Domo Arigato: Castles, Swords, and Gatos.

Sorry I haven’t posted a blog in awhile but the last week and a half has been very busy. Last week our group had a former ambassador visit us and the majority of that week was spent meeting with him and various clients to talk about cases. I’d like to go into better detail on this subject but now is not the opportune moment. I’ll do another blog in the future with a lot more content on the work we are doing over here in the future, but for now you’ll just have to deal with my personal adventure stories to tide you over.

The other thing that has been keeping me busy over the past week and a half is that on Saturday I flew to Osaka, Japan to hang out with my college roommate Tyler Adams. Tyler and I lived on the same floor of the freshman dorms at UGA (coincidentally his roommate that year ended up being my cousin though we didn’t figure out we were related until about half way through the year) and then were roommates for our junior and senior years at school.  He is 6’6”, reed thin, from Chattanooga, Tennessee where a goodly portion of my family lives (he actually lives about 5 minutes from our ancestral home in Chatty) and has been living in Osaka for the last 4 years, initially as an exchange student and now as a teacher – I told you, every non-Asian person in Asia teaches English, every single one of them. Since he has been abroad for so long, I haven’t seen him in a few years and I figured, since I was so close, now would be a great time to pop in and pay him a visit.

One small problem with that: I was not close. Like, not at all. I don’t know if any of y’all own a globe but Thailand and Japan are not all the geographically close. I was unaware. But when I was looking at the ticket prices to fly to Osaka they were exceedingly reasonable and so, somewhere in that empty morass that is my head, I equated “cheap flight” with “short flight” which was aggressively wrong. Japan is about 2500 miles away from Thailand my flight included a 2 hour layover in Kuala Lumpur. This means that when you add up my 2 hour flight to KL, my 2 hour layover, my 6 and a half hour flight to Osaka, and the 2 hour time difference from BKK to Osaka, even though I left BKK Saturday morning I didn’t arrive in Osaka until 11:30 at night (after flying the same amount of time it takes to get from Atlanta to Munich). Not close at all.

McDonald's in the BKK airport is on top of their cultural game. Too bad I actually got breakfast at Krispy Kreme which as hot garbage. Take my word for it, foreign Krispy Kreme (and pastries in general) are not where you want to be. Also, did you know instead of apple pie McDonald's offers pineapple, corn, or tuna pies here? Like I said, avoid foreign pastries. 

Snapped this off while running through the Kuala Lumpur airport. Seriously the most confusing airport I've ever been in. This Japanese lady who only spoke some English saw that I was going to Osaka too and had to tag along with me to figure out our changeover gate. She obviously knew success when she saw it as I got us there just in time for boarding.

No cell phone use on the flight but I can't stop, won't stop. Check that sunset.

Nevertheless, I made the flights and changeovers with little trouble and arrived Saturday evening in Osaka, greeted by my old friend and roommate and ready to experience a culture very different from both the one I’d left behind and the one I grew up in. Also, I will confess another part of the allure to visiting Japan was not just the cultural experience but also having a guide who can actually speak the language (plus free housing!). Having spent the last 6 weeks overcoming massive language barriers and just kind of going with whatever comes I was looking forward to taking a more proactive role in stuff I eat and do and having someone around to actually explain things to me. And it is a damn good thing he was there because without Tyler I’d have been up a certain creek, sans paddle.

After we said our hellos, Tyler and I went about the business of trying to get from the airport back into town to go out and do some drinking, catch up and all that However we ended up having to wait around the now empty airport for an hour for the right bus to arrive because figuring out the bus schedule and everything proved to be overly difficult. And this was difficult for Tyler who has lived in Japan for 4 years and speaks fluent Japanese. Without him there I would surely have just ended up sleeping at the airport or getting instantly lost. The bus ride also cost $15, which was somewhat difficult to swallow for me. Having lived for the past 6 weeks in a country where $15 is the equivalent of 2 days worth of food, the return to a non third world country and the price hike that comes with it was startling. Japan very quickly informed me how different this was going to be from my last few weeks abroad.

