I THINK I AM IN JAPAN?

Today I went to meet Yoshihiro in the Umeda building in Osaka. This entails taking the Karasuma subway down to Shijo station, at Shijo you take the Hankyu train line all the way to Umeda. It's easy travelling but all of it takes about an hour to accomplish. I took a photo through the train window.



I finally arrived in the train station underneath Umeda. Yoshihiro said he would be waiting for me in "1stSound" a music shop right outside of the train gates. I was about 15 minutes late, but it can be excused because Im not familiar with the train times and all that.

I walked into the music store and looked at everyone, trying to recognize him. They no doubt thought I was crazy. I finally found him and we said our hellos while walking. He asked me where I wanted to go and listed off a few places. We decided to visit the Osaka bay area. Getting there of course meant a few subway rides, but he was Japanese, and somewhat familiar with the area so I followed him and we were there in no time.





The Bay Area was so beautiful, and the two most noteable things within it were the Aquarium and the largest Ferris Wheel I have ever seen.





I wanted to go to the Aquarium, but Yoshihiro is a poor college student living on his own. I felt bad for him and finally got him to let me pay at least half. It's totally unjapanese and he probably felt horrible about letting me pay, but I would have felt worse since I wanted to go, not him, and the fee was 2,000 yen, which for him is 3 days worth of food.

The Aquarium was great, and went very deep. The coolest thing about it is it's the only aquarium to house a whale shark. The thing was HUGE. The only problem with the aquarium was all the photos look bad, because of the flash, and because they were taken through inches of glass.















The huge Whale Shark (bad photos, sorry)






Yoshihiro and I both got our photos taken with a whale shark statue.


After the aquarium we saw a street performer. The crazy thing is he was American, and spoke perfect Japanese. Yoshihiro told me he even used a Kansai dialect, which is used specifically by comedians.





We then decided to visit Yodabashi, which is the largest electronics store in Osaka. It was HUGE, I think it had 7 floors altogether.





They had all kinds of the coolest cellphone America will never see. Including cellphones for 1 Yen, that's less than one penny! The 1 yen cellphones were even way better than some of the expensive American cellphones out.

After Yodabashi we decided to go back to the Umeda building. Which is huge, and consists of two connected towers. They are connected at the top by two escalators. On the subway going to Umeda Yoshihiro and I got into some really good conversation. He spoke great English. We talked about touchy subjects like The Rape of Nanking, and Japan's refusal to admit to it. He even told me his high school textbook did not mention it! He said that his teacher, however, taught it to his class on his own. We talked about the Chinese riots, which were for admittance of Nanking and war crimes. We talked about the American Government, and Japanese Government. How all countries are basically made up of a majority of people who simply don't care enough about politics, but vote anyway, for stupid reasons. He told me recently Japanese elections have seen campaigins blatantly geared towards swaying opinion by using superficial means. It felt good to discuss this all with someone from a different country. We got so much into our conversation we almost missed a few of our stops.

And then we made it to Umeda.










For 700 yen you can take an elevator to the top floor, from there you take the escalator



shown connecting the two towers, and then you take steps out onto an overlooking, that has a rail and no windows. By the time we got up there it was dark, so we got to see all of the city's lights. It was truly beautiful.









Just to get the idea of how tall this place is. Here's a really tall hotel.


We had our pictures taken at the top






When we went back down there was a tree with paper. It was for the Japanese holiday "Tanzaku" one of the things you do is write a wish on a slip of paper, and then hang it on a tree. Yoshihiro wrote his wish, and then told me to write mine. I wished for 300,000 monkeys. We hung our slips on the tree.

The night was coming to a close, we were both worn at from all the walking and he had class tommorrow at 10:00. He told me ever since he started living by himself he's had to get up early to do laundry. He also lives so far away he needs 3 hours to get ready and to get to his school.

We took the subway to Inarabaki-Minami (I think) which is where he lives. We ate at a "fast food" joint. I got a bowl of pork and rice, it was very very very good. So much food for 420 yen! They fill your cup with green tea the minute you drink it all. Best "fast food" I've ever had. Finally he took me to the train station and gave me directions on how to get home, but it was fairly simple so I already knew. We said our goodbyes and I shook his hand. We are thinking about maybe going to Kobe some time. We definately will be hanging out in the future.