OSAKA PICTURES!!

I'm going to break my pictures up into two posts because there are so many pictures to look at and I want you to be able to enjoy them fully.

First i'll start with the Osaka pictures! 

Look at his little thing just sticking out there!
XD 

If you remember from the first post I went to Himeji with some lovely ladies I met the first day I was there. There were naked statues all over the place (and I guess there are a lot of naked statues all over Japan according to one of the girls but I haven't notice any in Tokyo...) 

At the end of this road is Himeji Castle. 

It read "Shiro Maru Hime" Which means white ball princess  

 This guy is like the mascot of  Himeji. I think it's a mochi ball (rice cake ball) with Himeji castle on it's head.

The part that's all in scaffolding is the main part of the Castle. Doesn't it look like their just building a hotel or something right on top of it though?

           

In spring the cherry blossoms make this place look even
more amazing. There were winter cherry blossoms
though so we didn't miss out completely.

This building is the part we got to walk through. It's a long corridor that surrounds part of the castle grounds and was originally were the princess' maids lived. During the Meji era (1860's-1900's) the castle was turned into a fortress and this part was turned into a sort of barracks for soldiers.

It's supposed to be a butterfly but it looks like a mosquito
to me. 

All the lords and rulers and whatnot choose flowers o,r in this case, butterflies for their emblems because beauty was what displayed power unlike in Europe where the castles look like fortresses and everyone had something fierce like a lion for the coat of arms.  

mmmm, so good!!

Then the next day we went to a local shrine and made mochi!! 

From L-R: Me, Santa, Lauren, Melanie, Teresa, Rudolph.

These are the three lovely ladies that let me join them on their escapades. Plus Santa and his reindeer. 

That little boy was so cute!!! XD

Let the mochi making commence! 

I wasn't able to make mine into a nice round ball
like everyone else...I think it's cuz i'm too white XD 

Nick the Aussie (in the bright jacket), and Ed
English 

Xmas dinner

I didn't get a good group photo but the guy in the yellow is
the other Aussie (the one who ended up in the wrong bed)
And the guy in the background is the American Navy
guy

She had a cold but I was just trying to keep warm. 

Me and Yukie on our way to Universal Studios Japan!

Even though it was the day after Xmas they still had Xmas everywhere. 

I had to fight little kids to get this picture!

We tried jumping but we couldn't time it right...

I fail at being a Vegetarian... 

Okonomiyaki time!!

This one was called the "Early American"
...it didn't taste as good as it looks though. I preferred the
Kimchee one. XD 

Okay, later i'll post the Kyoto pictures. Now, I'm going to go finish Biohazard! XD 

Osaka part 3

Written for December 26th, 2010 


Checked outta my hostel my 10am and met Yukie on the train to UNIVERSAL STUDIOS JAPAN!! It has been also...five or so years since I've seen Yukie and damn did that girl turn into one sexy mama ;P. We had a lovely train ride to universal city but once we got there it started to rain. I must reiterate how freaking cold it has been this whole trip. I guess the day after I left Tokyo dropped down below the 10's as well. Ah winter...

Anyway, because it was such a crappy day USJ was not crowded at all (unlike my trip to Disney Sea a couple weeks ago...that sucked). We got to ride most of the awesome rides (except for sider man and one other I think), and the most we had to wait was 40 minutes. The Jurassic Park ride was probably my favorite (and also the coldest...it's kinda like a splash mountain ride hence why it had the shortest line of 10 minutes because only crazy people like us were riding it in the rain). I think I like Universal Studios better than Disney. Less annoying music and more memorable characters from my childhood (I took a picture with Popeye!). The place was still done up in Xmas decor and all the workers were yelling Merry Christmas, despite it being the 26th. It was nice though. We spent most the day there despite being freezing cold the whole time and left at around 5-ish.

Outside of USJ they had a Tako Yaki (octopus balls) Museum! They had all these different things flavored as tako yaki and different tako yaki from around Japan. Even had Tako Yaki flavored ramune (Japanese soda pop), but I didn't buy any for some reason. Regretting it now. They also had a Museum dedicated to all the different characters of Universal Studios and Japan. A lot of Smurf dolls for some reason. And Family guy dolls as well which made me very happy because Family Guy is practically nonexistent over here although you can find The Simpson's almost everywhere you go. The creepiest thing they exhibited though has got to be the many faces of the Kewpi baby. Terrifying creature.

Got to Yukie's parents house at around 6pm where we proceeded to a yaki toori (various parts of cooked chicken) restaurant. Delicious. We were joined by her little cousin and her little brother (both of which are just too cute for their own good). For some reason though I could not understand a word that her dad said to me. I don't know if it was his accent (people in this part of Japan have pretty strange accents. Think of it as like how we regard southern accents in America) or if it was just him but damn. Not a word. When I go home back to Tokyo I'm going to try and use Osaka ben (osaka accent) as mush as possible so I can hear my host mom yell at me like, "that's not the proper way to talk! Speak clearly!". Then we called it a night.

