Trip diary: March 18th, 2007

The sumo guys are laughing at me.

Didn't sleep well. The futons at the hotel were very thin and it was little better than sleeping on the floor. Because I sleep on my side I had bruises on my hips. And the pillow was very thin as well. And I was fighting the affects of jet lag. I woke up at 5:00 and lay in bed staring at the ceiling for a while. Eventually I decided to go down to the lobby so I could walk around and not disturb Charles. The same guy who was working the night before at 11 was setting things up. He must have worked the night shift.

Charles came down at about 6 and thought I was all ready to go so was surprised that I was still wearing my slippers and hadn't brushed my teeth or anything. I went back up to the room and got ready. When I came back down I saw that Charles had found the complimentary coffee and was drinking it like it was ambrosia.

We went to Tennoji eki (for those not versed in Japanese, eki means 'station') and caught the Osaka loop line to Osaka-jo (jo = castle). We wandered around the castle grounds for a while but everything was still closed as it was so early in the morning.

We went back to the Namba area because the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium is near there and Charles wanted to buy his ticket for the next day's sumo fights. We found the arena and went in so he could buy his ticket but they didn't start selling next day's tickets until 10 o'clock so we had an hour to kill. We went to Namba Parks (a shopping mall) and sat on a bench until 10. Charles got his ticket (way up in the nose bleed section).

We decided to explore the same areas that we did last night with the added benefit of daylight. The area looked a lot dingier in the day. We found an electronics department store and went in to compare prices with the prices back home. In general we found the prices in Ottawa were lower. Usually $10 less on most things. There goes that myth.

By this time Charles was feeling the affects of only having one coffee that morning so we went to a Mister Doughnut. While eating doughnuts we decided to go to Kobe, which is really close to Osaka. We hopped on an express train at Osaka eki and sat back for the ride. Our primary purpose for going to Kobe was to visit Ikuta shrine. Supposedly it is one of the oldest shrines in Japan (nearly 1700 years old). The shrine is very nice. It's a popular place for girls to go to pray for boyfriends. This tradition is fairly recent. Two big Japanese celebrities got married at that shrine so it has now become a place associated with romance in Japanese people's minds. To quote Asuka (you will meet her later) with regard to this practice:“Japanese people are easily led. A celebrity does something and the next day everyone else has to do the same thing.”

We decided to see the Kobe Earthquake Memorial at the harbour so we walked in that direction. Along the way we walked into China Town. There was a public demonstration of Chinese dancing going on so we watched that for a little while. Us being the size we are, no one behind us could see anything so only disinterested school kids who were not there by choice stood behind us.

We continued on our way after two dances. Lunch was some deep fried things on sticks bought from street vendors and drinks purchased from a vending machine.

The memorial is a harbour pier that was destroyed in the quake that happened in 1995. The pier was never repaired. Instead it was left exactly as it was after the quake hit.

After viewing the memorial we walked around the area and found a swap meet. We didn't find anything of interest.

By this time our feet were killing us so we decided to take a ferry back to Osaka. Looking at our map we noticed that the ferry going where we wanted was near the station where we arrived in Kobe so we went back to the station and started walking south to find the ferry dock.

After walking for 20 minutes and complaining endlessly about our feet we looked at the map again. The map said that we had only walked about 1/3 of the way to the ferry. We also noticed that there is a train that goes from the station to the dock. After cursing our own stupidity for a while we decided to stuff the ferry and walked back to the station to take the train back to Osaka.

We decided to do a Lawson dinner. Lawson is a convenience store chain in Japan. They sell various pre-made meals there. We went back to Tennoji eki and started walking because there was a Lawson between the hotel and the station. We forgot that the Lawson is actually across the street from the station that is on the other side of the hotel. We could have saved our feet an extra 15 minutes of walking by simply remembering that fact. Heading back to the hotel from the store we discovered that there is a soup kitchen next door to the hotel that all the homeless people in the area go to. Lots of smelly insane people were wandering around.

Once back in the hotel we watched a Japanese game show that I forget the name of while we ate. Soon after we went to sleep.

Trip diary: March 16th and 17th, 2007

The Departure

Woke up at 6:00, checked email and fed the cats. It hadn't quite soaked in that this was the day.

