First Impressions - Part 3: Osaka Day Two/Three

If you're just joining us, scroll wayyyyy down a couple of messages for the beginning of today's entry. I've had a lot to catch up on so I've had to cut it down into parts (just in case something goes wrong and I accidentally delete it like I did yesterday).

So continuing from where I left off in Part 2, I woke up at 5:30am to hear Chris getting ready for his trip to the Philippines. I waited until after he was gone before getting up myself and was out the door around 8am to go discover the city and try to change my mind about the horrors of coming to Osaka that had plagued my mind the night before. I think the peak of the night before was when I realized that I had signed up for an entire year and was in a What was I thinking?!! mindframe. Anyway, it was a new day, and things didn't seem so bad anymore. The sun was bright and things looked happier. I still hadn't showered since my arrival since I didn't have a towel (don't worry, I'd been using one provided by the hostel while in Vancouver) and so my day's priority was to get out, see a bit of the city and buy a towel. It seemed simple enough.

Everything was bright and had that early morning happiness that I hadn't had the pleasure of being up for in the past few months. The schoolchildren sauntered about in small packs on their way to school and were dressed in hilarious little outfits. I guess their uniforms depended on their school because they changed from area to area. I saw a couple of them near my house who were dressed like Swiss mountain-men with bow-ties and brimmed hats and I burst out laughing and one of the boys pointed at me and said something to his mother. Japan is fun.

I got to Shinosaka and there were line-ups already for the train. Someone had explained this to me long ago and I was surprised to see that it was actually true... While waiting for trains, Japanese people organize themselves by standing in "double-file" lines (as if they're in line with partners) and stand quietly. As the train comes, though, the whole line system breaks loose and they all just rush chaotically aboard. The first came train and was completely packed already and only a few lucky individuals got aboard, including my "partner" and some women behind me, but excluding the people who were at the front of my line. When the next train came a minute or two later, it was empty and we all got on!

I got off at Umeda station. I had read in some travel guides that Umeda was a big business and commercial area and it didn't fail to disappoint. Massive department stores and floods of Japanese people in business suits presumably making their morning trek to the office. I was fairly lost with no idea of where to go and really wonder what most people do in my circumstance, since most newcomers have probably traveled less than me and have far less intellect than I do. After a bit of wandering I found a gigantic bookstore and had found the words in my phrasebook for "english" and "books". The store attendant had absolutely no idea of what I was talking about. I kept repeating myself, then showed him the characters in my book. Oh, apparently I was pronouncing it wrong. He said something in Japanese and said "Engrish Corner" and pointed up while showing me the number 4 with his other hand. "Fourth floor!" I exclaimed and proceeded up the escalators. On the fourth floor I approached the attendant and basically did the same thing, basically saying the Japanese equivalent of "Me want Osaka English guidebook." After a couple of times it worked and she found me one.

I continued on my wandering around the streets of Umeda. I came across those golden arches I'd been looking for the night before and decided I deserved a fine breakfast after that successful book purchase. I got my McMuffin and headed upstairs with my tray. The 2nd floor was really smoky, so I continued up and had most of the 3rd floor to myself.

After breakfast I continued my wandering, still keeping my eyes open for a towel shop. Sometimes I'd go into a random store and say "toeru doko desu ka" (Where is towel?) hoping that someone would be able to help me out, but they kept giving me disappointed looks and making 'x' symbols with their arms, politely indicating something negative.

Next I came across a sign showing computers and had the English name "Media Cafe". Thinking I'd found the internet cafe I was looking for I headed up their stairs and came into a large room with what kind of looked like mahogony cubicles and big mahogony bookshelves filled with what I thought were Japanese DVDs. They couldn't speak English and I tried to indicate that I wanted to use the internet, but my hand motions of typing must have looked like piano-playing because they just stared at me blankly. Eventually I started to think that maybe I'd stumbled upon the wrong kind of "Media Cafe" and that this was just a place for people to watch pornography, so I started to leave, but then saw ads for lan computer games on the way out and decided to go back in and give it another try. This time they gave me a piece of paper with English sentences saying things like "For office class with own room: 480 yen per hour" and so on, I just indicated that I wanted the most basic "class" of computer usage. The page they showed me also said at the bottom "You may buy food from our staff and vending machine. Drinks are free and we encourage you to take them."

