Recent Bits; Osaka

About a week ago or so I finished my first Haruki Murakami novel, Kafka on the Shore, which was a going-away/birthday present from Jacky (readers of my Germany blog will remember her as my sidekick-in-arms). In Osaka I was fortunate enough to pick up a free copy of James Clavell's Shogun from the hostel we stayed at. I have spent increasingly more time each night reading that instead of doing useful things, like writing down experiences or studying Japanese.

Hylton raves about Shogun the Miniseries, of which I've only seen about one unimpressive hour. As with many stories, I'm liking the book better than the miniseries blah blah blah...


Hey everybody, the side pony-tail is back!

Yeah! I see it all the time on hip-looking Japanese middle schoolers and wonder why the US hasn't picked up on the latest international craze. Or maybe it has and I just haven't figured it out? So retro!

The past week-ish has been more sub-par than normal, at least as far as work is concerned. Surprisingly I think this has been due in part to a lot of my classes being canceled due to mid-term testing. I thought this would be a good thing, but just having one or two classes a day to teach makes me feel really rusty when I do have to go in there and act peppy. And with the extra time to sit around and scour the Internet for useful lessons comes also the mind space to stir up theories about how certain teachers dislike me. I know it is stupid, because the ones that do abhor my presence probably aren't showing it, but the kind of caged idleness that office environment provides just makes me feel neurotic after awhile. Contributing to the weird feelings has likely been my attempt to ween myself off of the office coffee, which I have found to be a significant mood improver while at work. I'm not sure that last one is worth it, so I'll just make sure there are stores of milk cartons left over after lunch before I imbibe.

Because if I don't talk about it now it'll just get pushed back into some dark recess: weekend before last in Osaka was fun! Hylton's friend Atsushi turned out to be the most laid back Japanese person I've met, which was really nice for just kind of hanging around the city. I wrote the following after I got back:

To get to Osaka we took a train from Naruto to Chiba, a train from Chiba to Tokyo, and finally a train from Tokyo to Osaka. All in all the trip took some five or six hours, but some of that was because we missed our first train by one minute. The last leg of our journey, the train from Tokyo to Osaka, was on the shinkansen, the train I explained in an earlier entry to be Japan's famous bullet train. Hylton seemed really wowed by the experience, but I just kept trying to remember if Germany's ICE (Inter-City Express) trains went that fast or not. Anyhow, it only took two and a half hours to go from the Kanto plain to Kansai, two regions apparently very different from one another. Osaka-jin (Osakans) are known to enjoy good food and good humor, and are generally more laid back. The "culture" of Japan began in Kansai, where the Yamato clan had its stronghold. Without going into a bunch of history that I might or might not be confusing with something else, Atsushi, our Osaka-jin friend, told us that Osaka and Tokyo are very different due in part to their different histories. Tokyo grew up as a militaristic region, whereas Osaka was more culturally based (martial arts, tea ceremony, etc). Anyhow, the modern day observation that Tokyoites are more uptight and busy than Osakans looks to be somewhat true. Of course, I was in Osaka for three days, so take my observations with as much salt as you want.

I liked Osaka. After getting there we found out (we still haven:t bought a guide book) that Osaka as a city isn't much to look at. It was practically bombed flat in World War II, and like any big city has lots of tall buildings which you might or might not find some beauty in. I've been to big cities lately, and it rained the last day we were there anyway, so appearances didn't matter to me as much as they might other times. My biggest impression of Osaka was of its people. Osakans are "supposed to be" some of the friendliest Japanese, and for what my weekend was worth I'd say that's true.

Kondo Atsushi (you will remember that Japanese people write their last name first, which makes for lots of classroom hilarity when I am passing back papers) is a man Hylton befriended in Australia. Though they didn't know each other all that well, they communicated about meeting up in Japan, and since Atsushi is back in Osaka for the month, we took this opportunity to see a new place and meet up with someone who knows it. He speaks English very well (with just the slightest hint of an Australian accent) and was really accommodating and open.

