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Today was a good day. I woke at about half 6 and the room was really bright, and I lay in bed for an hour until I heard my room mates start to wake up. I had decided that today I would do my first bit of site seeing. The symbol of Osaka is Osaka castle. This building and the courtyards, walls, moats etc are depicted all over Osaka and it has a very long and complicated history being the focal point of many famous battles . The castle its self is a few Km from here and I decided to take the scenic route along the river. It was really bright when I left at half eight, but nice and cool. And even though id read its was gonna be heavy rainfall today it was bright sunshine and clear skies all day. It was a really nice walk and I took a few pictures of the different architecture I came across and just round the corner from the castle stopped to get my self a corneto. (You can see chocolate on the corner of my mouth in some of the photos). You have to enter via the still existing and partially rebuilt gates which are huge and the bricks that make up the wall are over 85 tonnes in some places. I found it creepy how there were so many crows about. There were dozens and they seemed not to care about tourists.
On the main bridge I spotted my first ever mantis. Until this point nothing has really stood out to me that I was abroad, granted I was surrounded by Japanese people and I couldn't read any signs but seeing a mantis was a big thing as it is something you would never come across in the UK.
I carried on up to the castle having a mooch in the souvenir shop and wandering what hello kitty and Spiderman toys had to do with Osaka castle. I bought my self a ticket and went in but sadly only one floor allowed photos so there are very few taken of my visit. Each floor represents a period in the castles history and artefacts from that time like armour and paintings talk you through what it was like to live and work there. There were a few videos to watch and lots to read (luckily in English) the top floor is a viewing area and you can see all the other prominent features of Osaka from here.
Having had my fill of Osaka castle by midday I decided id go window shopping. I had a meeting with flat Osaka at 4 so I had a few hours to mooch and had been shown where the shopping centre of Osaka was on my map by the ditsy blue haired Spanish chick that had shared a room the night before. On my way I bought lunch which was sushi and a grape soda. Both were awesome and the sushi was huge compared to what you get at Tesco's and half the price. I found first a street that seemed to consist of either fireworks shops or shops that sold the same toys you get at poundland….I was not impressed but made a note where to get fireworks in the future. The next few sections of streets though were awesome. These shops were everything you would expect from Japan and I took a couple of photos where I could. One of the first shops was just action figures from every anime show you could think of. Wall to wall and all cool and some perverse. I priced up a few Gundam models for the future. Then across the street i saw "Gundam Osaka" and realised this kind of stuff would be found all over the place. This shop was a store dedicate to one amine show. So it sold the models the DVDs the manga books. Watches, medals lighters….basically if you could fit the word "Gundam" on it then they had it. There were a load of phone shops and DVD and game shops most of which were the same. One however caught me off guard.
This shop had 5 floors and a list of what was on each floor was at the door. Sadly muggings here can't read Japanese so I made out the words games, DVD and manga. The 1st floor was games, loads of them for every console going back to the dawn of the computer. Old disks and cartridges sealed air tight and hung on display in perfect order. It was like a bootsale with OCD. After reminiscing over the dreamcast and Nintendo games I made my way to the 2nd floor which was DVDs. Again it was the usual and lots of anime and chop socky films were to be found. Floor three was labelled manga and held no surprise as it was a huge library of manga comics. Floor 4 and 5 however had signs I couldn't read. As the escalator reached the top on floor 4 I could hear music but under the music you could hear screams and grunts. At the top of the escalator you come face to face with a 30 inch flat screen displaying hentai (that's cartoon porn) The whole floor was DVDs, books, magazine and pc games of animated porn and I realised that there were only guys on this floor and the abundance of women that had been in the store seemed to have vanished. Some how a hidden etiquette told me to keep quiet and not make eye contact with anyone as well as a little voice in my head saying please don't let anyone brush up against you. I made my way round the floor towards the down escalator with a brisk walk. It dawned on me however that I was in a foreign country where no one knew me so I took a few mins to see what the fuss was about. Taking in the scenery I realised the floor consisted of 15 year old boys and the odd old man who all looked embarrassed as they browsed the library of smutty cartoons. It became apparent that this was the floor for those that didn't have the balls to go to floor 5. I had to know what the sign meant. I hopped on the final escalator to floor 5 feeling seedy just being on it. The pictures of scantily clad cartoon characters were replaced with lots of censored nude pictures (which seem to defeat the point) and again I was greeted with a large flat screen. They hadn't even bothered with backing music on this floor and 2 TVs were competing to be heard. This floor was the non anime version of that below yet populated by a collection of the shiftiest men I've ever seen and one counter girl that looked like she really didn't want to be there had had possibly made a bad career choice. I gave the counter girl an embarrassed smile and began my decent back to innocence of games and comics.
