause of all the eye candy. Too happy. Couldn't wait until summer so the short skirts come out, haha.

Saturday 7 May 2005 - Back to Kyoto
We headed back to Kyoto in the morning, to check into Matsubaya Ryokan. This place cost 5500

Samurai

Um... girls, do these guys turn you on? :)

yen a night, since it wasn't just a hostel. We wanted to try the Japanese inn experience, and this one I read was run by a 5th generation innkeeper. The place was very quaint. It was definitely cleaner than the other ones, and I really liked the balcony they had. There was no view (well, of a building across the street), but it was nice to sit by a window with a coffee table and study a little. I don't have a picture of me studying at the moment, but yes mom, I studied while on vacation too, because you're always nagging. Anyway, we went to the shopping street to walk around some, then called it a night. Not too eventful.

Sunday 8 May 2005 - Goodbye Kansai!
We checked out in the morning and went to put all our stuff in lockers at the station. It took us a while to figure out where to go and stuff, but we did it. We went to ARASHIYAMA Koen that day, to see monkeys. The view was pretty nice, but the climb was pretty tough. The monkeys were stupid creatures that were really greedy. The big ones kept taking all

Pokemon

The kids in the audience amazed me -- they were all so enthusiastic!

the food before the little ones could take it from us. Anyway, I was attacked that day. I really wanted to win the IES photo contest by sitting on a branch alongside a monkey... there are signs posted everywhere that say don't touch the monkeys and don't look them in the eye too... Anyway, the guys told me they thought it wouldn't be a good idea to get near the monkey, so I tested it out by holding a water bottle out to a monkey on a tree. It bared its teeth and ran at me. It took me a second to figure out that it wasn't smiling, but hissing. I shrieked like a little girl and backed off 5 feet, with it running after me. It stopped, and a lot of things ran through my head. Mainly, I was thinking that if it attacked me, I'd have probably killed it defending myself, and I might get in trouble. And I was also thinking that it'd be cool if the monkey called its buddies over and I saw like 30 monkeys fly at me from nowhere, and I kick them down like Neo kicks down all those Agent Smiths in

Mess

I'm sleeping on the train :(

Matrix 3. Haha, that woulda been sweet. I was a little annoyed with the guys for not having the camera ready to take that picture of the monkey running after me though. I was really thinking of taking a picture myself, but I was worried one hand wouldn't be enough to fend off its attacks. Haha, a good scare. After the park, we headed back to explore the train station until our 11pm bus. The station was pretty darn cool, and gigantic. The rooftop had a little garden, and a bar up there with some cute waitresses. I didn't get a drink, but there was a wedding bell up there! And I saw a wedding in progress! The guy had a beautiful white kimono on, and the bride was stunning. I almost cried because I just love weddings -- they're so happy. Plus, I was a bit sad I missed one of my good friend's wedding, Matt Smylie. Say hello to Cassy Smylie. I'm really realy disappointed I couldn't go because I would have been made best man. I've never been honored with such a great thing in my life, and I did cry when I found out. Sigh. I'll

Deer1

Entrance to Nara deer park

try to make it up to him in the future. Anyway, I don't have pics, so I'm moving on to the next update. I'll do a separate entry though, to make things easy. I got back to my dorm around 7am, and ran off to my 9:20 class that morning. I was pretty tired in class, but I made it through.

Golden Week was amazing, and I'm really glad I got to spend time with Cedric and Stephane. I wish I could have met up a few other people, but getting to hang out with Ari was really cool. I'd love to revisit the Kansai area next time I come back to Japan. It's a nice change from the business of Tokyo.

Oh yea, and I forgot to mention that I bought a lot of cookies for souvenirs. I also got some Nara sushi, that I heard were famous... Unfortunately, I assumed they were like beef jerky or dried fish, and preserved... yea, so I wasted 15 bucks on the box of sushi. Almost gave it to my dorm manager too, haha. And I got like 4 boxes of cookies, which all had expiration dates before I got