Hey all, how’s it going? I’ve made it safely to Japan and am spending my first few days being a tourist and checking out what I can before flying up to Sapporo for the exchange program. I’m currently in Osaka, the jewel of western Japan’s Kansai region. I’ve only been here for a day, and my experiences here already ranked it as one of my favorite places so far.
Roy and I are staying at a quaint little hostel where the rooms are everything I’ve heard of when it comes to small Japanese rooms. It barely fits our bunk bed. However, despite the spartan look of the room, the place is really nice. We have our own A/C unit, the showers and toilets are just down the hall, and the place is super clean. I think we may have come just after they renovated the place.
Anyways, today we were guided by our wonderful professor, Dr. Jayson Chun from the University of Hawaii at West Oahu. As he lives here in Osaka during the summer, he showed us around his neck of the city. It was very rainy today, but I’d take rain over the sweltering Japanese summer any day.
He took us to a local blue-collar restaurant where the food was all prepared fresh and right in front of you. I just have one word to describe the food there. DELICIOUS. I can’t begin to describe how good it tasted, and it was all just $10!
One of the places he took us was Osaka’s equivalent to Tokyo’s Akihabara, DenDen Town. Just like Akiba, DenDen Town is an area that has numerous shops dedicated to electronics and, of course, ANIME! This place has tons of shops to fulfill all of your otaku needs, without the hustle and bustle of Tokyo’s city.
We also stopped by Dotombori, the area famous for the running Glico Man and the giant crab.
We didn’t stay too long as it was getting late, and we had to go back to DenDen Town before the stores closed. We spent almost 4 hours earlier in the day just scouting out the area, so by then we knew exactly what we wanted. I couldn’t resist and bought myself some stuff direct from the source. Beats paying shipping!
Anyway, it’s getting late here, and we have a big day tomorrow. If you read my blogs from January, you may remember me going to the famous shrine at Fushimi Inari. I didn’t get to hike all the way to the top last time because of the Kakehashi Project’s schedule, but this time … I’m gonna make it all the way to the top! Look forward to it!
Otaku Ohana 