Then I made a pb&j sandwich for the bus. Because I'd eaten all my raisin bread I made it on my chocolate chip melon pan hahaha.
Then I finished up packing. Yuko left at 10 and I told her to let everyone know they can help themselves to the rest of my peanut butter.
She told me "kyoutskete" or however that's spelled (to be careful). Then I got everything together and left a little after 11. Here's a picture of my giant duffel I had to lug around everywhere:
It was hard biking with it sort of wedged into my bike basket. I ran into this old dude on his bike, but it was mostly his fault.
It was so hard to carry because I don't know where the over the shoulder strap is, so it sucked.
And then on top of that I had my backpack (with hardly anything in it). Thankfully I'll be able to leave my duffel in the hostel and just carry my backpack around Osaka and Kyoto.
And then I was off on my journey!
I took the JR to Nagoya Eki, where the bus stop is. I met Rana at the Hershey's Kiss thing so we could walk over to the bus stop, because she knew where it was and I didn't haha.
When I got there, she was there already, so we walked to the other side of the station to try to find everyone else because they had texted Rana saying they were at McDonald's. Well, we found a McDonald's but they weren't there.
We told them to come find us and while we waited we saw Rafa. He said he had been to another McDonald's, but they hadn't been there either. Lol it turned out there were three McDonald's in the station!
But we finally met up with everyone outside. Rana and Rashaa were the only ones who had looked up the bus stop beforehand lol, but with the two of them, we were able to find it and board the bus!
The seats were assigned randomly with boys on one half of the bus and girls on the other. But Rana and I ended up getting seats together!
Then I watched this Japanese movie called Linda, Linda, Linda. It didn't have English subtitles, which sucked, but I could understand some parts! Like there was this one scene where this Korean guy was confessing to this girl who was a ryuugakusei (foreign exchange student - like me!) from Korea. Anyway, though, because it was in Korean, there were Japanese subtitles so I could understand it well since I'm better at reading Japanese than hearing it. So like after the guy said "I've seen you around here a lot." And "I love you" and "I like you" and all that, the girl was all like "I don't hate you, but... I don't like you either..."
And I was all like bitch, shut up!
But whatevs.
It was an okay movie. I'm gonna watch it again with English subtitles to see how much I actually understood.
Anyway, like two minutes after I finished the movie we arrived in Osaka! It was less than a 3 hour drive because we took a rest stop 2 hours in.
And we went over a bunch of really cool bridges and through a TON of tunnels!
The rest stop had a konbini and super high tech bathrooms. Like the complete opposite of American rest stops!
And them we made it to Osaka!!
Our huge group of 12 ended up getting lost on the way to the Subway station, but we eventually found it with the help of locals that those of us in 600 (aka not me) talked to.
At the subway station, we left Noah because he was staying with a friend and going a different way. Then the rest of is rode for about 6 stops.
Andrew and Jaya got off to go to their place, and then Rana and I found out our hostel was on the same street as the one where everyone else got, Hotel Kaga!
So we all got off at the same stop. Jose was staying at a place alone, and he found it and broke off.
Rana and I saw Hotel Sun Plaza II, so I figured we should go in and ask for directions to the first Hotel Sun Plaza. Luckily, it was only a couple of blocks down, and right across from everyone else!
When we checked in, we found out showers are only open 4-9pm and the 24 hr showers cost $1 per 5 min. Are you effing kidding me? I take like 30 minute showers...
Then I had them make another key for Rana and we went up to our room. Also we thought there'd be a curfew because the front gate closes at midnight, but the guy was all like, it's cool if you come in after midnight, use the side door!
Which was awesome because the hostel everyone else is in, the side door and front gate close at midnight and don't open again until 3am!!
The sucky thing about our place is we couldn't get the wifi working even though we got the password for it. :(
Anyway, we got a room on the 9th floor of this old, sketchy buildings (all the hostels are really sketchy around here because it's a bad part of town). I'm just happy I have a roommate. I listened to the people in Hotel Kaga say they didn't want to go back to their rooms and be all alone because they were scared!
Our room was Japanese style:
And it has a TV and mini fridge!
And we get a view if another building out our window, but if you open the window and turn your head, you get this great view!