Tomorrow we are going to try and sneak me into Spa World. They don't allow tattoos but we're going to try our best and cover them so they don't find out. Fingers crossed!!    

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

Osaka part 1

Okay, even though I'm tired, I guess I'll provide ya'll with an update.

After spending the evening with some amazing friends I climbed onto my 12:30am bus to Osaka. The seat was terrible. The lady who sat next to me was fast asleep the moment we took off and kept on slowly inching her butt towards my end of the seat, making my seat smaller and smaller. As soon as I got on the bus I realized I had to pee but was wholly disappointed to find that the bus was not equipped with a toilet. In a country that has butt massagers on their toilet seats (among other various bells and whistles not generally associated with toilets back home) one would think that they could install normal toilets on a bus. But no. So I had to wait two hours until we got to our first rest stop. By about 4am I gave up trying to sleep (not only was there no room, but the bus was uncomfortably warm). By 7:30 we arrived in Kyoto and an hour later in Osaka. Finding my hostel was way easy (thank god) and all the workers here are very friendly and can speak English (not that it's a problem for me, but it is nice).

I had missed the 8am check in so I had to wait until 3pm before I could get my room. Grumpy, wanting a shower and a change of clothes, I walked around in search of a cafe. The streets were practically empty and I don't know if it was because it was 9am in the morning or because it was xmas eve (xmas here isn't a national holiday so no one gets it or the eve off but since the 23rd was the Emperor's B-day which is a national holiday, i'm thinking most people just went and took the 24th off as well) but there was no one about. A vast contrast to the busyallthetimenomatterwhattimeofdayornight lifestyle of Tokyo. I wasn't long in my search for a cafe and found myself in a nice, old Victorian style shop (not like a tacky Victorian style either) owned by this old couple and had some very nice coffee and raisin toast.

Not knowing what else to do and wondering if they would at least let me shower, I walked back to the hostel. When I had first arrived here there was only one older lady sitting in the lobby who said she was visiting from Australia. When I came back the second time however, it was packed. A couple, also from Australia, are here on vacation, three American girls and one American guy all filled the little kitchen area. All very nice people too. I got to talking to the three American's (okay one is actually from Canada but whatever) and found out that they are all on JET, working in Hokkaido. They were going down to Kobe to see one of the oldest/best preserved castles in Japan and wondered if I wanted to join them after finding out that I had nothing to do and couldn't check in until 3pm. My reply to the offer was "actually, yeah I would like to join you if you don't mind". Shower-less and still wearing the clothes of the previous day, off we went!

The train ride to Kobe (actually the castle is in Himeji but whatev) took a little over an hour. Unfortunately the main part of the castle is under restoration right now so we couldn't go inside. Bright side though, because it is closed not very many tourists were there crowding the scene. Down side, it was the coldest freaking day I have ever experienced in Japan. Bright side, there was a very sweet old lady who works as a volunteer tour guide for foreigners; therefore we got a free guided tour through the grounds and the parts we could go into, all in English.

The castle was really amazing, but sadly a lot of the buildings/mansions that used to be on the grounds were all burned down in the Meiji period because the castle was converted from living quarters for ladies and lords to barracks for soldiers. None of the original artifacts remain either but the castle itself is still wonderfully intact (even though it's being restored). Actually, when we got to the sight and saw all the scaffolding we thought that they were building some sort of modern building practically right on top of what we thought was the main part of the castle (turned out to only be just one of the separate towers) and were completely shocked. But thankfully we were wrong and the Japanese have more class than that.

After the castle we went into Kobe itself and ate some ridiculously good Kobe Beef XD. Couldn't help it, we were in Kobe so might as well go for it, right? And it was worth it. Then we set off in search of a cake shop that we heard was famous. Here in Japan people eat Christmas cake and KFC chicken for xmas. I don't know either. But alas! The cake shop was closed. Instead, we ended up going to this little tiny cafe that's owned by this opera singer and we had coffee and waffles! The lady was super nice and made some bomb-ass waffles, but I think we made her a little nervous (in fact I know we did cuz she kept on saying "sorry, i'm nervous". Can't blame her, if a bunch of foreigners speaking a language I didn't know invaded my little cafe kitchen i'd be a little nervous too). But it was all a good type of nervous and she sent us away with a gift of 和菓子　"wagashi" or Japanese treats.  

Now i'm sitting on my bed in my hostel, shower finally taken, clean clothes on, curtain drawn, personal light on, main light off writing this blog post alone cuz the other girls braved the cold again (i'm serious, it's C-O-L-D outside)... I'm staying in a mixed dorm room and one of the other inhabitants (the only male) just walked in... definitely staying behind my curtain.

Tomorrow there's some sort of Mochi making thing going on so i'm gonna go to that and maybe an aquarium and whatever else I can find to do around here. Maybe i'll go to Nara.

I forgot to bring my camera cord so I can't upload pictures until I get home.

PEACE OUTSIDE
Jam