Osaka Sucks

I'm putting up the stories about Osaka right now also, because I don't know when I'll next get a chance, and I'd rather get it out sooner rather than later. For those who're just checking now, there's also a second day of Kyoto below, so don't skip it!

Osaka

So, I got up early enough in the morning; I had to, in order to check out, anyway. But I didn’t leave immediately; Osaka wasn’t far from Kyoto, so I figured I had no need to rush. Also, the bar attached to the hostel I was staying at doubled as a breakfast joint in the morning, and served a halfway decent breakfast. When I got there, Niaya and Celeste were already having breakfast as well, so I joined them, and had eggs, toast, more toast, potatoes, and fruit, as I recall. Compared to the usual breakfasts in the area, this wasn’t half bad, and could have been far, far worse.

A little after, the ladies split for Osaka, and I finished enjoying the respite from the lack of breakfasts in Japan on my own. After that, I figured I’d ask the people at the front desk of my hostel if they could help me find lodgings in Osaka; although they were quite happy to help, it took quite a while to actually find a place with an opening. I don’t remember its exact name now, but it’s something like the Ryokuichi Youth Hostel, and since it was around the 10^th place we called, but the 1^st one that actually had any availability, I booked it immediately. Boy, what a mistake that was.

So I took a train from Kyoto to Osaka; it was a relatively short trip, maybe an hour at most, and pretty cheap, at about five dollars. But after that, I had to take a subway from the train stop to the appropriate station to get to the hostel; this was maybe about 30 minutes away from the train station. But still, its not like I’m walking those 30 minutes with all my luggage, right?

On the subway, I met a German girl. I couldn’t tell you her name if you put a gun to my head, but she was apparently pursuing a PhD with part of the time being spent there in Osaka. Due to our shared white-nicity, I guess she felt comfortable with trying to strike up a conversation; we agreed to try to meet up later in the evening, and she gave me her number to reach her with to make exact plans later on.

So, things were mostly looking up at that point. I had found a hostel, and met a girl to hang out with, and still could potentially hang out with Niaya and Celeste later on.

But when I got off the subway, that’s when things started going downhill, figuratively speaking.

It was probably close to a 30-45 minute walk, in the scorching midday heat plus humidity, to get from that subway station to the hostel, and the way was literally uphill. Carrying 25kg (55lbs) of stuff in those conditions was near enough to Hell, as far as I was concerned.

The area of the hostel itself was actually lovely. It was secluded at the back end of a large park, and the buzz of cicadas engulfed the entire place; for people who hate cicadas, that’s not such a great thing, but I quickly grew to like them in the first couple days I spent in Japan. For me, they were an extremely tangible reminder that I was in a different place, although for weeks I would never actually see one of the damn bugs, just hear them.

When I got into the hostel itself, I was able to square the first steps with little difficulty. But slowly, the rules of the establishment presented themselves; they had a curfew, at about 10pm or 10:30pm (I think it was 10). They also had a lights-off rule at 10:30, and had rules about a variety of other things, including the proper way to fold bedding when you were done with it. Yeah, there’s a specialized bedding-fold, apparently.

The physical aspects of the place were also in stark contrast with the other hostels I had stayed in up til that point; it was a mostly wooden place, creaking with age, obviously a relic from a time that should’ve long passed.

It actually really reminded me of an old Nickelodeon TV show; maybe someone can remember the name of it for me, but it was a show on during that early to mid 90s heyday with other shows like Clarissa Explains it All and Hey Dude; this one was about a bunch of kids at a camp that never seemed to end. I think it was Salute Your Shorts, or something like that. The sort of place you’d stay in where there is no access to internet, or cafes, or hamburgers, or anything else ultra-modern. Which is well and fine, except I was staying in the third largest city of Japan, and that’s not really what I had in mind.

Anyway, so once I found out there was no internet available in the building, I ask the people at the front desk if they could direct me towards some place where I COULD get on the web; they tell me to go to the subway, and drop down a few stops on the line, then look around in that area, as there’s supposed to be a lot of internet cafes in that general vicinity.

