Address & Weekend!

As a response to the heavy requests (probably because of my and Jesus' upcoming birthdays, ahem), here's my mailing address:

Ryan Smith
532-0012 Osaka-Fu
Yodogawa-Ku
4-17-9 Kikawahigashi
#615 Lions Mansion Shin Osaka Dai 6
JAPAN

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My weekend
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I had a great weekend. Wait, have I told you about Friday already? Ah yes. Alright, so as you may recall, my trainride home had rendered me yenless and I wasn't sure how I was going to get back into town to use the internet to transfer money online into my chequings account to be withdrawn. It's all a vicious cycle leaving me trapped at home. Luckily, my roommate Chris was able to lend me 200 yen so I could catch the train in from Juso. Chris has a shoebox full of change in his room, I'll have to remember this when things get tight... Actually, I created a secret change stash of my own, so that won't be necessary.

I went window-shopping for a glamourous bicycle and found just that. Actually, every bike in Osaka seems to be exactly the same. They all have the kick-stand, just one gear, a basket in the front and one of those little bells that make you feel tough. The shinier they are, the higher they're priced. After checking out a few stores, I settled for a moderately-shiny one for 6,000 yen.

That afternoon I met up with Steve. He can speak functional Japanese and he helped me get my key copied (which I am planning to hide somewhere in my neighbourhood - up a tree, if possible). We visited some of the bars in the Umeda area, one of them was a shot bar where I tried my first Irish whiskey, called Tullamore Dew, which was tasty. We later met up with some friends of his who are participating in the Jet program and had come into Osaka for a concert of sorts. I'm a little jealous about this Jet program, it sounds really good (300K yen/month, heavily subsidized accomodations, Japanese government-funded orientation) and is a much more prestigious program than Nova, but Nova was the only means by which I could go to Japan in November and be pretty much guaranteed placement in a big city.

Actually, in retrospect, I kind of hit the jackpot with Nova. I had originally been planning on teaching with Geos, which I had been told is much higher quality than Nova, but accidentally slept through the third part of the interview. Unfortunatley for Geos, they had already eliminated everyone else in the group interview and thought that I was surely their man, but apparently they were very wrong. I wrote them a letter of apology but never heard back. Well I'm glad I didn't. I haven't yet seen one Geos school anywhere in the city of Osaka (whereas Nova is everywhere) so I probably would have been placed in some kind of two-horse fishing village in the middle of the country- ok, so maybe they fish in a pond. Jen said it was fate and I guess it may have been her reporter's intuition and not just trying to get me to shut up.

Anyway, Steve and the Jet people were going to a club with a $35.00 CDN covercharge and that's still horribly outlandish to me, so I caught the last train to Juso. From Juso I decided to have a footrace with myself and sprinted as fast as I could home, the current record is 7 minutes, 23 seconds. Here in Osaka I feel like enough of an outsider that I have absolutely no problem flailing my arms around and running as fast as possible through the middle of the streets, people will still look at me with an equal amount of curious suspicion as always. I'm not sure if I told this story already, but my roommate Will said the people here are blind to the ways of the Westerners. He said that sometimes on on a full but quiet subway, Chris will just start beatboxing and he'll erupt into a freestyle rapping session and no one even bats an eye.

On that note, I was walking down the street earlier Saturday morning and a man was sitting in his car reading a newspaper, as they often do here. He glared at me suspiciously and as I approached he locked his car doors and sat back. Lucky him, too, since I had my crowbar on me and was looking for a Japanese man to beat up and rob, as I often tend to do. I guess I now know how minorities sometimes feel in North America. Sunday night, also, I was trying to politely ask for directions from a woman, who, instead of responding, took off running.

Sunday I decided to try out the new bike and made my way down to the riverside. The goal for the day was to get my bike down to the Shinsaibashi (southern downtown) area so that I could stay out past midnight (when the trains stop running) and then bike home. At the riverside I found my way up a hill to a set of stairs that led to the sidewalk along one of the many bridges that cross the Yodobashi (though this is the main one which has eight lanes of highway and carries my subway line). I cruised down the sidewalk, clenching the sidebar whenever a bike or person passed so that neither of us would get thrown into high-speed traffic.

