Monday, May 23, 2011

Japan: Day 03

Hello everyone!

I've been having problems with this site, but I think I got it all worked out.  Sorry for the delay.  I miss everyone!

Day three started out on a much brighter note, although I have to say I've never been more tired in my life!  The two full days of travel wore me out, and I woke up today feeling the strain of it.  But we were finally in Japan, and I was so exited to be here and go out and start to see Osaka.  We decided to head over to Denden town, which has a lot of shops and interesting restaurants.  :)  We got ready and stepped outside, and it was SUNNY!  So warm and bright!

Hiro's hostel is in the center of Korean Town, which has lots and lots of shops selling fish and kimchi (which I'm not a fan of).  The thought of eating any of that churned my tummy, so we decided to walk out of Korean Town before we ate breakfast.

 
Street view from the entrance of Korean Town!

The first thing edible we spotted was a shop selling cooked sweet rice, grilled in teryaki sauce.  I bought one right away and chowed down!

Grillin' up our sweet rice!

Mike and I eating our first mean in Japan!  It was very good.  Mike had his wrapped in seaweed which I opted out of.

We took the train to Osaka station and walked around for a bit to try and find Denden Town, and got kind of lost, but we found this cool park area, where we rested to look at a map and figure out where to go.

 Mike and Dave go over the map, while I document their efforts.

 View of the street from the park!

We got our barrings and headed back out towards Denden town.  On our way we saw some really great... sewage covers!  They were so pretty, I just had to take a picture!

Why aren't our sewage covers this pretty?
 
Finally we got to Denden Town!  Denden Town is very big, with lots and lots of shops, and the walkways are all covered so you can still shop when it starts to rain or snow! (Random Japanese Lesson!: Rain = ame and Snow = yuki)  I spent most of my money at the Bodyline store, which sells really cheap lolita outfits and accessories.  This is where I discovered that a lot of Japanese clothing stores only have ONE SIZE and that size is medium.  Sometimes medium is too big, and sometimes it's too small, it just depends on the brand, but they rarely have multiple sizes.  Also, most stores have a weird thing about hair and trying things on.  A lot of the time I wasn't allowed to try anything on that I bought, so I just had to guess.
 
We walked around a bit more and found the Glico neon sign!  This sign is REALLY famous in Osaka.
 
Here I am in front of the Glico sign!  This sign appears all over Japan, but this is the original!
 
After we walked around a bit more we headed for Hep5, a popular shopping mall with a huge ferris wheel that lets you see all around the city.  We immediately went to the top and got onto the ferris wheel.
 
 Dave and I riding the ferris wheel!

View of Osaka from the top!  Those are the trains down below!
 
After that we went down Hep5 to look at all the stores.  They were so expencive!  But they had really cute ice cream shops that were reasonably priced so we stopped in for some cute ice cream! (Japanese Lesson!:  Cute = Kawaii) 
 
 I can't wait to eat it!
 
How kawaii is that?  And yes, those are cornflakes in the middle!

After our ice cream, we ended our day with some bowling!  It was so strange how you bowl in Japan, you have to sign up at the register first, then you go over to a shoe dispenser (that's right, shoe DISPENSER), and turn the lock for your shoes.  It took us a while to figure out what size we were, and there were no female/male sizes, so weird!

Then we had to ride the elevator up to the fifth floor.  There were about fiver different floors with bowling allies.  When we got up to the fifth floor, an attendant was waiting for us as the elevator doors opened.  She bowed and showed us into the room, which had maybe eight lanes total.  She spoke no English, but still tried to explain about an extra game with bowling, which is kind of like bingo with your scores.  Once we finally understood her we got to pick out our bowling balls.  They were all color coordinated and stacked nicely in a row, and had basketball lines painted on them.  We bowled two games and didn't win at bingo.

 Dave destroying Mike and I at bowling.

In the middle of our game all the lights went out and the attendant got up in front of everyone and started speaking really loudly, she had a girl come up and try to bowl a strike, then the rest of us had to try and bowl a strike at once, it was crazy!  After that was done the lights all came back on and we continued to bowl as normal.  It was so weird.

Once we finished up we headed back and crashed.  It had been a long day.  Tomorrow we head out to Hiroshima!  See you then!

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