After an hour bus ride into the city, it was now 1:30 AM local time and neither of us had been drinking plus I still had my backpack with me. Many a normal person would have decided to just call it a night, crash, and begin the adventuring on the morrow. However I am not nor have I ever been a quitter and so Tyler and I set off towards a bar whose owner Tyler was friendly with. On our excursion we went through Dotonbori that is a big tourist destination in Osaka. It is essentially a theatre/shopping district that runs along this canal and it was my first real exposure to the bright lights and over-neonization that has become synonymous with Japan stereotypes. This place was an absolute assault on the eyeballs; neon everywhere. It was almost 2 in the morning and the whole street was so bright it looked like midday. Now I’m a man with a love for Las Vegas that borders on socially unacceptable and I frequently miss the neon extravagance that permeated my brief residence there, but this was almost too much. In actuality, it was a place that wouldn’t have been out of place on the Vegas strip but for some reason it was more viscerally impactful on me. . Perhaps it was the difference in purpose (in Vegas the lights are all casinos and stadiums, bastions of opulence, whereas all these signs and advertisements were for regular restaurants and stuff) but somehow the whole spot seemed surreal. I enjoyed it immensely.

A picture of Dotonburi from down a side alley. Any closer and the photo would have blinded you. Like looking directly into the Sun. If the sun was advertising crab restaurants.

This was just an awesome thing over a sushi restaurant. Advertisement A game here.

This was a technicolor dragon which somehow came out looking awful. See! I told you I was a bad photographer.

After standing around and touristing for a few minutes we continued on our way and ultimately ended up at Tyler’s buddy’s bar. It was a cozy little spot right off the main Dotonburi strip and it was populated be equal parts Japanese and e-pat patrons, many of whom were in bathing suits having apparently just left a nearby pool party. It was at this point that I asked, somewhat sarcastically, if we were to spend the whole night drinking sake and Tyler informed me that the Japanese are big on whiskey, so much so that Jack Daniels is actually cheaper there than in the States……me and the Japanese were going to get on just fine.

Again, I must relegate the happenings of this night to the annals of my future book for they are not fit for familial consumption. However, I will say that the night was pretty fun and highlighted by multi-lingual game spitting by yours truly and Tyler’s friend who passed out in the bar on top of a Japanese girl whose name escapes me (the only one whose name I remember was Megumi and that’s because it’s the name of the greatest women’s mixed martial arts fighter of all time; she was very excited I remembered her and I didn’t have the heart to tell her why). Top shelf stuff all around.

The man himself, Tyler Adams, with his bar owning buddy in his lap.

He was sneaking in the background of the previous photo when he was fully participating in the evening's festivities. Here, he has lost his consciousness and that poor girl has to bear the burden of that misplacement.

After the bar we went back to Tyler’s apartment around 430 AM and I finally got to meet his girlfriend and see how he lived; and how he lived was in a shoebox. I’m not kidding his apartment was roughly the size of my miniature bedroom back in Atlanta and considerably smaller than my accommodations in Bangkok. He had pre-warned me that during my stay I would be sleeping on the floor but I guess I underestimated at how high a premium space was. His apartment is 2 rooms, the bedroom/living room and then the kitchen/laundry room/extra storage with the bathroom and shower connected onto the entryway. Every spare inch of space was crammed full of pop-up closets or stacked to the ceiling with plastic containers. It was rather surprising how small it all was and the fact that 2 people lived there was kind of unbelievable. I don’t care who it is, if I’m stuck in that tiny apartment with someone else and no personal space that’s a one-way ticket to murderville be it wife, best friend, girlfriend, or even my dog. I just couldn’t handle it.