Yeah, well, maybe if you’ve been there before and know what to look for. Other than that, they’re crazy. I spent in surplus of an hour trying to find a place, before I started trying to ask people around there if they had any idea. It was certainly a decent mid-town kind of area, lots of stores and food places, even a Starbucks (which doesn’t provide internet access, in Japan), so the possibility was certainly there. One guy gave me pretty detailed instructions on where to go; I either failed, or he was wrong. Probably the former, but who knows.

I did eventually try my luck at a placed called Travel Café; it sounded and looked like the sort of place that might have what I was looking for. I sat down outside to see if there was any wireless connections available, and voila, there certainly was. But just as soon as I clicked on it, a lady came dashing from inside and informed me I had to buy something if I wanted to use it. How she knew, I don’t know. Maybe she’s a ninja. A wireless ninja.

Anyway, it certainly was no stretch of the imagination for me to down a cup of coffee while looking things up online, so I wasn’t too miffed by her assertion. I ended up spending about an hour or so there, and unfortunately I didn’t hear from Niaya or Celeste. Well, actually, I think I got a short e-mail, but I didn’t have a phone number to call them at; they were probably in the thick of the concert at that point anyway, but since I had found out about the curfew rules, I let them know I probably wouldn’t be able to hang out after the show with them.

Internet activities squared away, I moved back to my hostel to drop off my laptop, so I wouldn’t have to carry it around for the rest of the day. Of course, this still entailed that long trek from the subway station to do so, but that wasn’t so bad, when all I was carrying was a laptop, and not my entire set of belongings for the next six months.

At this point I was pretty set on taking a shower. I’m pretty sure I was thoroughly filthy from sweating so much throughout the day; however, before I could, I got waylaid by a young group of Japanese girls, probably around the age of 15 or so. One of them in particular seemed pretty excited to talk to me, especially after this one guy, who was older, told her that I was from California (he had asked me just a little earlier). Turns out she had actually been to California, and she could speak limited English, so as I hung out in the doorway to go into the shower, I chatted with her for a bit about stuff, then excused myself to wash off.

It was a communal shower/bath area, but I was the only one that was there, which was pretty posh, if I do say so myself, despite the otherwise decrepit state of the establishment.

Shortly after I was finished with that, I got shanghaied into helping that same group of girls; from what I could tell, they were a part of some youth group, probably something like the YMCA, and were doing a summer camp or something along those lines. Also, they were rolling these big balls back and forth between each other. These things were about the size of soccer balls, but were wrapped in towels and duct taped together, and made a terrible racket from something rumbling inside. Soon, I put together the fact that they were making their own ice cream, and that the ice cream mix plus ice was inside, and they were rolling it around for the requisite amount of time for the stuff to come together, and they had me help out.

After the running around I did to find the internet, it was a bizarre but fun way to relax for a bit, even if I could only communicate with one of them. Ice cream is a part of a universal language, so we still all enjoyed it together.

Eventually, after having a taste of the ice cream, I did have to leave; after getting online at the Travel Café, I had made a phone call to that German girl, and we had agreed to meet at a particular exit, the North exit, of a particular transit station.

Well, turns out there’s about 3 north exits from that station, which is the biggest station in Osaka, where the subways, local trains, and shinkansen all come together.

Shit.

Long story short, we never did meet up. I patrolled each of those exits as best as I could, but there was just no way to canvas it all properly, and somehow we slipped through the cracks with each other. I waited until almost 8pm, when we had originally planned on meeting at 7, and then resigned myself to getting a crappy hamburger at McDonald’s and heading back to the hostel. Before getting back to the hostel, I met a Japanese girl at the metro station. I had realized earlier that day that a lot of the metro trains had one or two “women only” cars, so I asked her about that. Apparently groping is a big problem, so that’s the solution they came up with. Kind of a funny way to strike up a conversation, I guess, but on the rest of the metro ride, we chatted about this and that, and ended up agreeing to meet the next evening in downtown Osaka. When I got to the hostel, I called the German girl, but the phone was no longer working. Her phone, that is. So, I have no idea whatever became of her.

After that, I slinked off back into my dorm room; the place had I think about 8 beds in it, but only one person other than myself was holed up in it. He was a Polish kid, about 19 years old, and we ended up talking for the next two hours or so; neither of us were particularly adept at sleeping at an early hour, so we agree to just forego the whole “lights off” rule, and stayed up really until almost 1am instead. He seemed like a nice guy, and had a bright future ahead of him. Like myself, he had encountered a lot of kindness from strangers thus far on his travels; unlike me, that kindness extended to grandmas buying him traditional Japanese clothes, just because he “looks” like their grandson.