I updated my blog for the next two hours or so and then somehow deleted it since I can't read what the buttons are saying on the screen since everything's in Japanese and I have to basically guess or work out of memory of the position of things. I was angry, paid for my time and headed out of there to continue my search for a towel. I saw my first other foreigner in the subway station, an American guy on a business trip who was heading back to North Carolina later that day. I talked to him, hoping he could solve my towel dilemma and he invited me to come with him to Shinsaiban, an area with more department stores where he was headed to eat some sushi off a conveyor belt.

Backtracking a bit, British Zoe had told me that the band Oasis was on the plane with her from London the day before and this businessman said that they were staying at the Ritz Carlton where he was. He drank the night before in the hotel bar with Noel and Liam Gallagher and I noted this so that I could go stake the place out that night, but completely forgot about it until now... maybe I'd better go stake it out tonight and see if they're still there.

So I parted ways with the businessman and went into the first department store I found and upon inquiring about towels the pleased store clerk took me to the other side of the room and showed me a small dishcloth and bowed. "Big, Big toeru" I said indicating something big with my hands. Oh, he expressed in the international language of facial expressions, Well We don't carry real towels. I continued my search and then gave up and decided I really needed a shower anyway. So I went back home and showered, using paper towel to dry myself off.

I still hadn't met Will and he was gone, at work, I presumed. However, he had cleaned a bit in the morning, the garbage on the kitchen floor had been taken out! Maybe he wasn't such a bad guy afterall... I was still really scared of him though.

I decided to go register with my local ward office, as had been recommended by NOVA to do on my first day. I was in the ward of Yodogawa-Ku and went to the Jusan (?) train station from where there was a map that NOVA had given me of how to find it. The map showed the local KFC and a bank that was closed. I knew I needed 300 yen to get an "Alien Registration Card" and only had 250 which was just enough to get the train out of there. So I wanted to visit the bank to either change over my Canadian cash or withdraw from my account from home before I went. Since Japanese banks close at the convenient hour of 3pm, it had just closed and the ATMs, which looked like a primative version from the 1960s, didn't take my type of card.

I decided to go find the ward office anyway and spent a good hour walking around trying to make sense of the map. I was led down strange alleyways to a dead end and through a kind of market-type area. Eventually when I was officially lost, I tried asking some passerbys and people pretended they didn't know what I was talking about (whereas they obviously did). I had been shot down earlier when I asked a man a question in Japaense and he pushed his way past me while others watched and didn't say anything, so I was a little hesitant. I asked a girl who was probably about 15 and she seemed delighted that I was talking to her. She couldn't speak English but motioned for me to come with her. We walked in silence for the next ten minutes or so and she would point when we had to turn a corner. It felt like a bit of an awkward silence, despite not being able to communicate with each other, so I kept looking up little comments in my phrase book as we walked like "massugu desu ka" (straight ahead?) to which she would reply "Hai!" (Yep!). We continued until we passed through a covered street and out the other side and she motioned to a big ward-looking building ahead of us, smiled and walked away. "Domo arigato!!" I said and ran towards it.

The ward building was very bureaucratic and friendly community-ish. People waiting for their names to be called watched a big screen where Sumo wrestlers were involved in an enthralling battle of who's more difficult to push over. I went up to a counter that had the English words Foreigner Alien Registration above it and a toadish old man jumped up and eagerly tried to impress me with a few selected words of English thrown into some Japanese, though he usually couldn't quite understand my responses unless they were "yes" or "no", but it was nice to hear some semi-functional English. I did, however, have a page of instructions in English and Japanese so we both looked at those and he was friendly and able to get me the right forms and told me to leave and come back in 20 minutes for my alien registration cards. I didn't want to ask him if I really needed that 400 yen, but I thought since I'd come so far that waiting it out and coming back I'd have a better chance of either him forgetting to charge me or not making me pay once I explained that I didn't have the cash on me.