My riverside has a walking path, baseball fields and then a bit of a strange boggy area that you wouldn't expect to see in such a central part of a large city. Getting to the other side was a bit of a shock, since there were little huts made of sheet metal and a man sitting in a pile of junk on a hill. It was obviously a sketchy part of town, but at least I wasn't going through at night-time (there's a little foreshadowing for you).

After passing through another neighbourhood into Umeda, I parked my bike and spent the afternoon there, exploring and mixing in with the weekend crowds. I really like seeing the youth all over the streets here and am now very thankful that I have weekends off, since that's when they're all out in their full glory. I met a group of Japanese goths and requested they let me take a picture with my phone, I'll upload it if I can figure out how. Also, Friday night at my work's train station there were a few groups of Japanese rebel teenagers playing the guitar and singing, I'd like to get a video of it because Japanese people can be so... adorable, I guess the word would be.

When it was starting to get dark I biked down to Shinsaibashi to drop off my bike. I passed through another red light district and am confused since I've now wandered into at least five around the city. I passed into another part of town that was actually beautiful. It was the first beautiful part of Osaka that I have seen. The clean street was lined with golden trees, there were little statues along the sidewalk and untacky Christmas-style lights draped over the lamp-posts. There were a few official-looking buildings, one possibly being city hall, and I passed over a nice-looking river that made me finally understand how Osaka was once called the "Venice of the East". Not that that kind of term is used selectively - it's also been named the "Manchester of the East" in reference to its industrial beauty.

I also came across the Hard Rock Cafe and after a few blocks was surprised to see that I had been on the avenue that later became the main strip of Shinsaibashi. Now everything that I had seen in scattered bits while emerging from subway stations around the city was finally coming together into one giant map.

There's always a lot going on in Shinsabashi at night time. Despite the sidewalks being packed, ther was a bride and groom walking down the middle with a cameraman filming them. I parked my bike among the many parked along the road. I always try to pick a point on the street to remember it by, since all bikes basically look the same. Mine, however, is of the unique brand-name "WendyCycle" so at least I have that. WendyCycle makes a fine bike. Actually, it's pretty rickety, but that's alright.

I took the train back home partially to get some supper and change, but mostly because I had nothing to do for a few hours before I was supposed to meet up with Mark, Justin & Jacquie. I probably ate sushi, I don't really remember these things anymore though. Ugh, tonight I bought some sushi at the local grocery store. Trying to find the least dangerous-looking roll, I got one with what I thought was chopped up peanuts in the middle, but it definitely wasn't. I have no idea what it was, but it's wet, gooey, tastes bad and looks like chopped-up peanuts. And please don't mention the fact that no one would make sushi with chopped-up nuts inside, I know.

That night I met up with Mark at Badaboushka's (or something like that), a fairly good-sized bar that provides free pool and darts if you purchase drinks. The pool tables were full so we tried our hands at darts. Apparently, the game of darts exists in Australia, because Mark was able to destroy me (it was my first time playing, though I'm on my way to becoming a darts wizard).

Afterwards we met up with Justin & Jacquie at the swanky Riverside Restaurant where they were on an all-you-can-drink deal with a slew of Nova teachers and staff from their school in Kongo. Jacquie and I have been discussing what to do for New Year's and have started thinking up ideas for some kind of Christmas dinner. Apparently, Nova is still operational through Christmas, though since Christmas Eve and Day land respectively on Saturday and Sunday, I happen to get both off.

Around 11:30, Jacquie and Justin both had to take their train back (but not me) and Mark luckily lives with a five minute walk and didn't have to rely on any transportation. We wandered around for a while, had a Kirin (good Japanese beer) in an Olde English pub, then headed up to Dotonburi to that 280 bar where I had gone last Saturday with Zoe and Suzanna. To refresh your memory, all items in the bar cost 280 yen (294 with tax) and that covers such random items as medium or large beers, skewered chicken hearts (luckily they have an English menu because the pictures look good), mixed drinks, frozen strawberries, various other skewered parts of a chicken, and "bowl of boiled cabbage (second helping free)".

