Neighbourhood Animals, Spa World and Bowling

Last night I was biking home and saw, for the second day in a row, a strange animal that was digging through the garbage crossed in front of me. For lack of ever having seen one of these creatures before, my guess is that it was a "possum". Ok, I Just looked up a picture of a possum on google images, and no, it wasn't a possum. I looked up a bunch of other animals that I've heard of but didn't know what they were, and can assure oyu that it also wasn't a meerkat, a weasel or a marmot (I really doubted it was that one anyway). But it was long, with a point nose, about as long as a cat but maybe... flatter? I don't know. Anyway, to my surprise, there seem to be more animals in urban Osaka than I would have imagined.

There are stray cats, for example, near a playground near my apartment. The local elderly seem to have taken quite an interest in them, as I have seen numerous old people attempting to feed and/or catch them. I saw an old man making strange noises in the general direction of one of the cats and the cat was ignoring him.

Moving along, this weekend was pretty fun. Yesterday (Sunday) I was invited by one of my Japanese friends to go to "Spa World", a gigantic spa complex in southern Osaka that is on sale for the next two months. Onsens (baths) are very popular, traditional and all over the place in Japan and I hadn't experienced one yet. Spa World was an eight-floor mega-centre in the middle of the city. We first went to the top floor where they had swimming facilities with giant waterslides and all kinds of advanced pool features. For example, there was a gigantic wooden bucket with water constantly pouring into it. When it got full enough, alarms would go off and it would dump all over the people on one side of the pool. It was a lot of fun. Next, we went to the European bath floor. There's an Asian-style and a European-style floor and each month they rotate genders (onsens are split up into genders). And it's a good thing that they were, because Japanese people are shameless when it comes to walking around naked, apparently. The European floor was split into the style of a half-dozen different areas: Finland was really cold water with hot saunas (oh, and fake birch trees and rocks). Greece, Rome, "Blue Cave", "Outdoor European spa" were all frustratingly hot. There was a Greek "red wine" bath that was kind of interesting, though unbearably hot. We went to a "salt room" where you're supposed to just rub salt over your body and to a couple of other unbearably hot baths. What I did enjoy, though, was relaxing in the cold Finnish bath. Most of the Japanese people stood clear of it, but it was really refreshing. Then afterwards in the Atlantic bath, where you're in a kind of section-off aquarium with fish and small sharks swimming behind glass under and next to you. Anyway, it was pretty relaxing and quite cheap.

Afterwards I went bowling as an event with people from work. I'm really bad at bowling, I was even surprised. I don't think I've ever used those gigantic balls with finger holes in them. No one understood what I was talking about when I tried to explain what bowling balls are back home. Anyway, I think I came in second last, followed only by a girl from Halifax that I met that night. It must be a local thing. Anyway, I think we're both getting prizes for coming in last place.

Time for work, talk to you soon.

Ryan