Completion of Marathon Osaka trip, finally

Hey all! More updates from the land of the rising sun. I'd like to thank you guys that e-mailed me, it's great to hear from some familiar folks. Today, I'll be continuing, and hopefully completing my trip to Osaka with Chris, Austin, Jason, Ryan, and Akira. This has been a marathon entry, I still haven't even gotten to questions 5 and 6 from my original post. I'll have to post an update with some photos from the schools I work at when I get a chance. Also, hopefully I'll have internet at my apartment pretty soon - then, the blogging volume should rise sharply. Well, picking up where we left off.

The third morning in Osaka, we were of two distinct groups - the group of us that returned to the hotel at 12:30 the previous night, and the group that returned at about 3:00. There was a quantum leap of hurt between the two. I was with the group that returned earlier, we were in better shape, but the group that returned later didn't slow us up that day. Once again, impressive. I'm going to post another hangover photo, because I think they're funny. This is Ryan on the train. He actually wore his headband from the previous night, he said the pressure on his head helped his headache.

That day, the group decided to make a day trip to Kyoto to see as much as we could of Gion and the temples before they closed at 5:00. When we were on the train from Osaka to Kyoto, we ran into this cool couple from America who were on a long, extended honeymoon to Hawaii and Japan. The guy was a successful software and video game designer, so he had a decent amount of money to burn, so they were doing as much of the two places as possible in about a month and a half. It was cool talking to him, because it made me reminiscent of MY first time to Japan, and not knowing anything at all about anywhere. Now that a few things have left an impression on me, it's fun talking to newbies. The other guys in our group were able to help them out with a lot of info about how to survive around here for a few weeks, including a reminder that Yen is NOT, in fact, Monopoly money.

When we got into Kyoto, we did a quick walking tour of Gion, where I saw my first real, decked-out geisha. Apparently, some of them (most?) need attendants at all times while walking around the city when it's hot, just because their costume is so heavy and intricate that it's physically exhausting to walk around too much, and passing out is a real danger. We also met some girls dressed in basic Kimono, and we asked to get their pictures and they did the same of us. It was a happy coincidence that we were in front of a famous pagoda at the time, whose name I have since forgotten. You look it up, I'm feeling lazy.

We also hit Kiyomizudera temple, the temple of the famous flowing holy waters, which we did not partake of. The line to drink and wash your hands in the waters was about 45 minutes long, and the charge was about 8 dollars. I'm sure some of the comments we muttered under our breath made a dent in the holiness of the temple as a whole. We did, however, get some great photos with a lot of people who just walked up to us and asked for pictures. Apparently, our group really hit a nerve with the younger population.

We also tried to hit Kin'kaku-ji, the temple of the Golden Pavilion, but due to the confusing and intricate bus system around Kyoto, we got there at 5:05, and it had closed at 5:00. Unfortunate. That did, however, allow us more time to sleep back at the capsule hotel before going out to the Midnight Rave at Osaka castle that night. That was about the coolest party I have ever been to. The flyers were printed in English, and consequently there were a heck of a lot of foreigners there. Highlights of the party were: Doing the robot dance to a techno beat and chanting 'Domo arigato, mister roboto,' high-energy dancing with a girl from Ireland, chilling and smoking a tabacco hooka with a guy from france and a Japanese girl who had lived in Canada most of her life, beating tribal rhythms on some African drums while keeping time to ultra-modern techno music, and the people in our group monopolizing a radio antenna for most of the evening, dancing around it or just sitting on its stone base and taking in the Osaka skyline. Definitely an evening for the books. Chris has some good photos of the pole dancing and Osaka castle at night on his blog, the address for which I supplied in my last post. On his page, the entry is in his archives, under the heading "Best weekend since the dinosaurs."

After the party on our way back, we found this great playground with a slide that was about 100 feet long (that measurement is in feet, not meters - I'm still a rebel). Our entire group took turns sliding down it, and eventually made a 7-person train. I still can't get the rust stains out of those pants. Totally worth it, though. After mercilessly harassing a couple of really patient taxi drivers to find us Karaoke at 4:00 in the morning, we made our way back to the hotel and crashed.

That's pretty much the end of the weekend, finally. We had breakfast the next day, parted ways, and shinkansen'd our way back to Shibukawa utterly exhausted. Best weekend ever, though. I think we may have even out-performed those dinosaurs.

Well, that's about it, and it's getting late. Next time: Where I work and what I do.