I posted another message a few minutes ago concerning the first half of my weekend, so maybe you're better off reading that first.

...So, the minibus dropped us off at the Umeda post office. I had talked to a number of the other extras, there were people from around the world, they seemed to consider anyone to be German-looking who wasn't Japanese. I even saw some Mexicans there and they would definitely pass as Japanese long before they'd pass as Germans, but no matter. Some of the people were cool, but the majority seemed to be of the quality of people who would come to Japan purely for the anime and girls who didn't understand what losers they are in their home countries. Supposedly you get a lot of those types in Japan, though I hadn't met many until that day.

Anyway, Mark and I bought some beer from the store and headed down to the subway to Shinsaibashi. We drank our beer on the subway ride and headed down towards Dotonburi. It's really hard to find good bars, so a lot of it is just trial and error walking down the sidestreets. We saw a sign for one on the 8th floor of a building called "2Pac", and with a name like that, good times were surely in store. We walked in and it was completely empty, though it was still early. There was a kind of pink/purplish glow and I knew something wasn't right, but Mark said everything was fine. We each ordered a beer and went to sit down near the window and were watching the scenery on the street below. When we turned around, there was a Japanese girl that had earlier been behind the bar, standing there in a mini-skirt and pig-tails, looking like she was ready to party. "Hello!!!" she said enthusiastically and waved at us with both hands.

We just kind of stared at her awkwardly and didn't say anything. She ran off, then came back with a big bowl of candy. Mark called the bartender over who could speak a bit of English and asked him if this was a "hostess bar" and he said it was. We'd heard stories of people going to hostess bars and being stuck with tabs of thousands of yen of a girl that they were paying to sit with them, so we explained to the bartender that we didn't understand and were able to escape with only paying a total of 900 yen for our beers and "seating fees".

It's hard to find a bar here, since they're mostly hidden within big buildings and are listed only in Japanese characters, so I think the only way to learn one's way around is by either knowing other people with more experience or exploring, so we continued on. After a bit more searching, we found a basement bar called "Plant Bar". Plant Bar was small (mostly just a bar) and played good music. There were four JET teachers from Seattle that we were talking to. JET teachers generally live out in the small towns and villages and will meet up in the city over the weekends. They'll often take a trainride of a couple of hours into town Saturday evening, spend the whole night at the bars, then go home the next morning. These four (John, Helen, Lucas and ___) had been here since July (like all JET people). They invited us out to the next bar with them, where they claimed it was "all-you-can-drink-for-two-hours" for a reasonable price.

The price turned out to be not so reasonable, but luckily they had cheap individual beers. We never would have found this place if it weren't for John who could speak Japanese and thus was the leader of their group. At around 11:30pm I realized I had to rush out to catch the last train, but Mark (who lives nearby) told me to just borrow his bike.

Next we went to an area called Amerika-Mura (meaning something like America Town. I had never been there but really like it. It's a neighbourhood dedicated to the styles of the United States and during the day has all kinds of little clothing shops and cafes, I'm told. There's an open triangular area where the Japanese skater kids hang out and there we ran into some friends of the JET people who we had, by chance, met earlier that day at the movie shoot. Actually, we probably saw about a quarter of the foreigners in Osaka at that movie shoot. We were all going to go to a club, but the cover charge John had negotiated wasn't low enough, so I just headed back with Mark to get his bike.

I biked most of the way home in record time, now that I'm getting to know the city better it goes a bit faster. I had to also pick up my own bike, which I had left at Juso station. I'm told that you can't leave your bike out overnight or else the police will come pick it up and put it in some kind of impound lot on the other side of the city. Dragging along two bike was taking forever, so I biked one home, then jogged back and biked the other one home and went to bed.

I got a lot of sleep that night and didn't wake up until after 1pm. I was scheduled to meet up with Zoe after her work in Nanba at 3:10pm, but I got lost after Umeda (trying to take a short-cut) and headed in the wrong direction for a while and was pretty late. I need to get a compass. On my way down it started raining. This was the first time that it had rained since I arrived in Osaka two and a half weeks ago, which is pretty amazing seeing as how Vancouver rained every day that I was there just beforehand (but yeah, that's Vancouver). Then the rain started coming down harder. And harder. Suddenly, it was hailing like I'd never seen before. Japanese people were all running into nearby buildings and staying off the streets, but I was late so I continued on.

