Day 9: Church and Osaka Castle

Sunday I got shown the way to the station more directly by bike, and was picked up by Bishop Ozaki and taken to church.  It was a small branch, only about 35 people there, but there were two missionaries I met there who spoke English.  I couldn't really understand much of what was said, since people tend to use different language at church than they do in regular conversation.  However, I got the idea, I could sing all the hymns, and aside from the size and the language, it was pretty much just like every other church meeting I've ever attended.  The church is the same everywhere.  [For those of you reading who don't know me personally, I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or the Mormon church.]  After church, I got a ride back to the station, biked home, and soon departed with my host family for Osaka Castle.

Apartments on the way there.

Some interesting architecture we drove by.  I have no idea what this building is.

After we got there, our first stop was a big playground, where Ranmaru climbed around for maybe 10 minutes before we moved on.

Sadly, you'd never see playgrounds this dangerous in the US anymore.  It looked like a lot of fun.

After that, we headed off towards the castle, but not before passing by many other interesting objects, people, and scenery:

Ranmaru had fun walking in the fountain.  I didn't want to take my shoes off (and there were tons of people around) or I might have joined him.

The fountain was going taller than he was.

The area is basically a huge park.  People were riding those skateboards that twist in the middle, and I saw a few people on some things I'd never seen before.  Like a cross between roller skates and a skateboard: Two small boards with just two wheels on each, and you use one board per foot.  It looked really hard to use.

Interesting trees.  I don't know what they're called.  I asked Yukie and she didn't know either.

Someone was bouncing down the path towards us in an astronaut costume.  I have no idea why.

There were actually a lot of foreigners there, too.  I saw several American families, along with some Chinese and I think Koreans.  No one really looked at me as anything special there for once.

Osaka Castle was first built in the 1500s, but has been damaged, burnt down, largely destroyed, and rebuilt several times since then.  Still, some of the walls I was walking next to and climbing on were older than my country by a good century or two.  That's something to think about.

An impressive stone wall we were on.

...right next to a forest, right next to a cityscape.

Ranmaru kept worrying everyone by getting just a little too close to the edge, but we were never in any real danger.  Those grooves along the wall are presumably archer/crossbow slits.

The plant life in that area was really different from anything else I've seen here.  It was pretty cool.

An ancient Buddhist temple, I believe.

The wall that borders the moat.  The moat actually only goes about 3/4 of the way around, with the rest of it just being a huge ditch.  Apparently that's how it was originally, and no one knows why (I read that off a sign).

More cool plants.

The front gate of the castle courtyard.

A torii opposite the main gate, outside, and right next to a modern refreshment stand.

The stones that made up the wall were huge.  I can't imagine how hard it must have been to roll those into place.

Approaching the central manor.

An ancient cannon, apparently.

 At this point we went inside the manor, took an elevator (!) to the top, and looked around the area from above.  We didn't have much time to spend there, because it was closing in half an hour, but we skimmed through all the displays.  It was basically set up like a museum, and about half of it had English text next to the Japanese.

One of the coolest things I saw in there (at least I think so) is the blade of a short sword that was forged by the legendary Masamune.  It has his real name engraved on the blade as the maker.  The hilt was gone, apparently rotted away, but the blade that remained was very impressive.  I could clearly see the temper line, and the display said that there were traces of gold lines through it, but I couldn't see them.  I would have taken a picture of it, but photography and video was prohibited on that floor.

Yukie and myself after we left the manor.

We all enjoyed some ice cream.

Ranmaru, Hiroto, and I climbed up this wall.  They did it the easy way and went up the stairs.  I did it the hard way and climbed up the front.  Really.  (Only as high as Ranmaru is here)

There were many steps and walls.  It was most tranquil.

Each of the stones on the right side had some symbol engraved in it, but I couldn't read the sign explaining what it was all about.  They weren't Kanji, though.

The ferocious wild Japanese Neko.  There were many of them in the area.

