Author: Sarah Northway

Yeah. Osaka.

We spent the day downtown around Dotonbori. Which is the famous place to be in Osaka. Seems like you can sum up different parts of Osaka as being ‘like such and such a place in greater tokyo but less so’. Dotonburi is like Shinjuku but less so. Which means it’s full of bright lights, pachinko parlours, shops, restaurants and a bunch of strip clubs.

Well shinjuku doesn’t really have shops or restaurants. But that’s why everything in Oskaka is ‘less so’. Because it’s all more balanced.

The food is definitely better. Cheaper, tastier, easier to access. One of my major gripes about Tokyo and especially Kyoto was the food. Osaka is much better. Actually it’s famous in Japan for food and is considered the countries ‘stomach’. There’s a saying that goes ‘dress till you drop in Kyoto and eat till you drop in Osaka’ referring to the popular passtime of visiting historic sites in Kyoto wearing Kimonos.

I would say Osaka’s food obsession brings it up to par with an average north american city. Not for breadth mind you. There are probably 8 types of restaurants instead of Tokyo’s 4.

Yeah so I forgot the camera today so no pics but google the ‘glico man’ and you’ll be good. Actually the one picture I really wanted was the sign advertising the ‘new style masturbation rooms’. Someone got a little too literal in their translating.

We went to see the new die hard because I wanted to see a movie. They went to the trouble to have two crashed cars, one on top of the other, riddled with bullet holes outside the theatre. I figure that kind of effort deserves some payback. Turns out it doesn’t open for a few days so we ended up seeing The 300.

Hated the message. Not real into lionizing pointless sacrifices. But I can love a movie and hate its message (signs springs to mind). I really like it when movies really crank up the fantasy nob. It’s a movie. It doesn’t have to be plausible. It doesn’t have to be realistic. I don’t know why there are so few fantastic (as in fantasy not as in great) films.

Hero leaps immediately to mind as a movie that accomplished this best. Total fantasy, totally great. And perhapse city of lost children played up the fantasy best while maintaining some kind of applicable to real life basic theme.

Anyway horray for a movie that cranks that nob. Even if the message was crap, the dialogue mostly sucked, and there was an under-emphasis on plot and characters. It looked great and felt great. I defy anyone to watch the introduction of whosit-the-evil-god-king being tramped up on his briliant art deco slave-powered throne and not cream their pants.

Not since The Cell have I so enjoyed such a bad movie. Also the theatre was rediculous with the sound which really added. The 300 is definitely best seen in as loud a theatre as possible.

Anyway then we wandered around Dotonbori again. Hit up a Chococro and called it a night. Back to the Banana House. Fingers crossed… yay noone stole our laptops.

So yeah. Osaka ain’t really doin it for us. There are some cool things in the vecinity. Some hiking to do and some castles to visit. We’ll probably be hopping a flight back home a little earlier than planned.

See you all soonish.

Colin

So we in Osaka now for the last month abroad.

We said goodbye to all the guys at the gaming group in Tokyo, packed all our stuff, and lugged the kitebag and everything through 4 trains and 6 hours to Osaka.

We have arrived at the ‘banana house’ where we’ll be staying. And good god. It’s like squatting in an abandoned building. There’s graffitti all over teh walls, one slimy kitechen for the whole 4 story complex, chipped dirty tiles, and well… just a general feeling of disheveled abandonedeness. I can actually hear the neighbours talking quietly in the next room.

So we’re looking foreward to exploring the bits of Osaka that aren’t here.

On the Train
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

We saw our touriestiest thing yet today: Tokyo Tower. It was like… seven tourist activities in one, and we did as many of them as we could reasonably handle. It is kind of a cool structure, and the observatory had glass bits in the floor where you could look down onto all the red steel bars and whatnot. Also one of the tourist exhibits on the fourth floor was a hologram gallery and there’s no arguing with holograms.

We found a place with an exotic menu of Belgian beers, then headed back to Shinjuku for $3 udon tempura from our new favorite noodle place. It’s down a crowded alley near the station, and even at nine o’clock people were lined up to eat at one of the half dozen stools. We slurped down our meals in less than five minutes then wandered out in search of coffee.

After coffee we wandered into then got lost in a Donkihote. It’s a real shopping experience: narrow aisles wandering through a maze of neverending light and sound and product; little monitors everywhere playing demonstrations and/or bizarre music videos. Fridges, Gucci handbags, DS games, tents, sex toys, cat food, TVs, tazers and beer. It’s no wonder Wallmart hasn’t been successful here; Donkey’s has that niche filled buthow.