Tyler’s girlfriend was very nice. She’s of medium height, Chinese-Dutch ancestry, and has a fascination with cats that made me start to wonder if all there were any Japanese stereotypes that weren’t accurate. She spoke some English though not a lot but when she did it was good and we got along as well as two such different people can when a language barrier exists between them. At times it was awkward because Tyler was, in essence, having 2 different conversations continuously and though she likely knew some of what we were talking about, I had nary a clue what they discussed which can be a tad confusing and frustrating sometimes. However, this complete cluelessness is a feeling I’ve gotten accustomed to over the past few weeks and I took it all in stride.

The next morning we slept in rather later than we had intended (I because I was 2 hours behind Osaka time and Tyler because he is a lazy bum, also the crashing at 5AM probably played into it too) and by the time we got up and moving it was past noon. After some dallying we finally left the apartment and headed towards the metro station. Tyler lives right next to a sort of covered market so we walked down that and decided to grab some lunch. There was a small restaurant on the way so we popped in there and this was my first exposure to Japanese seclusion. You see, as I came to find out, Japanese people hate everyone. By that I mean that Japan has gone to some pretty impressive levels to eradicate human interaction whenever possible. This is one of the most technologically advanced countries on the planet and they seemingly use all that technology to ensure that no one ever has to speak to another person ever again. At this restaurant we walked in the door and Tyler went to this gas station vending machine looking device and placed our orders, inserting the necessary yen. Then we grabbed out tickets, sat down at an open table and waited. 10 minutes later a guy came up and put our food on the table. No words were spoken in this entire transaction between customer and employee. There was green tea on the table and that is what we drank. When we finished we left and I had just finished a meal without saying one thing to anyone in the restaurant other than the guy I came in with. So odd.

This is the machine from which Tyler ordered out lunch. Perhaps cigarette machine is more apt description than gas station bathroom vending machine. Still, the point gist remains.

Sidebar: This green tea nonsense in Japan was easily the worst part of the whole trip. Every place we ate at the de facto beverage was green tea and since the places were engineered not to involve human interaction, getting something else was more hassle than it was worth. This would al be fine if you like green tea but I hate it. It is bitter and useless and needs a pound of sugar to have any semblance of acceptability, and since sugar seemed in short supply I was left parched at every meal anxiously awaiting leaving so I could pop into a 7-11 and buy a beer. Apparently Japanese food is known for erring on the side of blandness and I guess that’s why they like green tea since it too is a flavorless hell-juice. Japan does a lot of things right, toilets and public transit for instance, but this non-communicative green tea swill nonsense has got to go.

After our quick meal (I had some type of fried steak with a barbecue sauce, rice, tofu, and miso soup; tofu is the worst and again I’m left wondering why the Japanese don’t like things to have natural flavor and would rather just pour soy sauce on everything) we got on the metro and headed out towards Osaka Castle, basically the big cultural landmark in Osaka. It is a large castle in the middle of the city that was built in celebration of the unification of Japan back in the 1600’s. However after building it the place was promptly warred over for a century so I’m not sure the Japanese really understand what “unification” means.

The castle and outer ramparts.

View of Osaka from the outer ramparts.

The actual castle.

Another view of the castle.

View from on top of the castle. They had this awful cage from bottom and top which basically put the kibosh on any great pictures from up there. However that golden fish was pretty cool.

 

See? This panorama could have been great but for the damn fun prison around the building.

Sidebar: The castle is in a park in the middle of Osaka and also in that park was a convention center where one of the biggest boy bands in Japan happened to be playing. The park was filled with people and shockingly most of them weren’t teenage girls but a healthy mi of middle-aged people and kids. These weren’t chaperones but fully fledged fans carrying “Exile” (band name0 regalia. I later discovered that Exile is a 14 person boy band but only 2 of them actually sing; the rest are just back-up dancers. This is unfathomable to me. Do those 2 guys not understand they could just pay back-up dancers without including them in the band? Are 12 back-up dancers really necessary? What sorcery did those 12 other guys use to convince the talented ones to include them in the band? I don’t have the answer to these questions but the only answer I can come up with is the same answer for every mystery that happens in Japan: it has to involve the yakuza. More on them later.