After arriving at Shin-Osaka (New Osaka, the shinkansen station), we braved the Osaka Underground to Shinsaibashi, where we met Atsushi. He led the way to a mid-day concert that Hylton and I wanted to check out. Admission was kind of expensive, and as it turned out the band we had gone to see had just finished when we arrived. But Hylton got to talk with the band anyhow, and they have him some free CD's, and we watched the other two bands, which were both a kind of jazzy cool (Jacky, you would have dug it). I can't really tell a regular musician from a talented one, but Hylton has been consistently floored by the ability of musician's here. In fact, we are heading to Tokyo this Friday night to see American Short Hair play in Shibuya. I'll detail on that after the fact.

We had to leave the show a little early in order to meet up with Atsushi's friends for dinner at a Korean barbecue restaurant. Hylton and I ate at one of these places in Mito, during our training, with some of our fellow ALTs. It was a little rough then because these are a cook-your-own-food sort of deal, but this time we had not only three Japanese but also two Koreans to wield the power. My overall impression of the multiple hour long dining experience was that the restaurant was way, way too cold, but it is fun hanging out with some 'locals,' even if the language barrier was still up to my chin. The food was pretty good too.

After dinner Atsushi nobly helped us find our hostel. Finding places is such an experience here because of the lack of road signs and the strange lay-outs of cities. The hostel was just this tiny little place in Nakatsu in what appeared to be an old Japanese house, run by one woman. There was a downstairs common room and bathroom/shower, and then a tiny, steep staircase leading up (which reminded me of the staircase in Andi's apartment in Germany, "holla!") to one large dorm room. That night was my first night sleeping in "a real bed" since our training in Mito, so I was able to sleep through the snoring that apparently Hylton was not.

On Sunday we got up and explored some of the back streets by our hostel, checking out the selection of breakfast breads at not one but two convenience stores, Sunkus and Lawson's. I mention convenience stores now because I haven't before: they are everywhere. Everywhere everywhere everywhere. On Sunday night we found out with a shock that our beloved, omnipotent and all-knowing 7-Elevens (the very same as those in the US) are not so omnipresent in Kansai as they are in Kanto [Kansai is basically the area comprised of Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe, and Kanto is where I live, ish]. This presented a problem because it is the only place from which we can extract money until we have bank accounts here... which is a whole other story.

Anyhow. After breakfast we met up with Atsushi, who has just finished competing in a judo competition at Osako Castle. How Japanese is that. Osako-jo (Osako Castle) is the setting for some of the action in Shogun, so that has been kind of fun, especially since I picked the book up there. Therefore you can rest assured it is a big deal. Unfortunately, the most recent version of the building was, depending on the parts you choose to point out, rebuilt in the 1930's and 1960's, so the building doesn't look very old. I think Atsushi was also telling us that they recently just cleaned the outside of the castle, so now it looks even newer than before. That said, it was my first Japanese castle and was still quite beautiful.

Atsushi was kind enough to take us around the large grounds of the castle. As we neared the entrance bridge that takes one across the first of the two moats, we heard a tremendous racket and from a distance saw the plaza doused in red and black. As we neared it became clear: Ahh, a rockabiliy get-down. Of course, what could be more natural? Hoards of Japanese 20-somethings, the girls poodle-skirted and the boys leathered and slicked back, dancing frantically to what I assume to be American songs from the 1950's that were only popular here. To the credit of the Japanese, I think Atsushi was just as perplexed as us, but honestly I almost wanted to get in there and get down myself.

Once we tore ourselves away from a sight I don't imagine I'll soon see again, Atsushi took us up to the judo-training area, where we watched for about ten minutes as teenage boys threw each other around. Then we walked up to the castle (but not inside) and coagulated with the hordes of tourists, who surprisingly were mostly from this country. I saw some yellow koi in the pond, and with Osaka skyline at our backs, Atsushi called our bank helpline to try to to figure out our latest bureaucratic mess. After that we hit a cheap (thick wheat noodles in soup/broth) place, and agreed to regroup in Umeda in an hour. We were going to do some shopping (or at least, I was, while the boys talked amongst themselves), but the night took a decidedly different route, which was undoubtedly all for the better.