We stopped to look at the $2000 kittens in a pet shop next door, then wandered down a long street lined with what I gather were male host bars. They were all called “Lady’s” something and featured headshots of young gigolo-haired guys. We gawked some more until midnight and the last train approached, and we had to head back or prepare to sleep at a Manboo (an Internet Cafe with private cubicles and recliners – I hear some people live in them).

So, another typical Tokyo day. Yesterday we were visited by thunderstorms; tomorrow we’ll probably chill out here and do whatever. We’re down to just two ghostly roommates in this big quiet building, but it’s set to fill up again soon I think.

IMG_6940
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

Punchpunchpunch it’s three posts in a row!

We’re still going to the Magic group gatherings on Wednesdays, playing Time Spiral/Future Sight sealed decks. Time Spiral is probably the best set possible for me to get back into Magic, as it’s all about bringing back mechanics and flavour from oldschool sets. They even reprinted a bunch of cards with the old (better) card style. Future Sight on the other hand is full of cards with a new (also better) card style that are supposedly from sets yet to be released. Most of them are pretty lame: lots of tribal junk, silly new keywords and dumb mechanics like enchantments that are also creatures. At least they do seem to understand what we liked about past sets. In Time Spiral they even reprinted Merieke Ri Berit, one of my favorite cards from back in Ice Age.

At the last gathering I joined in on a four person draft of the WoW card game, which I’d never played before. It was pretty easy to catch on, as it’s a lot like Magic but simpler… too simple I think. The game revolves around your avatar or hero or whatever, who determines which side (Horde vs Alliance) all your creatures have to come from, and what subset (1 of ~6 classes) of other cards you can use. So, there seems to be much less flexibility in building decks. On the plus side it uses the mana system of letting you flip over any card to use as a land. You could more or less sum the rest up in a Magic card:

Wowize   –   Enchantment   –   3UUU
All creatures have: pay 0: this is unblockable except by walls.
All creatures gain Provoke.
When a creature is assigned as a blocker, tap it.
Every attack phase in which at least one creature attacks is followed by another attack phase.
Damage on creatures does not heal at end of turn.

Yeah, I know they aren’t called walls anymore, now they’re “creatures with Defender”. What was wrong with walls, guys?

Untitled-21
Originally uploaded by apes_abroad.

We’re staying at the Shrek Watta House in Musashi-Seki for one more month, because we’ve had a hard time finding monthly-rate places to stay in other cities, and travelling is damn expensive (the 2 hour round trip train to Kyoto cost $250 each). We’ve got more roommates now but things are still relatively peaceful and we’re happy to stay.

Tokyo isn’t really a city anyway, it’s more like thirty little ones strung together by train lines. I’ve gone on about “Electric Town” Akihabara and mentioned Shinjuku (the nexus, whose train station services 2-3 million people a day), but there are so many happy little places that feel more like downtown Victoria or Qualicum Beach. We visited a beautiful park in Kichijoji yesterday and saw the Ghibli museum there (well worth if not enhanced by the unbelievably complex ticket purchasing system). Two days ago we went to a Sumo match in Ryogoku Kokugikan, had beers at Popeye’s again and were gifted with a member’s card and cheers from all the staff. We’ve visited the Ueno Zoo twice (they have everything! gorillas! lions! pandas! monkeeees!). We’ve been to (or at least through) the Starbucks at the crazy pedestrian intersection at Shibuya Station.

Last weekend we visited Asakusa for the Shinto festival at Sensoji temple. Tens of thousands of people filled the streets and uncomfortable looking laborers lurched around with huge golden shrines. This is one of the few times Yakuza are allowed to show their body tattoos in public – totally the highlight of the day was the shrine with two almost naked tattoo covered guys riding on top of it, chanting and drumming and cheering the bearers on as it swayed back and forth.

Despite the sights, I guess we haven’t quite regained our enthusiasm from our first three weeks before the Kyoto trip. The crowded train trips do seem to take longer every time, and the language and culture barriers are starting to get frustrating. Today we tried to make a deposit to our next guesthouse via bank transfer (like most places, they don’t accept online payments or credit cards) and were rejected for not having a phone number we could be reached at (we would, if tourists could own cellphones here). There was a familiar moment where the bank teller looked as though her head might explode from the paradox, and even after she understood we didn’t have one, she just kept smiling and repeating “telephone number”. Wish I’d been more on the ball and just made something up; next time.

So, Osaka is next if we can find some way to make the payment.