This kid was as white as me. But he looked like their grandson.

I think someone needs to check their eyeglasses prescription…

Anyway, that was it for the night. I didn’t know what I was going to do for the next day, but I knew I sure as hell wouldn’t be staying at that hostel.

Day 2

Actually, I lied. Now that I recall, I had already made a reservation for another place for the next evening while I was out at the Travel Café, a capsule hotel in the heart of Osaka’s downtown.

For those of you who don’t know, capsule hotels are an innovation unique to Japan, and are basically big buildings comprised of double stacked rows of capsules that people sleep in, instead of having rooms. The capsules themselves are actually fairly spacious, and you can pretty much sit up in it, and have plenty of extra space on the sides; however, all your things are supposed to go into lockers in the basement. There’s also a standard uniform that I think you’re kinda supposed to wear, but for some reason I felt rather averse to doing so.

I walked around the place for a while, getting to know its own microcosm of a culture, with its relaxation rooms and such; they had a big leisure room with a couple rows of nice reclining chairs that you could watch TV from, as well as slot machines, and collections of Japanese comic books to read.

The place is mostly intended for Japanese businessmen who miss the last subway home, but also tends to be a refuge for people who just can’t quite get all the way home after a hard night’s drinking. As such, a lot of capsule hotels are male only; this one was an exception, and had a women-only floor.

At one point, when I was in the lobby, I recognized a couple of familiar faces. It was two guys I had met back at the base of Fuji, named Chuck and Keegan, who were both from Los Angeles. We recognized each other, and chatted a while; I told them I was heading out to meet the girl from the metro from the night before, and that maybe I’d catch them later in the evening.

So I headed out towards where that girl, named Hiromi, and I agreed to meet. It was pretty early, about 90 minutes prior to our scheduled time, but I had nothing better to do, and I figured I could at least do some solid people watching or something.

Oddly enough, after about 20 minutes, Niaya, Celeste, and another girl walk right past me. So of course, I say hi, and we went and ate lunch together, at a placed called “Freshness Burger”. Sadly, I can’t remember the other girl’s name now, but she was also from New York, like Niaya, but had only met Niaya in Japan.

They had had a pretty solid time at the show the day before, although Celeste seemed to be put off by a variety of things, not the least of which was the Japanese people’s way of attending a show, which was rather orderly, not trying to rush the front of the stage, and standing mostly still the whole time.

In truth, something seemed off about Celeste in general, and over the course of the next hour, as well as later in the evening, I was never able to shake the feeling that she was bored with me in particular. Niaya later tried to explain to me that it was just that Celeste was bummed out about a variety of issues she was having in Japan, between language and culture, but . . . I don’t know. A gut feeling is a gut feeling, you know?

It was still nice talking to the other girls, though, and shortly after I split to go make sure I met Hiromi on time.

Turns out that attention to time wasn’t so necessary, as Hiromi was about 30-40 minutes late in the long run anyway. I was a little miffed, since I knew she had to work shortly after, as she’s a bartender working in one of the prime spots in town, but what can you do? We still had almost two hours together, and she took me to an Italian restaurant, where I ate spaghetti with chopsticks for the first time in my life. That in and of itself was an odd experience. The food itself was better than I expected, and the company was pleasant as well, though I doubt there’d be much of substance between us if I had stayed any longer in the Land of the Rising Sun.

So at around 7:30, we said our goodbyes, and I hightailed it back for the capsule hotel. I sort of just meandered around for a while, and eventually ran into Chuck & Keegan as well as Niaya & Celeste. Chuck and Keegan invited me out for the night, but I gave them a tentative response, hinging on what was up with the other two girls. I then hung out with Niaya and Celeste for a while, and they both seemed basically down in the dumps. Celeste was utterly in her own world, but I talked to Niaya about what was up with her for a while, and it seemed like both of them were just kind of done for the night, and decided instead to make use of the hotel’s 24 hour spa facilities, so eventually I relegated myself to joining up with Chuck and Keegan, who were going about on the prowl for some live music, which sounded right up my alley anyway.