Anyway, the Castle was pretty cool. It had some fun ramparts and 2 moats, inner and outer, and upon looking over the Castle schematics it seemed like a pretty well built compound with only one major entry and exit point and layered castle walls for multiple levels of defense. It wasn’t as stand alone impressive as European Castles (in an interesting twist, European castles are more vertical and this castle was very spread out; this is directly counter to current day Osaka which is the most vertical city I’ve ever been in, Bangkok sprawls vast and wide but Osaka is just buildings going up and up and up and crammed with people. Like a beehive) but it was cool in its own right and a fun visit. Inside, the castle has been converted to a museum telling the story of the caste. This was much like any other museum except a lot of the cool artifacts and armor and swords and stuff they wouldn’t let us take pictures of. However what we could take pictures of was me paying 3 bucks to dress up in some Shogun armor and wield a samurai sword. Obviously not passing up on that opportunity.

Check me out in my shogun armor. They had lots of different hats to choose from. I opted for the big ass horns helmet. It narrowly edged the giant peacock like helmet. Important to note how Raiden I look right here. And the golden tiger in the background sets the whole look off.

Fellow campy samurai warrior. He opted for the very intimidating "Salad Bowl" helmet. Defenders of the Japanese Empire right here.

After the castle, Tyler and I grabbed some ice cream from a vendor and then went to check out this temple on our way out of the Castle grounds. The temple had a cool samurai statue outside of it and at the temple you could pay them a buck to get a fortune. Clearly I couldn't pass this up so I rendered unto the monk my 100 yen and we received out fortunes. Tyler's was good and said he's be happy or whatever. Mine was an "unlucky" one which said I would live a long healthy life but be unlucky and depressed. I don't know whose the arbiter on lucky versus unlucky in Japan but apparently they haven't heard the phrase "well at least you've got your health." Living a long healthy life seems pretty lucky to me. Regardless, Tyler then informed me that upon receiving an unlucky fortune you are supposed to go tie it to a nearby tree so the good spirits (AKA janitor) can take it and rid you of the unluckiness. Bull crap. You can't offer fortunes and then every bad one comes with a get out of jail free card. what kind of hogwash is that? If you're going to run around ascribing to mystical preordination then you'd better be willing to deal with the consequences. I mean come on! At least make it hard to get rid of the bad luck. Tying your fortune to a tree? Literally anyone who is competent enough to receive a fortune can then just immediately bail on it if they don't like it. Phooey I say.

Another view of the Castle.

 Turbo Japanese gate on the way to the temple. 

Artistic shot of samurai statue, gate, and temple. The statue is holding both a katana and a fan. the fan was used to signal orders to the soldiers in battle (though I'm pretty sure it was actually so the general could cool himself off in the hot ass Summers of Japan). 

Anyway,  post fortune telling (which I kept because 1: it's not unlucky and B: I'm a man of principles) headed back towards the busy part of town to meet up with his girlfriend and see some things. (I’ll tell you what one of my favorite things about Asia has been the prevalence of mango flavored things, particularly ice cream. It’s a delight.) We met up with them in this massive shopping center and it was at this point that Japan just went all in on the Japan stereotype thing. The stores and people in them were exactly what I imagined when I first decided to come here. Just filled with the strangest assortment of weird crap and anime. Hello Kitty was everywhere. There was an entire store dedicated to Sailor Moon. Most cities i go to I have preconceived notions born of ignorance and maybe some latent prejudices and when I get there i quickly see how different my imagination was from reality. But the most remarkable thing about Osaka was how unremarkable it was. It was almost exactly what I'd imagined before ever stepping foot there only even more so. I'm starting to think Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift was less "ridiculous car racing movie" and more "factually accurate period film." For Pete's sake there was an entire store devoted to cats! Not selling them mind you, but cats just imposed on every item imaginable. Pillows and blankets and soap and pens and everything you can think of. They had a cat scratch board that was shaped like a DJ turntable and cat houses that looked like fighter jets. It was ridiculous. And of course in the center of it all was Tyler’s girlfriend buying cat things. After awhile we finally managed to pry her away from the feline fecundity and back out into the mall. I wanted to go see a “joypolis” since they are supposed to be worth a visit so Tyler took us to one to check it out.

