Osaka: The City that Never Sleeps (now with pix)

Ah, there is so much to say and yet so little space on the internet. In all seriousness, I could spend the next 24hours detailing the moment by moment timeline of "Osaka Saturday" and still fall short of decent description of the day in total. Osaka is the only city i have been to where the party does not start until 4am and the first train does not leave until 5am.

The day began at 11am at Kyoto Station where I met up with a friend for breakfast before meeting with the rest of our group on the platform to Osaka. The initial plan was to meet up and head out to osaka on the noon train and head straight to the Osaka Dome and watch the Onix Buffaloes beat the Seibo Lions in a head on, life or death baseball battle. To our surprise we saw that there were three Americans on the Buffaloes, one of which was named, Tuffy Rhodes. Now Tuffy's nickname was, "Mr. Buffalo" and everytime he came up to bat as the designated hitter for the pitcher some random American rap song would play over the speakers. Now, Tuffy was a very large African American man. When i say large, I mean giantesque in comparison to his Japanese compadres. We had a very long lasting conversation about whether the use of different rap songs for Tuffy's batting cheers was Japanese racism or just the man's personal preference. I came to the conclusion that he is actually devout fan of classical music and that the rap music is just a stereo type he needs to fill because of Japanese perceptions of African Americans. Although, to our grave disappointment, the Onix Buffaloes failed to vanquish the Seibu Lions, 7-1. An utter slaughter. The Lions pounced on the Buffaloes like a ... lion pouncing on a buffalo. (Brilliant use of simile, I know)


Knowing that this night would be a painfully expensive evening, i decided to go to an ATM to take out some more money so that i would not run dry and not have the money necessary to get home. It felt like i went to every damn ATM in the district. I tried an AM PM, a Family Mart, a Sunkist(some random convenient store), and two bank ATMs. All of which rejected my private Kyoto bank cash card(debit card). So finally, after about 30minutes of searching i tried a Citi Bank. The rejected my Japanese bank card, but accepted my Wells Fargo card. To me this was shocking, but i was grateful to not have to borrow money from people around me. I learned my lesson though, never go to Osaka with less than ￥20,000($200) in my wallet.

The rest of the evening was a bit more exciting, although it is very difficult to remember the details from 1am - 4am, i will try. After a delicious dinner of Kimchi(fermented cabbage) and deeply fried chicken, myself and the group of Kyoto JETs met up with the Hyogo JETs for a night on the town. At about 830pm I had a very important, yet easy decision to make. To hangout and go shopping with some people until 11pm and catch the last train back to Kyoto station and home to Yamashina, or to party all night and catch the first train home at 5am. As i said, it was an easy decision for me, the only thing waiting for me at home was an ominously multiplying tower of dirty laundry and a painfully empty refrigerator. And thus the night began.

For ￥2500，roughly $25, we accepted the guidance of a bald man in a yellow shirt and wore a yellow wristband indicating that we were foreigners on a pub crawl. In the price of the event all of the cover charges to all of the bars and 1 free drink were included. (we would later come to the conclusion that the price was a terrible rip off and the only thing this event did was show us all of the good foreigner bars in Osaka) But, such is life. The first bar was a New Zealand bar with flags and nationalistic propaganda around the room with two Japanese bartenders. On the television was Austrailian rules football, that means that it's like American football but less rules, less armor and more broken faces. On the menu was linguini and french fries. By the time we left this bar and headed for the next, half of our group was drunk and heading home. Luckily, I have had lots of practice over the past 4 years and am a champion. We went to 6 different bars and clubs over the course of the night, each a bit more strange than the last. At one point in the evening we ended up at an Irish bar with authentic Irishmen tending the bar. There i ran into a huge Irish guy. I use the words "ran into" in a literal sense. I bumped into him and my head only came up to his armpits. I was a bit frightened but got to talking to him and found out that he spent some time in Tucson, Arizona.

Events like these are always a trip down fun-times avenue but when you lose a member of your group due to faulty leadership and unnecessary risks, the night begins to sour. At one point in the evening, we lost one of our friends because he got caught up helping an extremely intoxicated girl walk. Eventually, he showed up about 2 hours later at the last bar of the evening. At one of the clubs we helped populate there was a bit of a pole dancing show and a breakdancer. It was quite interesting.



Saturday night was the first time i have ever heard this said about any establishment, "Sorry that this club is a bit empty, it does not usually get busy until 5am." It was hard to believe that the place would fill up with locals at 5am, but when the night progressed the club filled with people around 430am. At which point, one of my friends was dragged to the dance floor by one of the locals. As she was dancing with this guy, he kept grabbing her shoulders and shaking her, then removing his hands and putting them in the air like he was sorry and felt guilty for touching her. This was the highlight of my evening and I still laugh when i think about this. The look on my friends face was priceless, filled with fear, shock, and awkwardness. It is a shame that i did not get this on video. After this club, we all left. Some people when on to the next club but the rest of the kyoto people went home. It was nearly 5am and the first train home called our names.

We wandered the streets of Osaka at 5am without a clue to where the subway station was that would take us to the main station. Eventually we found one, and noticed that we had walked about 2 stops south of where we were supposed to be. As a result, it took us much longer to go home than was likely if we had got to the other station. I finally got home at 8am. It made a full 24hours of being awake and on my feet. My uncomfortable bed felt amazing and I welcomed the springs of my hard mattress. I slept on and off for a large majority of Sunday. I am writing this from work today because i have nothing to do. All of the students are preparing for the school festival tomorrow and i have no classes to teach. I have been studying kanji all day and have memorized about 15 new characters.

The next entry will likely be the pictures and videos from both of my school's cultural festivals.

Gio