Osaka part 2

December 25th 2010 
(I've been writing these half on the day it happens and half the next day because I never have enough time to write everything and post them so all my posts are going to be a couple days late from now on).  

Christmas day in Osaka and it's snowing! But it only lasted a couple minutes then it stopped (thank god). I has been so cold ever since I got here making going outside almost an unbearable thought. Almost. Today my plans revolved around the big aquarium (what? I like sea life....). But first me and my new friends went over to this local temple where they were holding this mochi making party for anyone who wanted to join. For free! I like free. It was super tasty and watching the little kids pound the crap outta the rice was really cute (for those who aren't familiar with mochi it's a rice cake made by repeatedly pounding hot rice until to forms this sticky, stretchy substance then you eat it with either soy sauce, red bean paste or by itself). The temple staff seemed very pleased to have a group of foreign girls participating and kept on asking us various questions and wanting to take pictures. There was this older lady there who freaked out when I said I was from Portland. I guess she went there last summer to visit her friend; a very famous friend (well okay not famous at all, but she seemed to think very highly of him). Can you guess who it is??


KOJI! like the owner of the restaurant Koji's. I thought it was pretty cool. She hugged me when I said that I knew the restaurant.

After the mochi making party I parted from my friends and made my way to the aquarium! My friends had other plans (biking all the way to Osaka castle) which I wasn't interested in (it was cold, and we already went and saw a castle). The aquarium was packed! ...with couples. Christmas is a couples holiday, mush like Valentine's day, so everyone goes out on dates. And the aquarium seemed to be the hot spot. But it didn't take away from the awesomeness of the aquarium. The main exhibit was two spotted whale sharks. They were HUGE!! and really ugly. The also had a bunch of dolphins and penguins and other animals you'd expect to find at an aquarium. They even had a guy dressed as Santa Claus swimming around in one of the tanks. It was cute. When I got to the cafe I was pretty hungry so I got some tako yaki and had a nice conversation with this couple who had just gotten back from a year study in Vancouver Canada. It seems that everyone I've met so far has either studied/been to Oregon, Washington or Canada.

After I got back to the hostel me, the three girls I met and a group of guys decided to throw a little Xmas party at the hostel. We bought Xmas cake, booze and Domino's pizza! It was a good night (especially for the English guy, he got lucky with one of the other girls lol). There were two Australian guys there too and one of them was pretty cute but got way to drunk and ended up taking the bed of the girl who got lucky with the English guy (of course she wasn't in it at the time, but in the morning it created a little confusion) XD.

Tomorrow I'm going to check outta my hostel a day early and go stay with my friend Yukie! She did a home stay at my friends family's house that I lived with throughout high school. We're going to go to Universal studios! So until next time

PEACE OUTSIDE
J