Lost In...Kyoto (Day 7)

Kyoto, here I come! Saturday morning I packed up, left most of my luggage at my hotel, my laptop with Jean, and boarded the Shinkansen (bullet train) in Yokohama bound for Osaka.





I was zooming along faster than an assassination bullet. Unfortunately I didn't get a window seat, but I did get to stare at the man sitting beside me while he ate his bento. It was really quiet for the most part since all Japanese people do on trains is sleep or email on their cell phones...and in the case of bullet trains, sleep, email or eat bento. There is even a girl that comes through with a trolley cart every half an hour or so selling coffee, pretz, and other assorted snacks. She wears a apron and everything. The entire trip to Osaka took about 3 hours, and I was going to take a picture in every station we stopped at, but due to my lack of window seat, I only could snap a shot at Nagoya since my man was standing up, reaching for his bento.



I finally made it to Shin-Osaka…



I had to switch trains one more time to make it to Osaka station, which sounded easy enough but in reality turned out to be more like an 'Office Space' moment. Boo! So I made it down to the platform and there were two trains, both headed in that direction. So I just grab the one that is leaving first and cram my body in the jammed car. All of a sudden, an announcement comes over the loudspeaker (in Japanese, naturally) and everyone makes a mad-dash out of my train onto the other train. They did not repeat the announcement in English. A few people stayed behind, so I thought I should just stay put. Well all of a sudden, another announcement was made, and a handful of people from on the other train dashed onto my now-empty train. Soon the other train shut its doors and left. My train didn't move for another five minutes until the next train showed up on the other side. As soon as those doors opened, everyone dashed out and ran into my train. Whoo hoo! Finally going to go! And soon enough there was another announcement made and everyone dashed out of my train back into the other one. I thought I'd take a chance and follow them, so I crammed my body into the other stuffed train. Soon, another announcement and bodies dashing out again into the train I just left, and it closed its doors and left. I've now been sitting on this stupid platform in one train or another for 15 minutes, when I should have been in Osaka already. We sit there. Soon another train pulls in on the other side and I am determined to stay put. Well…it leaves. Soon after that one left, my train finally shut its doors and I got to Osaka. The moral of the story is…if you are white, you are screwed when you are in Japan and they make announcements about trains.



After I stashed my crap in a locker at the station, I struggled to find my way out of the massive station (this is actually a problem at a few stations) and headed towards where all the people were congregating on a pedestrian bridge. I thought I'd try to find my bearings there.





I had read about some pretty cool things in my tourbook on the train, so I decided to head towards colourful objects since I logically decided that that is where the fun is.


I was like, Namco City! Cool! Yeah…it just turned out to be a pachinko place. Booo.

I wandered aimlessly for a while looking for a bench to eat my bento lunch and coming up unsuccessfully, I just plopped myself down on the curb. I don't know if curbs are strictly for bums only or something, because I elicited so many stares in Osaka sitting on that curb that I felt like my face was a giant booger or something. Who can say? I earned that curb! I wandered for nearly an hour looking for a place to eat! (FYI, there are NO public benches and very few garbage cans in Japan). Turns out my meal was shit anyways since it turned out I didn't realize it needed to be microwaved and it was basically cold udon with seaweed. Gross. I chucked and headed to the only place I thought I could find comfort:



And on that day, my seventh in Japan and 8,427^th day on this planet, I discovered the wonder of a sandwich. It was amazing. From this point on, it would become my number one food staple in Japan.

After devouring that savory goodness, I decided to continue on with my adventure, logging some time at the HEP Five.



Long story short, this mall was quite inferior to others I had been to in Tokyo, but the Sega Joyopolis at this mall was actually pretty cool until I got lost amongst the hot, sweaty teenagers playing video games to the shrieking schoolgirls in the purikura booths and the crepes, the thrill rides until all I wanted to was claw my way out. I wanted no more HEP. I always akin HEP to hepatitis anyways. (HEP in this case stood for Hankyu Entertainment Plaza)


This is a Hankyu department store. I think Hankyu basically owns Osaka and Kyoto as there is Hankyu stores everywhere and there is even a Hankyu subway line. I just said "Hankyu!" whenever someone did something nice for me.

Determined not to head back inside for fear of getting trapped (again), I headed towards another attraction listed in my trusty tourbook, the Sky Garden Observatory.



I had to hike a bit for this one since it was a bit of a distance from the train station, but thankfully it wasn't hard to find since it is one of the tallest buildings in Osaka. Once I got there, I found out it was 700 yen to go up, but since I walked all the way there and had nothing else to do, I paid.