Zoe and I met by the big metal ball at OCAT and went up to "Skits" or something like that, where the multimedia people hang out. Nova has a big building in Nanba where there's the multimedia centre, meaning all the teachers teach classes over the internet, Zoe and her boyfriend Graham both teach there, as well as Jeremiah who I met in the Vancouver airport on my way here. The multimedia people were sitting around, drinking their coffees and beers. I didn't really get a chance to talk to many of them, though they all sounded British to me. Zoe told me all about the workings of the multimedia centre and it sounds fun, though I'm happy to be teaching man-to-man since the interaction is good (for now, at least).

Afterwards, Zoe and I walked up towards Shinsaibashi. She said she was aware of somewhere that sold postcards, which I had yet to see. The bookstore she had described sold only expensive postcards that weren't even of Japan (things like the Eiffel Tower), but luckily we found a great place along the way and I bought seventeen.

Next we went back to Amerika Mura, which I really like now. We went into something that was probably supposed to look like an American diner, but definitely didn't, though its walls were covered in Coca-Cola signs and other general crap from the 1950s-60s. I had a chocolate-banana milkshake which was great, probably the most sugar I've consumed in one sitting since I've arrived.

We went to meet up with Justin & Jacquie afterwards, and listen to this...

When Just got home Saturday, he realized his wallet was missing. He looked around and couldn't find it, which was pretty bad since it had the equivalent of a few hundred Canadian dollars in it. Meanwhile, Justin's father gets a phone call in Canada from Visa, saying there has been some strange action on his credit cards and they wanted to make sure that everything was alright. Justin called them and apparently over $7,000 CDN had been spent between his three credit cards within a period of six hours. Now Justin is completely out of money and identification and is generally in a bad position, but he's going to be fine. Actually, Justin's whole household is in shambles. One roommate had his bike stolen the day before and the other one's long-time ill mother died last week and he's had to return to Scotland.

Justin, Jacquie, Zoe and I went to Balaboushka's (the free pool & darts bar from last weekend) and met up with Graham and his friend. I played Justin a game of darts for a beer and he won, so I have to start practicing before I make another wager. Apparently he and his roommates play Texas Hold'em quite often so I'm going to come join them some night this week, though I'm a bit worried about his apartment being cursed. Hopefully it's just the residents that are cursed and I might be able to win some serious cash from them. Graham (Zoe's boyfriend) is also living in Shinosaka and he invited me out to the local bar on Tuesday night. He seems like he could be the typical uppity British guy, but I haven't gotten to know him yet. At the end of the night I rode Mark's bike down to his house and dropped off the key and headed home, barely making the last subway back. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do when I finally do miss it.

This morning (Monday) I got up early because I had a few chores I wanted to do in my neighbourhood. First of all, there was the matter of breakfast foods. For the past week I was eating bread, peanut butter and orange juice, and had pretty much run out of all three and wanted to make my way to the Max-Valu supermarket. Secondly, I wanted to check out the prices of the local drycleaner, and thirdly, I wanted to check out Shinosaka's gym, to which someone from work had drawn me a map.

The supermarket portion went swimmingly, the drycleaner was alright, though it takes them two days to clean anything which is unacceptable so I might just wait until the weekend before cleaning things. Then came the gym. I got there just before 10am when it opened and there was a line-up of old women. I went down to Starbucks to listen to Christmas music until it opened, then went back up. The gym staff couldn't speak English, so I drew them sufficient pictures for them to understand I wanted to have a look around. I walked around and was fairly unimpressed. Gyms are a lot more expensive here, which is fine, but if I'm paying more I want a much better gym. This one was packed with old people (except for the weight area which was completely empty). Actually, when I got up to the weight room, a trainer-type guy rushed over and managed to get an English sentence out, "American people like lift weights little." As you can see, this was a very informative trip to the gym. There was an old man in a hot tub off the changing room bobbing up and down. I didn't like this sight an quickly got out of there. There's a chance that I still might sign up since it's so close to my house, but for now I'm going to save my money and try to take up jogging again.

Well, that's about it, my work week is going to start again in an hour and a half, so have a good week and fill me in on what you're all up to.

Ryan