Unfortunately, he didn't and ripped up my temporary cards when I said I didn't have the yen. I tried offering him my Visa and Canadian dollars, but he said "No, Japanese yen!" and bowed his head in sympathy and continued to rip them up. He gave me a sheet, though, to bring back the next day and they'd print them out for me again. They were open for another half hour and I desperately ran from hotel to hotel in the area to see if they'd exchange CDN$ for yen, but they wouldn't, so I caught the next train to Umeda with my last couple of hundred yen. I knew that I wouldn't be able to walk home from Umeda, so I needed to find cash there or else I was sleeping on the street.

In Umeda, I was happy to find two sources of cash... A CityBank machine that allowed me to take out 4000 yen from my checking account and a department store that had a foreign currency exchange where I changed my $55 CDN into about 5,000 yen. With my pockets full of thousand-yen bills I got ready to head back home. But first I checked out some more department stores for a towel. One of them was a sports store. The English-speaking employee replied "Oh, to dry yourself off in the rain?" and brought me to another dishcloth. God, how do these people get dry?! When I said I wanted something bigger, he motioned for me to go upstairs and a group of store employees tried to help me out. They called other stores to see if anyone sold towels and finally came back to tell me that there is a place that sells them across the street on the 9th floor.

I spent about an hour trying to find this elusive 9th floor, and when I got there there were no towels in sight. I think the previous store's employees may have just made it up to get rid of me. I decided to give up and go home.

In Shinosaka station I bought a toasted sandwich. Pretty much every shop there sold only rice with various meats on top with a strange brown liquid poured over it, so I was happy to find a shop with actualy sandwiches. I realized the irony in all three meals that I had eaten in Japan so far were sandwiches, whereas my past five or so days in Canada were packed with me eating Japanese food.

I made my way back to my apartment because the deliverymen were supposedly coming between 8 and 9pm to deliver my big backpack and popped in the movie "Go" and watched about 25 minutes of it before the buzzer rang on the phone (not a real phone, one of those ones in apartments with no numbers on it). I picked it up, they said something in Japanese, then I mashed all the buttons down to let them in (they were all in Japanese so I didn't know what was what). I met them at the elevator and brought my bag back to my room. I went out again to use the internet and have the feeling that I ate something else, though can't remember what.

This time when I got back, I met Will and was happy to see that he acutally seemed to be a nice guy and not scary like I'd imagined. I asked him a lot of the same questions as I had asked Chris and apparently he also has no knowledge of Japanese, I don't know how these people get along. At first I got the impression that maybe he has some kind of learning disability, but he told me that he was just accepted to do a master's in London next September, so maybe not. He said he's really into hip hop and his clothing is very fashionable (?). I inquired and most of the 8 or so pairs of shoes out front were his and he has more in his room. It's amusing talking to Californians because they throw words into regular conversation like "Dope" and "Hella-" as if they're regular parts of speech. He told me he was going to Kyoto for the next day. Will showed me how to use the washing machine and I went to bed around 11pm.

Wooo, this is getting long and I want to leave to get something to eat or my next blog will just end up being about me typing my blog.

So this morning I woke up at 5am to see that I'd fallen asleep with the lights on (too much walking the day before). I'm very productive in the morning. I put all my clothes out on the line which hangs across our balcony and started to wash the dishes which were still dirty in the sink. I think at least one of them had been sitting there for a very long period of time.

It was again bright and sunny outside and I was considerably more comfortable and happy to be in Osaka. Most of my clothes were either dirty or wet so I threw on a button-up shirt and fancy sweater to go about town in. At around 9:30am Will gave me directions and I walked to the Yodagawa-Ku ward and got my temporary alien registration papers. They said to come back in December for the actual card.

I made my way to Umeda again afterwards and continued my search for towels, but again to no avail. I went back to the same internet cafe as yesterday, and... well that's where I am now. I spent a really long time typing and my neck hurts and I want to go find some good sushi, so I'm going down to where that businessman told me he was going to eat it off a conveyor belt. Sounds like fun. I still haven't really done any sightseeing but I think that might be more fun when I meet other people to do it with. Also, I think things will be a lot more enjoyable if I can make some local Japaense friends who will be able to help me out and help explain what is going on. Hey, there's a guy reading this over my shoulder right now. Ooh, that got him to leave and go back to his computer really awkwardly. I guess he's not going to be my new Japanese friend.

If anyone has gotten through all of this, please feel free to leave comments.

Ryan