3/20
It’s still raining today and it was very cold at night. We planned to go to Osaka castle today, and then another hostel resident suggested Himeji castle instead, which was much larger/more impressive. When we got to the connecting station we found out the trains only ran around 9AM and 6PM for commuters so we’d be stuck if we did go. Osakajo was plenty impressive (it even had a huge moat) on it’s own (and the rain cleared up, yay). The interior of the castle was redone as a museum to Toyotomi Hideyoshi (wikipedia) who had mostly unified Japan and made Osaka the capital. I hadn’t heard about him before, because he is somewhat overshadowed by Tokugawa Ieyasu (wikipedia) who took power after his death (and moved the power base back to Edo). While at the castle we picked up some cheap souvenirs and I tried Octopus balls (fried dough balls with Octopus meat inside). They were good but had a weird texture.
We then headed back to Den-Den town because we had seen fliers for a parade that day. It turned out to be a combination parade, dance/athletic/music exhibit, and open air cosplay. People would flood the street taking pictures of the people dressed up, then everyone moved to the sidewalks for a group to come through. After the performance group passed there would be another few minutes of people taking photos and wandering. We saw some traditional music and dance and a very good martial arts group go by. Most of the cosplayers (flickr pages) I wasn’t able to recognize at all. I think they must have been video games or obscure anime (and scary Japanese Ronald McDonald). This one was just awesome. There were still a ton of Haruhi and Bleach costumes. The local maid cafes also had waitresses out advertising (and tons of people taking their photos, which I’m told isn’t allowed in the restaurants). There were a lot more guys cross-playing then I’ve ever seen at a US Anime convention (and girls crossplaying, now that I think about it).
After a while we headed for Dotombori and saw all the crazy neon and restaurants. There were also some cool things like a drop ride on the side of a building, a dog cafe (to match the cat cafe in Tokyo) with engrish, and some arcade (maybe this one?) that had an enormous fish tank in the basement with fishing for points (you may have seen this in a Zelda game).
We took a side trip to Amerika-mura which had the highest concentration of Engrish of our trip. I really wanted to buy one of the t-shirts but they were all $40, which is much too expensive for a t-shirt. We ended up having a drink or two at the Pig & Whistle, which is a UK themed bar for foreigners. I wasn’t feeling to great after my cold and the cold night, so I crashed after that while Keith went back to Flashback.
September 29, 2008 at 11:34 pm
I found Flashback purely by chance and I’m really glad I did. The first time I went to Osaka I asked the hostel owner for any good bars nearby and suggested this, primarily because it was gaijin owned and operated. Normally that isn’t a very big pull for me, but there I didn’t know the area and didn’t want to wander to far.
Flashback is owned by this awesome muscular black guy fluent in Japanese and English. The accent to his English leads me to believe that he grew up either in The Ivory Coast or South America, but I know most of his family lives in the States. He’s a pretty nice and talkative guy, like the bar tender you see in movies shooting the shit with his customers. He always had a Japanese woman or two that was flirting with him, usually one of his regulars. He would always toss one of the girls my way and encourage them to talk to me. He always remembered my name and welcomed me warmly, like one of the cast members from cheers. I think I earned an in with him because I tried very hard to understand all the Japanese being spoken and carry my weight in the conversation. The women would be nervous to talk at first because their English is weak, but once I piped up with my Japanese everyone seemed pretty comfortable.
I came here every night I was in Osaka, and on the night noted in this post it was pretty quiet. No girls from Yokohama taking their picture with us. No flood of people, and the flirtatious girls left a bit early. We chatted for a little bit, in which I told him it was my last night in Osaka before going back to America. When I went to pay my tab he wouldn’t take my money. Said it was on the house.
One of my best memories of Japan.