We hadn't been walking outside of the subway station long before a worried-looking girl approached me. Through the broken English I figured she was trying to sell me something or otherwise lure me into some trap. But as she spoke I remembered that I am in Japan, and that really isn't a very Japanese way to go about things. Finally I realized she was trying to ask us if we would be interested in a language exchange. In other words, we would help her with English, and she would help us with Japanese. But the fact that we don't live anywhere near Osaka killed the bird before it could take flight. I felt bad, because that kind of thing would be nice, not just to get the help but also to make a new friend. Just as she was started to take her leave, Atsushi showed up, and they exchanged some words (her looking quite relieved to be able to be speaking her native language), and before I knew it Atsushi had invited our new friend to come along with us. Megumi works as a chef at a restaurant right near the subway stop we had just emerged from, is about my age, and is planning on going to Australia within the year to study English and travel. She ended up hanging out with us the remainder of the evening, and was a welcome addition to our small party. We spent a good hour running around trying to first find a kinkan shop (apparently the place to buy cheaper rail tickets), and then to find a convenience store with an ATM that would accept our international cards. This is most definitely a cash kind of country--- only really large stores accept credit cards, and even then I wouldn't really count on it. In the end Hylton had to borrow Atsushi's bike, and I sat on the back as he weaved through foot traffic to a 7-Eleven a bit down the road. Once we finally got the cash for our train tickets home, the kinkan shop was closed. But our spirits were still high, so we set out in search of Osaka's most famous culinary delights: okonomiyaki and takoyaki !!!

Okonomiyaki is a pan-fried batter cake cooked with various vegetables and or meat. I had this for the first time in Chiba. It was a strange conflagration of egg, crab, bacon and bits of green. Not much to write home about. Osakan okonomiyaki, or at least the kind I had, was in comparison quite good. We had it, as well as the about-to-be-explained takoyaki, at a restaurant in Umeda advertising "pizza balls." Headlines read the next morning:

Meredith eats octopus! World stops turning!

Chewy, but surprisingly swallowable, the best translation of takoyaki is "octopus balls." Atsushi, our new friend Megumi, Hylton and I ate at a cook-your-own-takoyaki place, which for some reason advertised them as "pizza balls." Luckily Atsushi is an avowed takoyaki lover, and Megumi is a chef, because otherwise Hylton and I wouldn't have had a clue what to do with the metal hotplate that divided our table. Takoyaki really is basically just octopus fried into balls with a batter often made friendlier with some vegetable bits. If you didn't already know this, I have for as long as I can remember hated seafood. Even if I don't come back loving the taste of fish (because I still don't see that happening anytime soon), Japan is helping me open up.

After dinner we regretfully parted ways, and I gave Megumi my contact information. That reminds me, I need to get back to her email.

Monday morning (a national holiday, and therefore not a work day) Hylton woke up sick, so we got a late start. Our late start included befriending a passel of Japanese women who had come into our hostel (which has a capacity of 10 people) the night before. In the end we traded some contact information with them too, so if Hylton and I make it back down to Kansai (which we are planning, because I want to go to cosmopolitan Kobe, castle-ridden Himeji and tourist-must Kyoto) we might have some people to help show us around.

Our trip home was fairly exhausting, because even with our reserved-seat tickets we still had to sit the first hour of our shinkansen trip in the aisle waiting for a seat in the unreserved seat car to open up. It being a holiday and all, loads of people were traveling, and thus all of the reserved cars were full until deep into the night. Even so, on the ride home we passed temple-topped Kyoto, busy Nagoya and Tokyo Bay-framed Yokohama before pulling into Tokyo. During our six minute walk home from the small Naruto train station we saw that the little downtown was strung with rope for the approaching festival.



Up next: This past weekend's Autumn Festival: mochi, colorful floats and a free glass of sake into the sewer.