After a couple more wholesome shops I started to make my way to my meeting with flat Osaka. I had about an hour to get there and a fair ways to go. On my way I came across a street filled with wacky restaurants each having some character on the front of the building be it a crab or a racoon in a apron I proceed on to my meeting making notes of the other streets I passed and one named Europe street that I will have to go to when I have time. At the flat Osaka building I met a guy called Tame that also spoke perfect English. After talking to me in Japanese until I look confused he switched to English and the conversation became much more productive. Midoka it seemed had popped out to see another client. I wondered at this point if she was actually real and maybe Tame liked to pretend he was a woman called Midoka to those that contacted the company. I hoped it wasn't true as it weirded me out a little. They had one place to show me based on the requirements I had given them (Cheap) This place was just down the road, was a shared flat of 7 other people that were a mixture of Japanese a westerners and I had a room to my self all for about £220 a month all inclusive. It sounded good ,so tame offered to show me the place. We headed down to the street when tame pointed me towards a little green car. I hesitated a little as I noticed the assortment of dents and scuffs the wings had in them. I got in and put on a seat belt as soon as I could. As we pulled away I noticed my black flat cap sitting in the street. It must have fallen out my pocket as I got in the car. I almost said something but didn't want to give tame an excuse to take his eyes of the road so I watched as my hat disappeared in the mirror and we set off on our trip. After about 15 minutes of traffic and stunted conversation we arrived to a little backstreet. The house its self was on a lovely clean street and close to a super market and a station. We took off our shoes as we went in and I was led around a very quaint Japanese house where all the doors slide and the ceilings are low. The kitchen was pleasant and not too cramped and the separate toilet and bathroom seemed fine enough. I didn't expect much. All of the bedroom doors were made of frosted glass and I could see that they are actually locked by padlock rather than keys and that everyone had taken it upon themselves to makeshift some curtains to cover there doors, as they all led directly on to the halls. Mine however did not. As we rounded a corner upstairs I was introduced to A Japanese girl who was currently in that room and had been for 2 days as she waited for the Australian guy in the next room to move out on the 11th where she would move into his room and then I into hers. It seemed that upgrades worked this way in the house. The room its self was small but not uncomfortably so, I would say about 7 foot square. It had a bed that seemed to be one half of a bunk as it had about a foot and a half of leg underneath it. And there was a little table in the room. a cupboard which seemed to use space exterior to the room was next to the bed and in all it was a nice room and fine for my needs which consisted of a bed and cheap. I was told later that the little window in the room also led out to my own balcony which surprised me but was also very cool. Before I left we got into a conversation about ju-jitsu and I was informed that one of the best dojos was 1 stop away. That was the clincher. I told tame I liked it and we agreed I would pop by on Monday with the deposit. As I walked to the car he asked me if I wanted to walk to the station of I wanted to be dropped off there….. There was no option of being taken back to where I had come from so I decided to walk to the station.
The station was as he said only a minute or so away. So I bought my self a ticket. I didn't however buy a ticket back to the hostel…cos I wanted my hat.
10 minutes later I was back where I started and my hat was where I left it, albeit now under a truck. With a little manoeuvring I retrieved the hat and began my walk back to the hostel. Hat on head and a spring in my step (despite them being sore at this point) the trip back seemed longer and was mostly uneventful. I did however come across a free café. After staring in the window for 5 minutes confused as to whether I had understood correctly an elderly man came out and in broken English repeated "drink for no money" until I said thank you in my best Japanese accent and went in. I poured my self a coffee grabbed some crackers and sat down. The place was packed and if you wanted more than a coffee and a few crackers there were things to be bought but no one did. We all just sat there drinking a free coffee (it was good too) and munching. I handed in my empty cup and headed off now fuelled for the last leg of my walk back to the hostel.
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