Cat Scratch Fever. DJ Kitty Kat on the tables cutting up some tasty tunes. (I would have actually bought this for my sister had I been able to bring it back to BKK with me but alas I was traveling light.)

Here. This is a thing that was in a store. An entire section devoted to plush ice cream cone figures. i can't even begin to guess what is going on here.  I just thought it would be all Pokemon stuff but no. Sidebar: did you know Pokemon still exists? And is still going pretty strong in Japan. Good for them. There must be 8,000 by now. Good luck catching all of those kids.

For the uninitiated, a “joypolis” is an arcade. However they are the biggest, most impressive arcades in existence. The one we went to was 8 stories high and absolutely teeming with customers. If the bright lights and neon glow of Dotonbori was visually overwhelming, this place was sensory overload. Thousands of slot machines, video games, racing games, flashing lights, explosions and general chaos berated your ears and eyes. I’ve been to many an arcade in my time but nothing with the sheer scope of this and, it must be said, the success. In the US arcades are generally sparsely populated and the people who do hang around them are frequently of questionable coolness. But this place was brimming with people dropping money to play FIFA on Playstation or drop coins in the slot machines (though granted, a vast majority of these individuals would probably not be considered “cool” in the US either). I didn’t venture to watch the Dance Dance Revolution players because Japans track record of fulfilling even the most ridiculous of stereotypes had been 100% and I didn’t really want to see how good those people would have been at fake dancing but the one “game” that stuck out the most to me was virtual horserace betting which is exactly like it sounds. There was a big video monitor with virtual horses racing on it and in front of the monitor were two-dozen desk setups with a computer to investigate and bet on. It was just like horseracing/sports betting sections in casinos only instead of wagering on real life horses it was betting on the computer programming. It was utterly baffling.

Loud noises!

This was virtual horse racing. Just the most incomprehensible thing I've ever seen.

Round 1, Mega-Arcade. 8 stories of video games, bowling, karaoke, pool, darts, and abject loneliness. Also, you'll notice the Colonel hiding out in the bottom corner there. Somehow KFC is the second biggest fast food restaurant East of the Alps. Never would have guessed that in a million years. I don't think I've eaten at a KFC in a decade. 

Post mega-arcade it was time to get down to brass tacks and do what I came to Japan to do: eat sushi. We met up with some more of Tyler’s friends and headed to a conveyor belt sushi spot. Sadly the sushi was unremarkable and the experience damped by the green tea restaurant rule; however the unagi was actually quite good and I had several portions of that and the conversation was lively enough to make up for the mediocre food. That ngiht was a relatively tame affair as it the World Cup Final would be played at 4AM and Tyler had to work the next morning so we decided not to get too rowdy. We hung around for a bit and then went back to Tyler’s apartment where I got to meet his buddy Brian who would be taking me out the next evening (since Tyler had to work). We crashed pretty early and then woke up to watch Messi be lethargic and disinterested for 2 hours while the evil German empire inevitably won because that was what was always going to happen without America there to put a freedom wrench in their nefarious plans. The sad and anticlimactic ending to the Cup was somewhat of a downer (for me and Tyler who were rooting for Messi; Tyler’s girlfriend was rooting for Germany because apparently being a quarter Dutch means she inherited some deep seated Stockholm Syndrome or something I guess) and we all just rolled back over and went to sleep. Monday Tyler would be working and I’d be left to my own devices in a city I could barely comprehend.

I’ll end the story here folks as I’m past the 3K word mark. Thanks for following along and be sure to pass this on to any and everyone you know. Always a pleasure,

Jed

PS:

This place is friggin weird man.