Ooooooosaka!

'Kay, so this is a tad belated, but I blame the typhoon for my tardiness. Essentially I blame the weather in Japan for everything.

OH SNAP CHUNICHI DRAGONS JUST SCORED A DOUBLE!!
...sorry, my favorite baseball team is playing tonight, and they're trailing by 2 in the bottom of the 9th. They really need this. I'm tired of watching Nagoya's home team lose. I should really be rooting for the Hanshin Tigers, since they're Osaka's team and everyone around these parts feels more loyalty towards them than the Dragons, but Chunichi was my home team while I was studying at Nanzan. Also I just like being contrary.

Anywaaay, last weekend was extended to 3 days on account of Japan having the coolest old people in the world. No, seriously, they get their own holiday - Respect for the Aged Day - and their holiday gets me a day off of work. Everybody wins! Nicoli and I thought it was a pretty good idea to take off to Osaka for the long weekend, since neither of us had ever been before and we've both heard such great things about it. Plus, it's one of Chicago's sister cities, so that automatically makes it cool.

We made reservations at a place called Capsule Hotel Asahi Plaza Shinsaibashi. That's right, "capsule hotel" - they're usually geared towards businessmen who want cheap lodgings, but this one has some space for women as well, and is quite popular with foreigners. It's located in Shinsaibashi, very close to Amerika-mura ("America Town," center of amazing shopping and general hang-out zone for the hip youngsters, the young hipsters, and the freaks & geeks of the city) and just a hop-skip away from the most famous takoyaki (fried squid ball) stand in all of Osaka.

I should probably mention right now that Osaka is reknowned for takoyaki and okonomiyaki (there is no accurate way for me to explain what this is. Not quite a pancake, not quite a pizza, it is the most delicious thing that will ever clog your arteries and probably take 4 months off your life). It's also famous for producing hilarious comedians, being the first city in Japan to display neon signs, and as a key stronghold to 16th-century warlord Oda Nobunaga in his endeavours to unify Japan under his rule and end the Civil War Period. He didn't succeed, but his successor, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, did. Hideyoshi built Osaka Castle, which unfortunately doesn't survive in its original structure, but is stunning nonetheless:Nicole and I visited on Sunday, with one of our old friends from Nanzan, Fig, in tow. Turns out Fig is doing JET in Kyoto, so she is very close to Osaka (envy! >:O) She met us in the city after we arrived on Saturday, and many adventures ensued, including buddying up with a random German girl. We were browsing through an Elegant Gothic Lolita outlet shop called Body Line when we noticed another person of European descent eyeing up the dresses. Her name was Julia, and she was on a several-weeks vacation, gallavanting about the entire country on her own. Apparently this is the thing to do in Europe, because my Swedish friend has done it at least twice in the past couple years. So we all wandered about together for the remainder of the night, eventually settling on a place for dinner on Dotombori (THEE food tourism street in Japan. If you visit Japan and try Japanese food only once in your life, let it be at a restaurant on this street. You will thank me and yourself after you have come out of the food-coma). We thence stuffed ourselves stupid. Here is but a meager fraction of what all we four consumed:

And this is me with Julia. None of us exchanged any contact information with her, so most likely we'll never see or hear from her again, but she was a fun lady nevertheless and made our stay that much more interesting.

On Sunday we met up with Eli ("Elly," she just spells it differently), a fellow Mie JET I met at Tokyo Orientation who swiftly became Nicole & my partner in weekend-in-the-city crime. It was on Sunday night that we tucked in for some famous Osakan okonomiyaki. Best. Dinner. Abroad. EVER. Afterwards, we met up with Allison, a lady Eli knew working for JET in Osaka. She'd been here a year already, so she knew all the good places to visit for shopping, supping, and shenanigans. Unfortunately my camera died Sunday night, so I didn't get a lot of pictures from the rest of our trip (;___;) LAME. But Nicoli has quite a few on her camera, so hopefully she'll get around the e-mailing them to me soonish.

Nicole said something on Sunday night that I think sums up Osaka pretty well - "The amazing shopping, the crazy-awesome-friendly people, the delicious food that will probably kill you, the crazy drivers that make up their own rules - no wonder it's Chicago's sister-city!" Also there is an art supplies store that Eli found called Kawachi which sells, among other things, oil painting supplies, specialty papers, and a sh*t-ton of Copic Markers. Eli and I will definitely be heading back to O-Town before the year is out. It's officially my favorite city in Japan.

Oh yeah, and Chunichi lost to Yakult 2 - 4 ( > . < ) Get it together, Dragons, or I'll dump you for Hanshin!