We had some time before we were meeting everyone for dinner, so Rana and I walked around the area our hotel is in.
(Osaka drain cover!)
We walked through this covered shopping area that reminded me of Osu and then headed to the station where we were meeting everyone.
So at 5:30, we met up with everyone to go to dinner. We went down to Dontonbori to look around.
Half our group got ramen, and the other half (with Rafa, Ben, Rana, and me) got takoyaki at one of the food stalls, because that and okonomiyaki are what Osaka is known for! It was really good. SO much better than the one I had in Osu. A lot sweeter and fluffier!
Then Cameron decided to get takoyaki after everyone else had finished eating, so we had to wait for him. Rana and I headed to the arcade we saw next door and Ben and Rafa went off in search of more food.
Apparently Ben and Rafa were talking among themselves, figuring we'd probably gone into the arcade to take purifies, because there's no way we were playing the games.
Haha, they were right! Rana and I took super cute purikura! :)
When we left the arcade, everyone was gone! But Rana texted Cameron, and the group came to get us. But Rafa and Ben weren't with them.
So we all just decided to look for a bar and meet up with Rafa and Ben there. While we were walking, we ran into this guy advertising nomihoudai for only $10, so we decided to do it.
Yeah, well let me tell you all how much of a ripoff that nomihoudai was!
So we got in to the room and we were all sitting at the table waiting for Andrew to get Rafa and Ben and at first I was thinking of bailing along with Jose, because he doesn't drink alcohol by choice. But then I was like aw, what the heck. It'll be fun. So once Ben and Rafa showed up and we were all set to go, Jose still didn't want to do it, so Ben and Rafa were going to be good friends and go hang with Jose because he couldn't be in the room with us if he wasn't drinking. And Rashaa asked if they had Khalua milks for nomihoudai and they said no, so she was going to go with the guys. So I said I'd go too. But then the waiter was all like, "Actually, we do have khalua milks and you can do soda for nomihoudai" so Rashaa and Jose decided to stay. So I did too.
We should have realized how fishy that sounded too, but we didn't.
So I got this drink called peach pineapple that was really, really good!!
Then we did kanpai and started out hour and a half!
I also got: a Tequila Sunrise, a lychee soda (it was mixed with some sort of alcohol and was soooo good!), and then two more peach pineapples.
I would have been on the verge of blackout after five drinks in America, but I wasn't even buzzed. Lol I thought I was a lightweight before I came here, but the Japanese ain't got nothing on me.
Like most of our group was pretty fucked up after four drinks, because most of them hadn't ever drank before coming to Japan!
The drinks here have like no alcohol in them, though. Anyway, the waiter came in halfway through the nomihoudai and told us we had to buy food too. Wtf? So everyone either bought fries or karage because they were cheap. The cheapest thing was endless cucumbers. Everyone laughed at that, but I hate French fries and fried chicken, and endless cucumbers sounded amazing!
So guess what I got for 280 yen plus tax? Endless fucking cucumbers (as everyone referred to them).
When the karage turned out to be fried cartilage (I kid you not, it was super crunchy and hard to chew), everyone was really jealous that I'd been smart and ordered endless cucumbers haha.
So yeah, I got cucumbers on cucumbers on cucumbers (three orders).
When our hour and a half was up, we all left. Devon and Andrew went up to pay and the dude and they ended up charging $40 extra apparently for the edamame they gave us (that we didn't order!) that you usually get at nomihoudais for free... So yeah we're all going to have to pay around $4 back to Devon sometime in the future.
After that we walked around Osaka some more but the people in Hotel Kaga had to get back for the curfew, so I was happy we left around 11 because I was really tired.
Rana and I walked over to Hotel Kaga to go in and hang a bit more, but they wouldn't let us go up to the rooms, so we just headed back to our place. We were both super tired, so we went to sleep right away!
I'll post the legit pictures from my camera this weekend when I'm back in Nagoya, so check back then!
~*~ PICTURES!!!! ~*~
I'm just dumping all the pictures from my camera:
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| Engrishhh |
Photos of Dotonbori:
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| Better takoyaki picture! |
Glad your blog is back online!!
ReplyDeleteshoulda stood under the Kate Tokyo pix!!
ReplyDeleteha ha