There was a group of girls dancing to American classic rock, from the 60s and before, while the guys stood around and listened to/played the music.  You can't really see it here, but in addition to the girls wearing period-style clothing (mostly), several of the guys had their hair done up in classic Grease style.  It was pretty amusing to see.

Inko-san (Mr. Parakeet).  He has a live bird on his hat in this picture.  We later saw him riding his bicycle away, with the bird still on his hat.  I have no idea how he did that.

And that concludes the tour of the Osaka Castle park.  It was a busy, fun day.  For dinner, we went to one of those sushi bars where the food goes around on conveyor belts and you pick up whatever you want.  I had udon and a couple other not-really-sushi things.

Day 8: Universal Studios Japan and Nanba

Yesterday was the trip to Nanba (AKA Namba).  My friends and I met up around 1:00 at Izumichuo station, and we all rode it first to Universal Studios, then to Nanba.  The Universal Studios here is a theme park, but the only price for admission is the cost of train fare.  We just went to the shopping area and looked around.  The first store we went to was nothing but anime.  Unfortunately, it was all shonen anime stuff, largely One Piece with a bit of Naruto, Bleach, and Ao no Exorcist, and there wasn't anything there I was interested in.

Jump Shop's entrance

Waiting for everyone to arrive, outside Jump Shop.

Afterwards we went upstairs, some of the others had lunch (I ate before I left), and we looked around at more shops.  I didn't buy anything, but I saw some interesting stuff for sale, such as this giant Roadrunner and Wile E Coyote.

Only 168,000 Yen!

We had to see what Japan's version of the USA was.

The shop called "FUNNY" had a bunch of cowboy-themed clothing (very expensive).  A couple of us went in and looked at a t-shirt they had with Engrish text.  We read it, but it didn't make any sense.  There are a lot of things here with pretty good Engrish:

I'll do that.

Yes! Let's!!

Do signs that shape exist in California?

It is a theme park, so of course there's a roller coaster (jet coaster in Japan).  We didn't ride anything though.

Then on to Nanba.  This is Japan:

The main thing of note here is that the crosswalk is roughly 100 feet wide, and curves around the station along with the road.

The first stop in Nanba was karaoke.  That is expensive!  I wasn't happy when I saw how much it was.  Oh well.  To help make up for it, they had unlimited drinks during your stay (I had two cups of ginger ale), and a HUGE selection of songs.  I sang the opening of Clannad After Story (Toki wo Kizamu Uta), the ending of Angel Beats! (Brave Song), and a couple others, and I attempted (very poorly) Cirno's Perfect Math Class.

One of the first songs.

Filling up the queue.  The room wasn't actually anywhere near this bright.

Cha-La Head-Cha-La.  Of course.

After time ran out, everyone else was hungry and decided to go to a fancy buffet thingy.  All you can eat or drink within the time limit of two hours.  I didn't really want to go, especially because the cost was 3,000 yen.  I ended up going anyway because it was better than wandering around outside and getting lost for two hours.  That meal is probably the most expensive food I've ever eaten.

Near the start of the meal.

Hey, look, I'm in a picture!  My drink there is Calpis Water (or maybe Calpis Soda.  I had both, but the water was better).  I ended up having I think 5 cups of that stuff.  It's a slightly sweetened water.  I don't know what's in it, but it's really good.

I ate a ton while I was there.  Probably at least 5 or 6 plates of various foods:

Meatballs in some sort of sauce.  I wasn't particularly adventurous.  Still, it was really good.

The steak was amazing.  If there weren't so many other things to try, I probably would have had three or four of these.

I also ended up having some good fried chicken, different from the USA's; french fries (they came before anyone had a chance to order anything, so we all had some); two takoyaki balls, which were surprisingly good - octopus just tastes better in Japan; tamagoyaki (lit. fried egg, basically scrambled eggs, solidified); and I think a couple other things I'm forgetting.

As the meal wore on (and after many dishes had already been carried away empty).

Exploring the shopping district of Nanba at night.

