Osaka Part I

Well, I'm back! Osaka was a great trip, and there's lots to say so I'm going to have to break it up into a couple posts.

Saturday

I left the house at 7:30am in order to meet up at the station at 8:30 for or 9 o'clock train. (View of the countryside from the train)

Mrs. Yurikusa made me a bento (Japanese lunch box) for the trip to eat on the train. It was delicious! It had 3 rice balls, some french fries, little sausages, and some kind of egg. The train ride only took two hours and was very enjoyable. We arrived in Osaka at the main downtown shopping area so we wandered around for a little bit and looked for a place to eat. The area was really neat and busy. There were restaurants with big moving crabs on the front and lots of blowfish balloons. Osaka is famous for three kinds of food: Fugu (blowfish), Takoyaki, and Kushikatsu (which I will explain later). We wanted to try blowfish because there's a chance that if it isn't prepared right it can poison you, but we ended up not getting a chance.

After exploring the main areas for a while we went to our hotel (by subway) to drop off our stuff. Then we wandered around the area by our hotel for a while. Osaka is a really big city (2nd largest in Japan) so there is lots to see no matter where you are. We walked a long ways just looking at all the different things, and then went to a building with a really neat view of the city. It was just getting dark by the time we got there, so we got to see Osaka all lit up at night!

After seeing the city from up high we wanted to meet up with some other kids from Nanzan who were back in the area where we got off the train. We decided to try to walk there and save a couple bucks by not taking the subway- bad idea. It took us 45 minutes power walking to get there! It was really neet to see that area of Osaka lit up at night though. There is a famous bridge in Osaka that is surrounded by all kinds of neon lights- the most famous of which is the big Glico man. Glico is a kind of really sugary candy. (The Glico man from the bridge)

We ended up sitting uder the bridge for a long time where we could look out at the city and watch people. We stayed there so long that we m issed our last train and had to walk all the way back to our hotel again! Needless to say were pretty tired.

Sunday (Warning: I eat what you would probably consider really gross stuff today)
One of my friends from school has a bunch of family living in Japan. Today his cousin, who lives near Osaka, wanted to show us around a little bit. We met him at the train station and then went to another shopping district where he treated us all to lunch! We had Kushikatsu, which basically means fried things on a stick. We had all kinds of different things, from cheese to shrimp, and soup with pig intestine in it. I wasn't soo keen on eating the little piece of intestine, but I did anyway. It was really squishy and didn't seem to have too much flavor.

(Osaka Tower and the shopping area around it)

After eating we walked around all kinds of other parts of town. There was one area that was pretty much guy heaven, with all kinds of electronics stores and such. One store we went into had all kinds of crazy little pieces for building train sets. On a lower floor there was a race track for people who build there own little battery operated cars. It was really cool watching the people test them out. Even little kids had huge tool kits to work on their cars! Next we wandered through America-mura (America's answer to China town), although it didn't really seem to me that there was anything especially American about it. Just more shopping and Japanese food. For dinner we found a Yakiniku place (Yaki=to cook, Niku=meat). Basically it means you get a little barbecue grill and plates of raw meat and vegetables and you cook them. We got alll kinds of parts of a cow that you would never eat in the states: tongue, intestines, stomach, and heart.

(Our Yakiniku - I think the pieces in the middle are tongue)

I tried them all like a true world traveler. I have to say, the tongue was very very good. We treated our 'guide' to dinner since he had been so generous in spending his day with us! After dinner we just took it easy at the hotel and watched crazy Japanese tv since we wanted to get up early to go to Universal Studios Japan the next day!

To Be Continued...... Same Bat Time- Same Bat Channel!