On the train I had read about the author's experience in this building saying it was eerie since the escalators leading to the top are only supported on either end and if there was an earthquake, she would have been, essentially, toast. Well, I was thinking about this the whole way up…and down.






This is Osaka Bay and Universal Studios


The suspended escalators


It was actually really neat, because I could see all of Osaka from up there.






The ferris wheel on top of the HEP Five


The observatory was a giant ring and I thought it was pretty.


Going down…needless to say, I'm still alive and I made it, earthquake-free





The sun was starting to set and I decided to grab some dinner and make my way to Kyoto. On the way back to the station, I wandered unknowingly through Yodobashi Camera….geeze! That place is nutso. They have live auction-style salesmen trying to sell you all kinds of stuff with loud microphones, giant speakers and people just generally shouting everywhere. Instead of trying to comprehend what was going on or trying to find anything else, I booked it over to my new favorite restaurant, 7-11, and got myself another sandwich. I leaned against a wall (remember, no benches) and stared up at the HEP Five:

After I got back to the station, that is where the story of the day really began. I decided to call my buddy Jen, whom I was going to be staying with, from Osaka, that way she'd be at the station when I got there, since Osaka is about half an hour by train from Kyoto. So I called up the number she gave me in an email and I reached some guy who was "Moshi moshi"-ing me and I asked for Jen. He hung up in pretty short order and I was really confused. Maybe I dialed the wrong number? Maybe I'm not supposed to include the first number or three numbers? The numbers there are different than here, so I thought whatever…I'll just head over to Yamashina (the station we are to meet at) and call her when I get there. I got to Yamashina at 6 PM and I tried calling Jen again, but no answer and the answering machine message was a robotic lady in Japanese. I know Jen would have changed her message to English, so I was staring to think I had written the number down wrong. Yamashina is a pretty small station, so I didn't see any internet café or anything besides a Starbucks (which probably had wireless, but I didn't bring my laptop) and I didn't know who to ask since small station = small amount of English. I spotted a Nova sign on top of the Starbucks and logically decided that since Nova is a company that teaches English to Japanese speakers, there should be some English speakers inside. The receptionist didn't know a lot of English, but I decided to regale my story to her anyways. Soon enough everyone in the office was gathered around the desk and then a blonde head popped out with an Australian accent. Saved! Or so I thought. They had no internet in the office and no one knew of any internet in Yamashina. The nice blonde girl offered to show me to an internet café in Kyoto when she was off shift in about half an hour. I said when she was off, if she found me down on the sidewalk waiting for my friend still, I'd go with her. Well, several failed phone attempts and half an hour later, she came down and off we headed, back to Kyoto station. After running around the station, and then to the tourist booth, then into Isetan (department store whose internet had closed 10 minutes earlier), we headed outside past pachinko parlours, restaurants and a travel agency. A lady finally pointed us up to a shady internet café on the third floor of what looked like a deserted building.



The girl took the elevator up with me and then left me there. Yikes! I now had to try to communicate with two Japanese boys who spoke scare English…thankfully when I said "in-ta-ne-to" (Japanese word for internet), they happily gave me a little tray with a time card and I went into one of the half-curtained booths. Half-relieved, I soon started to panic when I stared at the Japanese keyboard and the lack of an underscore (they had several versions of an underscore, but nothing that worked with my email address); that, and every time I tried to type, kanji would populate in place of the letters I just typed! I ran up to the counter and asked how to turn off the Japanese. They smiled and punched a few keys and I was off again. The poor guy couldn't help me with an underscore until he finally discovered one in the address bar for hotmail I could copy and paste. I was in business! So I sent off some emails to Jen and said I'd head back to Yamashina in half an hour and wait for her there. The number I had written down was the same as in the email, so that was all I could do. I paid and headed back to Yamashina and sat down in my now usual spot at ouside the station, two hours later than when I first arrived here. Within 10 minutes, I hear a "Ddddddjjjjjjjjjzzzzzzz!" (that's our name for each other, btw) She was making dinner when she was wondering why I hadn't called yet, so she checked the email she sent me and she had given me the wrong number and then found my somewhat panic-laden emails. All was well with the world again. I gotta say though that I did pretty good, considering I didn't know what the hell was going on. We then took the train down to her and Chris' a-pa-to (apartment in Japanese), and had dinner and exchanged stories of our tales thus far in Japan.



This was probably the most dramatic thing to happen to me in Japan, but I was never actually that worried. I just kept thinking that I didn't want to pay for another room at a hotel – I'm cheap like that.

Tomorrow is my first big day out in Kyoto – seeing a Shinto wedding processional, dressing as a geisha in the geisha district of Gion, learning the word 'shimasu', and more purikura! I rove this prace.