The Savage Orient - Japan

Shit, overslept.

It was badass, for a change, to actually be able to sleep past 6am. Korea was freaking insane, non-stop, drinking, eating, living. Given the chance to chill out, relax, David and I took our sweet time waking up. Slept like 3-noon, hahah. We were so damn lazy today. Didn’t even leave the apartment til like…4? Shit I don’t know what happened. We watched the Lady Gaga/Beyonce video “Telephone”, shits….unbelievable *remembers video droolz*

Not knowing crap about nuts, we took the hotel worker’s recommendation to hit up Osaka castle. Finding it was cake. A 15 minute walk to the left? Nice.

It was so damn beautiful! David and I turned into hardcore shutterbugs. Stopping every 5 seconds to snap a new angle of this and that, here and there. It was our first taste of hanami (cherry blossom viewing).

Just walking up to the castle took days cause we kept snapping pics. There is so much beauty to be found everywhere! It sucked that it rained that day, I was a little afraid to get the camera wet, so I didn’t take as many pics as I should have, but at least a few came out.

I don’t know if any of you ever watched the cartoon “Ronin Warriors”, but this castle hella reminded me of that shit. Needless to say, badass vibes were all over the place. Hell yeah samurai-dragon-rooftop-lightning-bolt-ninja-battles!

The view from the top was pretty damn awesome, too. You could walk around the entire perimeter of the castle way up there, and you could see all of Osaka!

After too damn many photos, we parted with Osaka Castle, and headed out for the (town/prefecture/area?) of Namba. Marcus told me around 8 or 9p we’d find hella dancers.

Wouldya look at that, he was right!

Unfortunately, those were the only dancers we saw (but…oh man….those moves…)

Aah, umm…..

I was really hoping to find some house dancers around. Bah, too bad I didn’t find anything.. :/

So anyhew, David and I dorked around Namba for a bit. Somehow met up with this Polish chick and Australian dude, and hung out with them for a bit at the Time Machine Bar.

Definitely a cool name for a joint, but there was no one inside save for us. The chick was a travel agent, and the dude sold weed in Japan. At the ripe age of 30 or 40-something, that guy’s sure got a bright future ahead of him! Then two other foreigners (Australians?) came up to the bar, and joined us.

We eventually parted ways (phew! they were all too content with just sitting and drinking (and smoking)), and David and I set off to find some damn food.

We eventually found a place called “toyatoya”, a chain izakaya where everything was 280 Yen (even drinks!).

We chowed down on some ridiculous food. Really cool appetizers, dude. For drinks, we didn’t know what to get, and the only stuff I could make out on the menu was “beeru” and “gurepufurutsu jyusu”. Neither David nor I are really big on beer, so we sprung for the juices. Apparently, they were alcoholic, and I mean…really alcoholic? They were called “kashisu” or something like that, and tasted exactly like juice. We downed that shit like crazy cause it was so delicious! and immediately ordered one more.

Down went the second drink. But this time, by the end of the second, David and I started feeling a little bit tipsy. We ordered a beer each for some reason. Pretty soon, we were hella messed up! Neither of us have any idea how, but we were drunk. Man, we are such hardcore lightweights.

The rest of the night became silly just cause of how smashed up we got off of the stuff. We walked our way back to the hotel (like, 3 train stops away). Shit took days, but it was absurd from the weird drunken conversations we were having. I can’t even remember what was said anymore.

At some point I remember I helped some Japanese people read a map. What a weird concept. I think my Japanese is starting to come back?

Japan - Day 2

Tagged: ronin warriors,Osaka Osaka castle Namba