The place we were looking for was named “Rock Rock”. I’ve found this sort of name to be all too common in both Japan and Korea, a simple word repeated twice, and if you ask around for its location, no one will ever know what you’re talking about.

And that’s exactly what happened with us for a while. Eventually, thanks to some handy GPS, we DID find it, but it had a 20 dollar cover fee! As I think I’ve mentioned before, these kind of rates are actually pretty common, but it seemed astronomical given that we had never heard the bands playing inside before, so we decided against it, and went looking for some place to sit down in the main bar district.

After oogling at least hundreds of Osaka girls, a good portion of which we figured were actually prostitutes, and not having the slightest idea of where to go in the area for a decent time, we settled on a British pub.

And no, I’m not kidding when I say a lot of those girls were probably prostitutes. They waited outside of establishments that were seedy in the way that only big bars that cater to lascivious businessmen can be. Even though there’s a lot of money in it, and they’re not run down at all, there’s still something off kilter about the place, and you can tell that everyone there is up to no good. The girls wait outside wearing almost nothing, and are so disaffected by everything going on around them, until they see an older guy that looks like money, then they turn as sweet as can be, and a weird sort of mini-courtship ritual presents itself. It was a bewildering thing to behold, but happened dozens of times in the span of maybe 30 minutes, right in front of my eyes.

A lot of those places, and plenty of others that were dissimilar, were all utterly unwelcoming to foreigners; that’s why we ended up at the British pub. Inside the pub, we had a bit to drink, and got our minds off of the weirdness of Osaka downtown, and just chatted about our lives in general, and I found shortly that the two of them were both pretty good guys with good senses of humor.

The rest of the night kind of repeated itself from this point, as we bounced between a couple other bars, and by the end of it all, I found myself drunk for the first time in my life, though, not exquisitely so, just enough to wobble a bit. Highlights of the conversations of the night included a sushi chef in L.A. that is apparently really famous for having an absolutely foul mouth, a plate of nachos that we ordered that came prepared with a whopping 8 small chips, and an annual event up by Mammoth where Chuck, Keegan, and a bunch of other people dress up as superheroes, and play music and soccer, if I remember correctly.

Afterwards, we hobbled our way back to the capsule hotel, and I did my best to fall asleep inside the place. We got back a little late, but not terribly so, maybe around 3am; however, owing to the fact that the assorted capsules were not separated by much, the individual alarm clocks that went off inside the other residents of the hotel’s capsules that started at about 5am made short thrift of wrecking my ability to get any serious sleep for the day.

Because I didn’t really sleep at all, I’m going to make what happened the next morning a continuation of this installment.

Eventually I got up at about 9am, finally giving up with trying to get any serious sleep. I felt groggy, with a light headache, but wasn’t sure how much of this was due to the imbibed spirits of the previous evening versus the detrimental effects of not being able to sleep because of dozens of noisy alarm clocks going off constantly.

Chuck and Keegan got up only a bit after that, but I went up to the lobby to see if I could find Niaya or Celeste one last time. I did indeed find Celeste, and that same disaffected feeling lingered, so I gave up what pretense I thought there had been of friendship, and went back to Chuck and Keegan to see if they wanted to go grab lunch before I headed out of town to my next destination. We went to a nearby McDonald’s, as Keegan was feeling particularly receptive to the idea of getting some non-Japanese food, and because I purchased a double quarter pounder, I found out I was eligible for the benefits of a promotion going on that weekend at that particular McDonald’s, where they were handing out bright pink t-shirts promoting eating big burgers to anyone who got a double quarter pounder. I haven’t taken a picture of mine yet, but I’ll post it soon if I can.

The promotion was pretty hilarious, actually, and included such materials as t-shirts that had the slogan “Beef is Beauty”, as well as a big promo poster with a skinny Japanese guy and a big fat white guy, the Japanese guy looking somewhat glum while the big fat white guy was positively gleeful, in a shirt that was far too tight, and a slogan that said something like “bigger is better”, or at least something to that effect.

The comedy made for a nice touch to my departure, and I said goodbye to my newfound friends, bound for a train to Hiroshima via Himeji.

This picture was taken right before I left to do so, and features Chuck on the left and Keegan on the right. Perhaps tellingly, this is the only picture I have from my time in Osaka.