A Long Day in Osaka

Written on 11th May 2009 - [estimated reading time 7 min]

I meant to get up early and leave Hiroshima by 10am, but the whole hostel went out drinking the night before in a traditional Japanese "pub" and I didn't want to miss out. So a little later than planned I got my stuff together and went to the Hiroshima station and the Shinkansen to Himeji to visit the famous castle there. It was really very impressive. You had to climb a hill, upon which an enormous stone pedestal had been built - and on this sat a 6 floor wooden castle. It was over 600 years old and the whole thing reminded me a bit of a giant old-fashioned windmill from the outside. Inside it was more like an oak battle ship - like HMS Victory or something similar. I climbed to the top in my socks - no shoes allowed. Once at the top there was a traditional Shinto shrine with a bottle of Sake and a gong - which most visitors delighted in ringing. It felt very old and traditional - then I noticed in the corner was a small but very obvious defibrillator. The Westerners had arrived.

A couple of girls [USA and Canadian] asked me to take their photo. We got talking and arranged to meet in Tokyo a few days later. They also invited me to "Disney Sea" the next day - "what is it?" I asked, "oh it's like a regular Disney land but with loads more little mermaid stuff and the over the top insane Japanese taste - it'll be like Disney land but whacked out on crack!". I declined, explaining that I didn't have plans, but intended to make some about 1000 times more tolerable than that sounded. When I did meet them again in Tokyo - they said "it was great - I totally like regressed to when I was 6". I told them it sounded like I missed a great day - and for the first time in my experience an American college girl detected irony in my voice.

Anyway, once we'd had our fill of Himeji castle that day we parted ways and I got a bullet train onto Osaka and proceeded to have a very strange evening...

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When I arrived in Osaka I had trouble finding my hostel. Osaka is a huge city. Unlike England where our second and third cities are really like giant sprawling towns - Kyoto and Osaka and other cities are massive - with complex transport systems to match. Historically, when Japanese Emperor died, the capitol would move to another city, usually Kyoto, Hiroshima, Osaka or Tokyo. For hundreds of years Japan had a "floating" capital city - the result being 4 or 5 cities of huge scale. After making phone calls and giving up on finding the hostel myself I asked for directions in a local restaurant. A small crowd of Japanese patrons gathered outside, helpfully arguing about where it was. After discovering no one knew except for one individual, the crowd dispersed leaving a man in his 30s.

Now - something that often happens in Japan is if you ask for directions - they won't tell you where it is. They'll walk there - either because their English isn't very good [or rather - because my Japanese isn't] or because they are just very polite. This is very common and it took some getting used to. I most certainly can't imagine walking with a lost Japanese tourist for 15 min in central London, simply because my Japanese isn't up to scratch.

Anyway, it's for this reason I often ask people who are working for directions as they're less likely to mind taking the time or will simply tell you rather than walking with you - which I can't say I really like. On a couple of occasions I was walked around until I realised that the person didn't know where it was we were going either - they were just pretending to know so as not to seem rude. Japan is strange like that.

So I found myself being walked to my hostel by "Ken". "My Japanese name is too hard" he said. I asked if I could hear it - he was right - so Ken it was. So Ken left his mother at the restaurant [which seemed fine by her] and he walked me to the hostel. On the way he explained that he had traveled lots - especially in England to see famous football grounds - and people had always been kind to him and he wanted to do the same now. We got to the hostel and I thanked him - expecting him to fade into the crowd. But he just stood there and didn't leave. I was unsure what to do. I spoke barely no Japanese and his English was scattered. " I wait" he said. I was confused.

I said I was going to check in and he looked very disappointed. "I wait" he said again. He'd had to ring the hostel and he wanted to come in and speak to the staff and thank them. He spoke Japanese with the woman and he said "we go for drink?". Now, anywhere else in the world - a strange 37 year old single man asking you to go for a drink after following you to your hostel would have caused alarm. And it did in Japan too. The Japanese hostel worker could clearly see my apprehension. She explained he had been treated kindly as a traveler and he wanted to pass it on. At this point I remembered something my friend Dave had told me about the Japanese and Japanese hospitality and how it was highly offensive to refuse - so I accepted and dropped my bag off before we headed out.

We went to his favourite bar - a European themed one - but thankfully without Irish music. It was however complete with the terrible sort of music which haunts all of Japan - wafting from each speaker like an aural disease. It's the kind of music you'd get if you were put on hold by Satan's insurance company - but it's everywhere in Japan and I have no idea why. It's truly horrific. Even signs for barber shops or boutiques play a kind of 1980s greeting's card melodies 24/7. And it seems the more expensive the place, the worse the music gets.