I knew that I couldn't sit around until it was time to leave so I went back to bed to cuddle the cats a bit more. Normally, I am not excessively emotional but my cats are one soft spot for me. I was tearing up as I said good-bye to them. I always miss Esme the most when I am separated from the cats for a long time. She is special to me.

I left the apartment at around 8:00 and stopped in at Subway for breakfast.

Arrived at the airport at around 9:00 and stood in line at the NWA counter for 40 minutes. The people who run the NWA counter are also the people who do the boarding for the NWA flights so they are constantly running back and forth between check-in and departures.

Got into the security area and was randomly selected for a search. It wasn't a problem but the guy doing it should think of buying me flowers next time he intends to get that personal.

The wait in the departures lounge was long, boring and uncomfortable. Whoever designs airport chairs must have a strange idea of what comfortable is.

The flight to Detroit was boring (seeing a pattern develop?). The only interesting part of the flight was when the flight attendant, Jess, accidentally rubbed her butt across my arm. Polyester pants never felt so good.

We landed in Detroit on time.

In the terminal waiting for the flight to Osaka there was a 'Welcome to Detroit' announcement on a TV. The accent on the guy doing the announcement made it sound vaguely threatening. 'Enjoy your stay or your kneecaps will be broken'.

I only had a 20 minutes wait (just enough time to go pee and write in my journal for half a page) before they announced they were starting boarding.

I was in a seat on the right-hand side of the plane. At first I was seated next to a hyperactive woman who kept getting up to go see friends in other parts of the plane. It wouldn't have bothered me except I had the aisle seat. Early on she decided to switch to a vacant seat near her friends so I was left with three seats to myself. That was freaking sweet.

I have trouble falling asleep on planes. I can never get comfortable. Even with three seats to stretch out across. There is always a lump in the wrong spot and the seat handles are too pointy. I only managed to doze off for about an hour of the whole 15 hour flight. That served only to re-enforce just how tired I was at that point.

The movies they showed were 'The Prestige', 'Flushed Away' and 'Man of the Year'. The first was blah, Flushed was cool (yeah Aardman!) and MotY had a few good jokes but was too over done for my tastes.

When the pilot announced we were beginning our decent into Kansai Airport felt like singing.

It is pretty scary to look out the window when landing in Kansai. the airport is an artificial island and the runways go right to the edge of the water. Watching through the window all you see is water getting closer and closer all the time, then just as it looks like you are about to do a water landing the land appears and about half a second later the plane hits the runway.

Going through security I was again selected for a random search. Two random searches in the trip already didn't fill me with hope that going home would be easy. The guy who frisked me this time was much more gentle than the guy in Canada. He asked permission before he grabbed my privates.

Got through security with no more incidents and met Charles in the arrivals area. We caught the train to the city. It was delayed because of an 'accident'. For those who don't know that is often code speak for someone committing suicide by jumping in front of a train.

We had to take a local train so it was a long ride, about 90 minutes. On the way, a drunk old guy told me I was handsome. But that was more than made up for by a cute girl who kept smiling at me whenever our eyes met. Unfortunately she got off the train before I could talk to her.

We got to the hotel and checked in. The room was small and a bit Spartan but passable. The door to the room was ludicrously short, we both had to duck to get in the room. The bathroom was yellow. Going to the wash room usually involved a few verses of 'We all live in a yellow submarine'.

We went out to wander around Namba (the night-life area of Osaka) for a couple of hours. There were people everywhere. It was starting to sink in that I was in Japan again. Dinner was had at Yoshinoya - a Japanese fast food chain with food that is actually good. I had curry and rice and Charles had gyuudon (beef and rice in a bowl). For fast food, it was awesome.

At around 10 the shops started closing up and the crowds started dispersing so we went back to the hotel and crashed.

< img src="flicker set" >

Here is my Flickr photo set of pictures from my trip.

I took many more but this subset are the ones I like most.

EOF

I'm home.

It's good to sleep in my own bed again. And to hold the kitties. I missed them a lot even though they acted as if I had never left.

I now have about 600 photos to go through to pick the good ones to show to friends.

PS for those of you who didn't get it the Hachiko story was posted on April 1st.