After leaving, the streets were pretty empty and we were approached by a lone woman offering "massaji". Since the streets were so dead I decided to try to bike back at top speed and set another record, though I'm a still a little worried about bike use here. Helmets don't exist, which I guess is good since I hate wearing them, so I have to be extra careful not to crack my head open (versus in Canada, where I have been hit by a car while riding a bike twice).

Everything went well until I got back to the bridge area. I figured that rather than making my way through the dodgy riverside possibly hobo-infested area, I'd just take the shortcut up the overpass upon which cars drive. HUGE mistake. It was four lanes heading in one direction which started out calmly until I got about five minutes along. After a "close call" with what looked to be a car scene out of the movie "The Fast and the Furious", I hopped off my bike and walked it along a narrow strip between the road and a concrete wall I was likely going to be crushed up against. I came to a platform that I could use to cross over to the traffic heading in the opposite direction and took it, thinking it would raise my chances of survival by having the cars at my back, but it just made it ever-the-more-frightening as vehicles went booming by at speeds that physically pushed me towards the rail with a big drop to the road below. I had a near-death-experience when a giant truck, refusing to give me anymore space than he thought necessary, barely brushed past me. I was so thankful to get off of that ramp alive.

Next came the hobo village that I had mentioned earlier. I was making my way towards the lone spiral staircase that I would have to carry my bike up to get onto the sidewalk. Government officials were considerate enough to place this as close as they could to the grassy bit by the river where it seems that Osaka's homeless like to camp out. As I approached, there were no longer any street lights and the area was completely dark, to add to the effect. A man was biking out of there and looked quite ogrish which made me yelp out loud and then burst out laughing. As I passed under a low overpass, I passed another character, a motorcyclist who had debarked and was holding some kind of pack and just standing there in the dark, no doubt waiting for someone to come pick it up and I really didn't want to be there when that happened. I continued on and made it to the spiral staircase, threw my bike over my shoulder and jogged up and took off.

When I got home, I told my roommate Will about it and he said that I took the wrong bridge. Apparently the bridge near Juso is completely made for cyclists. Hmm.

Alright, so it's now Monday night. Today work was easy, one of my classes was cancelled since they didn't have enough students to go around, and I also got to do voice again, which is pretty relaxed. I had good class discussions and in a lesson about nutrition I got to tell some Japanese women about why North Americans are so fat. I think I've now met all of the teachers at my school and am surprised by the number of Americans, at least six. I'm the only Canadian and there's at least one Brit and one Australian. One of the staff (administrative front desk staff, they're all Japanese) told me that one of my students complained that I speak too quickly. I know just who it was, too, and it was his own fault, he wasn't listening and I think was humiliated that he never knew any answers when I called upon him. Nevertheless, I do speak too quickly and have trouble gaging how good the students' English is since it really seems to vary. The other teachers say that conversation with them gets boring once you get to know all of the students for a while, but for now things are going well and I enjoy teaching the classes more than sitting around in the teacher's room.

Anyway, now that I'm into the full swing of things, this is probably the last gigantic post that you're going to see here for a long, long time. Frankly, I don't have the time anymore, things are probably going to become routine and monotonous and there's little reason for you to be sitting here reading the same thing over and over again. There are other things I want to get done too... I went to the Osaka Foreign Work Office today and they directed me to the Working Holiday Visa Office to find second job. Also, one of the teachers at my work told me about a service that matches English teachers up with students for tutoring that pays $25/hr plus transportation. She says that they've even issued her more students than she can handle and she was able to live off of purely tutoring last month, so that sounds nice and I'm going to check it out. This paragraph has really just become me talking to myself, I'm getting really sleepy if you can't tell, and my eyes keep shutting. I don't want to become one of those Japanese people who sleep at the internet cafe (they provide blankets and pillows here), so I had better get out of here.

Ryan

P.S. In case you've forgotten, that address again is:

Ryan Smith
532-0012 Osaka-Fu
Yodogawa-Ku
4-17-9 Kikawahigashi
#615 Lions Mansion Shin Osaka Dai 6
JAPAN