The bar was mostly empty, but the 4 or five staff seemed to know Ken and the atmosphere brightened upon our arrival. We drank beer, Japanese whiskey [which I must say is pretty good] then Sake and Shoju [both wheat and potato] and ordered some spaghetti carbonara - which I made a point of eating with chopsticks. We got talking as best as possible. Ken turned out to be a very nice and normal guy - he was a keen amateur sax player and recently divorced [I was never sure if these two facts were linked....] so he seemed normal in most ways - except it turned out that he worked 3 jobs - not normal. He'd started work at 9am today and worked until 6pm. It was now 8pm and he'd start a shift at the post office at 11:30pm until 8am. So he'd be awake for 25 hours - work 19 of them - spending his 5 hours off drinking with me. His third job he did mostly over the phone, which was always by him 24/7. The most amazing thing was that he was still smiling and looked pretty fresh. "I like working - I enjoy it - I like using my brain and meeting new people - it's exiting" he said. I frowned - "and the post office?" I asked, "it's fun" he beemed. Seeing I was not convinced he added he was not typical in Japan - "good!" I replied.

At about 10pm he said it was time to stop drinking. The total tab was over 6000 yen and he wouldn't let me pay a yenny - he worked 3 jobs to earn that money. Dave had warned me not to insist on paying as it causes great embarrassment - so I insisted on paying for a taxi. I thanked him and we swapped details and parted.

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I went up to my room in the hostel to make my bed. To my surprise there was an elderly man in the room. He turned out to be a 72 year old retired teacher from Belgium who was travelling the world - he'd been everywhere it seemed. "Better to be here and living rather than rotting in front of a TV" he laughed, Flemishly. I couldn't have agreed more and we chatted away. I left the room to let him get some sleep with the intention of going out and finding food. All that drinking had given me a violent udon craving.

I took two steps out of the hostel and two Japanese girls who were roughly my age said 'Hi' and giggled. I smiled politely and said 'Hi' back. By this point they were in stitches. This never happens in Japan - girls are so shy [or faux shy] that it's very rare for a couple to just say 'hi'. We all stopped walking and stood on the spot and we started talking [them in very broken English]. I asked if they'd been drinking and they thought I said did they want to go drinking. They said "yes - we go". More drinking was very much not at the top of my to do list after Ken had topped me up nicely. They started walking and indicated for me to follow - "why not?" I thought to myself - "this is travelling after all".

To my surprise I was led up to their flat. And it's not what you're thinking - they were refined Japanese young women and I'm a perfect gentleman. I was told to wait outside while they both frantically "tidied". I dread to think what it looked like before they'd tidied. When I stepped over the threshold it was a mess of fluffy pink, clothes, magazines - all wafted over with a sickly scent from a plastic battery operated oil burner to mask the smell of rancid pots and pans. This said, it was a lovely flat -underneath the girly sediment. We sat on the floor around a small table and diligently worked our way through a bottle of Shoju. We talked as best as possible with the help of a bi-lingual phrase book. Amongst the standard set of questions, I was asked my blood type. A deep fear of waking up in a bath of ice with a kidney missing might have flashed before me, had I not been forewarned. Some Japanese believe blood types indicate personality traits [and other things] and give hints at compatibility in relationships. I might not know it, but somewhere out there is an O type waiting to fall in love with me. I rather disappointed them when I said I didn't know. I suppose I should really but it's not the sort of thing you guess at when pushed in England. We were snapped out of our cosy evening by a series of loud sirens. I went to the balcony and observed that a building across the street was on fire. People were being evacuated from the roof - crowds gathered on the streets. We sat and watched the scene unfold- what else is there to do? "did I want a top up"...."ok"

Things settled down and they hit the hay at 3am and offered me a makeshift bed on the floor, which I accepted.

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I woke up confused an early. I sat quietly until they awoke and said my goodbyes. We arranged to meet for a meal that night. I walked into the hostel - unmade my fresh bed and checked out after a shower. On my way out I met two Canadian guys - we compared plans for the day and decided to all visit Osaka castle. It was a recreation of one destroyed by fire - built in the 1920s complete with lifts inside to the top - a world away from Himeji. Himeji had a temple and defibrillator at the top, Osaka had a gift shop and icecream. The grounds and huge stone walls were impressive though - especially the humongous 130 ton Octopus stone which made up part of the wall. Truly humongous.

That evening I organised a meal with my new Japanese friends [not an easy thing to do]. I invited the two girls and Ken. I also invited the Canadian guys - after they let slip that they spoke Japanese. I intended to engineer an evening where we could all talk in English, assisted by Japanese. That evening Japanese was the tongue of choice. In Japanese I could count to ten and use 5 other scattered words [not bad for a week...]. I've never been so quiet at a meal.

It was a lovely evening though and we all parted ways swapping email addresses as we went.

So the evening was over and it was time to check into a capsule hotel for the first, and last time.