More Nanba shopping

Eventually it was time to go home, and after another long ride back, I walked to my bike with my friend, then rode home.

I cross this road on my way to school every day.  It's never this empty during daylight hours.

Travel is prohibitively expensive in Japan.  Everything is.  I spent significantly more on this trip than I had throughout the entire rest of the week.  Even so, it was pretty fun.  I probably won't ever go to karaoke again though.  Better to just sing my own songs when I want to.

Days 6 and 7: Falling behind

I wrote this post last night, but didn't get a chance to post it then, so here it is now.

Dinner last night was the usual rice, some white stringy stuff I didn't ask about (not the same as the fish - I think it was just the radish), and the new addition of pizza from Costco. Apparently, they have Costco here. It took a couple tries before I understood that that's what Yukie was saying, because that's not something I expected to hear.  It wasn't the gigantic pizzas you can get and eat there or have as carryout; it was just a small frozen pizza, normal enough.  The toppings were a bit odd, but nothing unheard of.  There was corn, chicken with some sort of green seasoning, and various bits of vegetables.

This morning, for some reason I slept in pretty late, even though I went to bed early last night, and got up with only 40 minutes to get to school. I hurried downstairs and grabbed breakfast, which consisted of toast with sausage (?) halves and ketchup on top, a piece of watermelon, milk, and some dried banana slices and ... some other fruit that we have in America but I don't really eat.  I think they were prunes?  Anyway, despite the late start, I still made it to school, in roughly 15 minutes.

Today's classes weren't too bad after having studied last night, but two of my classmates and I, who are all in a similar situation as far as the courses go, were called to the side by the teachers in charge and told that we should probably switch into the lower class.  We get the same credit, and we'd be able to actually learn all the stuff we've been "reviewing" for the past week and reinforce what we do already know, rather than moving on to yet more stuff we don't understand and having to try to teach ourselves the rest.  It seems like a good idea to me, considering how hard it still is for me to communicate with my host family.  I've worked so much on comprehension, and I can understand a lot of things they say, or at least the grammatical structure of the sentences, but I have a hard time responding with anything more than basic answers because I just can't think of the vocabulary I want to use, and my grammar usage isn't fluent.  I have the weekend to decide if I actually want to switch or not, but I'm pretty sure I will.

Tomorrow, about half of us are planning to go to Nanba (via train, which I have yet to ride) to do some karaoke, shopping, and sightseeing.  I was hesitant to go, considering the cost, but then they posed the argument: "When else are you going to have a chance to go to a real Japanese karaoke parlor with friends besides on this trip?" So I can't really argue with that.  It's worth trying at least once.

More pictures:

The view from the classroom

Part 2

Part 3

Some of my classmates and the teacher during a break

Lunchtime, 5/31/12 - My lunch is the one that no one is sitting in front of

Enjoying a bento and some soup

More food

My second lunch

Friday's lunch - A chocolate coronet and two pancakes

Melonpan and some jelly thing I think.  I had melonpan on Monday, but didn't take a picture

The pancakes come packaged with butter and maple syrup already included!  It tasted pretty bad cold, though.  Should have warmed it up.

A new running joke among us gaijin (=foreigners): "What's up?" "Not bad."

The daily lunch menu is posted outside the cafeteria.  Too bad I can't yet read most of it.  A Lunch that day was something about "Beef stamina."

I took this picture for the Key Coffee.  Angel Beats! fans know what I'm talking about.

Around campus

Campus 2

Campus 3. These pictures were just as the rain was stopping.

Lots and lots of people ride bikes to school.  I am among them.

Why you should never ride a bike in Japan.  See the sidewalk?  Neither do I.  And those gaping holes are everywhere.  Oh, and cars drive by within reach of your elbow.

A small lake/pond I ride by every day

Signs I mostly can't yet read.  The left one says no trespassing in red.  I think the middle one is saying not to litter.

Opposite the lake is a bunch of farmland.  The road goes between the two.

Ranmaru being Ranmaru.  He does stuff like this basically every day.  In my room.