OSAKA OH YEAH OSAKA OH YEAH
December 2nd 2008 01:29
A woman with a giant brown afro and dangly earrings and a white mini-skirt and giant white boots entered our hostel the same time we did. She was a westerner like us. She looked us up and down and said, You ain't getting shit from me tonight, and kept walking. We spent the next hour with a fat German guy who lost both his front teeth while swimming. We waved him goodbye and went to our rooms and instantly fell asleep.
We woke up groggy but excited nonetheless. We were somewhere else, far from the realities that had us sunken low for a long time now. Trevor was excited about the women here. The women with their high heel knee high boots and short skirts and curled hair and eyeliner and perfect shape. They exploded out of trains and out of the skies, they just erupted out of the ground and spilled everywhere. Trevor looked extremely happy. I told him I have a girl waiting back home.
We were going to return to Osaka the following week so we didn't spend much time there, so we decided to spend our last hours in a bar with an unrecognizable name. It was a great bar with great big beers and happy looking people. The chefs and the waiters yelled
OHHH YEAHHH!
every time a dish had been cooked, upbeat You Can Do It style music blasted from the speakers and everyone was generally in pure drunken bliss. Trevor told me about his life, about some poem he'd written, about a short story he'd won a competition with after climbing a mountain in China, about the paintings he'd made, about the books he'd read and about the governments he hated, all while the chefs and waiters in the background kept yelling
OHHH YEAHHH!
He told me to never stop writing. We ate more and laughed more and made friends with the people around us. Afterwards we got incredibly lost.
By night time we found our shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo. After the shinkansen staff cleaned all the seats, we hopped on, excited for what was ahead of us. We didn't expect what was coming for us, the strange things and the frightening things and the scars and the fights and the cruel and the perverted and the wonderful.
Next up:
Tokyo, Kyoto and more travel tips.
Travelling to Japan? Here are some tips:
Get a JR pass. What a JR pass does is let you travel anywhere in Japan on the JR line (there are several train lines in Japan and the JR line is the main one) for free. You can even ride shinkansens, which are generally slightly expensive. With today's exchange rate, a typical shinkansen ride from Osaka to Tokyo will cost over 200 Australian dollars, so with the JR pass you wouldn't have to pay anything. The JR pass is very, very convenient to get around. We bought a 7 day JR pass, which cost us about 436 Australian dollars.
Definitely go to 7-11s. They sell beer (I bought a great tasting 8% beer there for around 3 Aussie dollars), wine, toiletries, porn, tasty meals (a favourite snack of mine is "pizaman"; if you buy a meal they can microwave it for you), magazines and plenty more. They generally don't sell condoms.
Get all the maps you can to point to if you are lost. Study a bit of Japanese, especially the necessities, such as "I want to go to..." and "Where is..." and try and memorise all the hiragana.
Fish snacks with cream fillings we found at a station.
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Comment by Lilla
Enviro Warrior
An Extra Ordinary Life
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
Good tips to remember, thanks. (havent been to Japan yet), but it sounds like it is worth seeing ...
Have fun!
Lilla ...
Comment by Mountain Fog
Infognito
can't wait!
go see the penis worshippers temple, down south I think...check out the "Kenny site "facts" list link I posted on your previous update on Japan.
cheers
fog
(and you've gotta check out the Emperor's Palace, and some of the ancient Samuri places and the astles...ok...so mostly you will be getting drunk and slappin' spunky girl's asses..but in between all that I mean.. hehe!