Osaka Day 2/3, Fukuoka

The next day, me and Tomoko walked around her town. We found a cool carnival/festival just up the road from her house that apparently was put on by a housing development company for potential customers and neighbours. It was aimed at kids, but I didn’t care, since they had photo opportunities with POWER RANGERS, or some similar super fighter guys. So I got my picture taken with them and we proceeded on. We walked around and came to a model home that had been built, but it was HUGE inside. It was big even by north American standards, with 3 floors and a huge living room, kitchen and dining room. We walked around inside for a while then went to find some grocery stores. I needed to buy floss, so we checked everystore we saw, including a 100 yen store. I began to think that Japan didn’t have floss, when we decided to go into a pharmacy and found that drug stores are the only ones to carry floss. We basically walked around until the evening, until Tomoko’s father got home. Then we went to a really nice restaurant. I couldn’t believe how nice it was. I can honestly say that it was the nicest restaurant I have ever been to or eaten at. The food was really good, and I got to try many new things. I went to bed as soon as I got home though, since I am such a HUGE party animal ; )

On the following day, Tomoko’s aunt came over, and Tomoko, her mom, aunt and me went to Osaka castle. I was really hot that day, and I kept seeing gaijin who were sweating their asses off. I considered myself lucky that I wasn’t to hot. We got to go up to the top of the castle, which gave us a pretty decent view of most of Osaka. It was also breezy and cool, which was nice. We took the long walk back, and then went to the aquarium in Osaka, which was my favourite part of the whole trip.

The Aquarium is famous because it holds one of the only whale sharks in captivity. We ended up getting lunch before we actually went though. It was at an Italian style restaurant, and I had REALLY good sausage pizza. I couldn’t believe how much is tasted like western style pizza. I also accompanied it with a melon soda.

The aquarium itself was probably 5 or 6 levels and you started by going up a HUGE escalator. Then, you made your way down a slowly descending spiral. It was probably the best aquarium I have ever seen, especially the giant manta ray and whale shark. The only thing was that the whale shark looked sad, since it was so large and had to swim in circles. It took us around 2 hours to walk throught the whole thing. I took a lot of videos but I need to find a video converter, so I can change my movies from .mov into something I can edit. So, We came home and then had dinner. I even learned some new recipes from Tomoko’s mom. I can make fried rice now, miso soup, and some kind of Japanese egg. The next day, Tomoko and I took a taxi to the train station, then a train to the bus station, then a bus to the airport to pick up Joel.

After Joel arrived, Tomoko walked us to the subway station and me and Joel got tickets and went to find our train. The train ride to our hotel was REALLY long, and when we got there it was already dark. This was compounded by the fact that we were trying to find the hotel using a crappy internet map and Joel’s PSP, which was useless at first, since we couldn’t find north. We ended up going in the wrong direction, and when we turned around, our new course took us down two streets that were filled to the brim with dirty homeless. There was an entire society of them living in that part of town. We ended up walking and I ended up carrying Joel’s luggage, since I didn’t want to walk slowly through that part of town. After about 15 minutes of looking, we found the hotel. It looked a little like what the internet showed, except that it was dirtier and surrounded by slums. I even got to see a guy beating the shit out of a drunk guy. SO EXCITING! So we checked in and it turned out our rooms were actually really clean. It was really small, but really clean and cheap, to boot. I got ready and went to take a bath. With the night’s event behind me and a warm bath, I was able to get a really nice night’s sleep.

The next morning, we woke up early and headed for the airport. The train ride was shorter, since we took an express, so we got there in plenty of time. OH, I forgot to say, when we picked up Joel, Calen was also on the plane, but he went straight to Fukuoka. So we found some lockers and I unloaded all my luggage, but Joel had old man luggage, so his wouldn’t fit. He ended up taking his smaller suitcase, which was heavier, for some reason. Anyway, we got on our flight, and since there were only like 30 people flying, I got to move from my aisle seat and sit next to a window. The flight was a little over an hour. We landed and got off and went to get our luggage, and Kaori, Nicole and Natsumi were there to pick us up. We ended up taking the subway with all out luggage which drew more than a few stares and then walked from the subway to the I-house which took a lot of doing. I just wish everyone had packed smartly like me. Damn I’m so smart. Anyway. I was so happy to finally get to the I-house and unload all my crap. I started to unpack as soon as I got in, since I wanted to get in out of the way. Afterwards, I went out and met all the students that had already arrived.

Ok, that’s all you get for now. I can tell you, that it only gets more exciting from there. But it will take me a little while to put the last 7 days up!!!