Updates

Now that I'm back in Kyowa and sober I'll fill everyone in about the trip that Tom and I took to Osaka. We basically just drank the entire time we were there with the Human Rights Museum and the Shin Umeda building used to waste daylight. I've posted all the pictures I took along with four videos. Osaka is a great city to wander around in and get drunk but I'm not sure how much else there is to do. Not really a sightseeing city in my opinion. There are two busy areas: the Northern (Kita in Japanese) area, and the Southern (Minami) part of the city. The northern part consists of Osaka Station and Umeda and the southern part is centered around Dotonbori and Nanba. We arrived at Osaka Station and after seeing the Human Rights Museum, spent the night in Dotonbori. We drank our weight in Chuhi for about $1.80 a can at convenience stores. I would compare Chuhi to things that I would be too embarassed to drink back home like Smirnoff Ice or Mike's Hard Lemonade. If you get the chance, drink the Freeze Orange variety. Kirin Lemon tastes like windshield washer fluid. We went to Amerika-mura and hung around with the cool kids in Triangle Park. We met this Indian guy named Umesh who works in a factory because he won't cut his hair to get a better job. His Japanese buddy had a tattoo of La Petit Prince on his forearm but seemed much cooler than that sounds. These girls who were also hanging around were too cool to talk to me. I was also pretty drunk and not as charming as I usually am.

We stopped in a lot of random places to piss and drink so we saw quite a bit of the nightlife but I remember only bits and pieces of it. I was vehement about going to this sushi place near the Dotobori Hotel where I stayed during my first night in Japan. After that we met some breakdancers on the sidewalk so I gave them some cookies I was eating and tried to speak Japanese to them. One of them spoke pretty good English so he helped us to find an internet cafe to sleep in. I updated this blog from that cafe (see the previous post) and the next day we headed back towards Osaka Station. Tom wanted to get out of Osaka as quickly as possible because he didn't really get any sleep and he was exhausted. I said that we should stop at the Shin Umeda Tower on the way out just to see one more thing and he thought it was a good idea. It turns out the Floating Observatory didn't open until 11 and we got there just after 8:30 or 9. We weren't going to wait so I got some shots from the 39th floor but nothing higher. The trip back was spent sleeping and smelling.

For two videos from an arcade, one from the sushi shop I love, and one from outsie of the internet cafe, click on the following links:

Arcade Video One
Arcade Video Two
No more sushi
Sawing Logs? Ha?