Yesterday, Erin & Mayu took us to an okonomiyaki restaurant for lunch. Erin said there’s another place not far away that is a modern interpretation of okonomiyaki, and has lots of different options, but it was good to visit a traditional okonomiyaki place. The tables here had hotplates set in the middle, and the okonomiyaki was cooked in front of us by the same woman who served our drinks. On a side note, to ask for cold water, you say to the waiter/server ‘ohiya’, which Erin told us literally translates as ‘cold’.

The okonomiyaki was delicious. Tim had his with cheese, Mayu & I had mochi with ours, and Erin ordered a Hiroshima-style. I had only had mochi as a sweet (mostly with red bean paste inside) and I wasn’t sure what it would taste like savoury-style, but it was excellent. The best thing about mochi is the texture. It’s chewy and stretchy and weird, and doesn’t really have much of a flavour on its own.

The lobby of our hotel is on the 22nd floor of the building and has a chapel in it. It has a glass roof and the other end of the chapel is on the outside of the building. The architectural concept is designed to imitate Vienna’s Schönbrunn Palace (Austria), which you can’t really see from inside the building.

Our room is on the 30th floor and has pretty decent views across Osaka city, though not as good as the views from Tsutenkaku Tower, where Mayu & Erin took us yesterday. The elevator to get to the top of the tower has glass sides, and so Tim experienced some vertigo and didn’t enjoy it as much as we did.

There is a huge network of underground malls/walkways in Osaka. When we leave our hotel, we can take escalators down to the Namba Walk, which connects to the subway system, without ever stepping outside.

It’s a strange feeling walking around in the underground malls and not seeing any other Caucasian faces anywhere. In Tokyo, there was an obvious mix of Japanese and foreigners. Here, that is less apparent. I don’t know where the other tourists are, which is actually kind of nice. It also seems like less people speak English here. We’re getting better at interpreting questions without knowing what exactly is being said. It’s getting easier to pick up the Japanese that I do know out of all that I don’t, whereas before it seemed like an uninterpretable staccato. It helps that people are so friendly here.

Tim is watching Mission:Impossible 2, which has been dubbed in Japanese. They do a pretty good job of syncing the voices & lip movements of the actors. I guess they would have a lot of experience in that, because everything here that’s not Japanese is dubbed. They made the Aussie guy in MI2 have an Australian accent, which is pretty impressive and also funny in Japanese.

The ads here are hilarious and make no sense. Then again, I don’t know how much sense our ads would make if you didn’t speak English. But also, sometimes it’s difficult to tell what’s an ad and what’s just a documentary. There was an ad earlier that seemed to just be someone interviewing old Japanese men in onsen (Japanese baths). Now Tim tells me that was actually a program, not an ad.

Tomorrow we will be meeting up with Mayumi & Erin at lunch time. I hope I’ll be able to sleep through tonight and not wake up and be discombobulated.

The joke from my Christmas cracker yesterday was the best:

Q. What do you call a donkey with three legs?
A. A monkey.

I did a google search, and I think the punchline is supposed to be ‘A wonkey’, which would make more sense than the version I got.

Did you know:

When the Space Invaders game was released in Japan, it was so popular that it created a coin shortage.

Probably going to see some of these guys soon.

I stressed a little bit on the plane, then when we got to Japan, the guy who scanned my passport ended up just using the chip reader and it was all fine. Japan’s customs and immigration thingy is so much less hassle than Australia’s.

Anyway, after some standing around looking at signs, we eventually made our way to Ikebukuro (where our hotel is). We caught the train from the airport, and it was nice and comfy. A girl with a trolley of exciting foods came around, and Tim got yellow pringles (they were salt flavour). I got an orange juice, being that they stuffed us on the plane. The food was quite good.

On the plane, we had the very first seats in starclass. The seats were roomy, they reclined and had foot rests. They kept feeding us, and it was yum.

So far everything has been fairly straightforward. Signs are in English and Japanese, and we had no trouble following the map to get to our hotel (a 5 minute walk straight up the road from the station). We’re pretty much set here, with a decent room close to the station, easy to get to, with lots of little food places and alleys full of things to explore. Everything is still bustling at 10:00pm on a Sunday night, and I’m not just talking about clubs. There are electronics shops with guys standing out the front with megaphones, thrusting flyers at you as you walk past.

Also, it’s freezing. But not inside. Inside is stuffy.

Tomorrow we are going to the Ghibli Museum. I’m psyched.

Btw, I found out that my phone does work here on roaming, so if you send me a text or something chances are that I’ll get it. I’ll send updates through when I can.

i’m going to head off to bed now. Our hotel gave us pyjamas and slippers. We get to keep the slippers. Plus, our bathroom has a toilet with buttons on the wall. I’m going to have to figure that one out.

The resolution isn’t high enough for me to tell what his expression actually is, but I’d like to think he’s delighted.

And why wouldn’t he be? Living in a country where things like what’s pictured below are just an everyday occurrence…

Some friends of mine

Watching the Amazing Race the other night, and seeing the teams in Japan, in Tokyo, rushing through Shibuya… all these things that Tim and I will be doing in just over a month’s time…

Well. I can’t get ahead of myself. There’s still a few weeks to go yet, and Tim and I also have to concentrate on selling the house.

Still, it’s exciting!!!!