Cinema restrictions

I only noticed this today while booking movie tickets, even though i’ve used the online ticketing system many times before!

“At theaters located within Osaka Prefecture, persons under 16 years of age are not admitted to showings that end after 19:00, unless accompanied by a guardian. (restrictions by prefectural regulations) Persons under 18 years of age are not admitted to showings that end after 22:00 in Gifu,Kochi and Osaka prefectures, 23:00 in other prefectures, as prohibited by prefectural regulations. Student or Child tickets to such showings are not on sale.”

buying movie tickets in japan is great, because they dont charge an extra booking fee like they do back home. i dont know why there’s the extra charge back home either, because the customer does all the work when booking online; all the ticketing officer has to do is retrieve the purchase. in fact, if they just install automatic ticketing machines like they have done here, you wouldnt even need a human being to issue the tickets!

post-beer garden apocalypse

in osaka – and i’d presume in other parts of japan too – rooftop beer gardens are popular in the warmer months. they offer all you can eat and drink for about 3300 to 4000yen, and are lots of fun cos you just sit there with friends and enjoy yourself on the roof where it’s nice and cool. all the people at the beer garden are nicely drunk, so the atmosphere is really lively and relaxed too.

 

i’d been to beer gardens several times before, but yesterday we witnessed a post-beer garden apocalypse for the very first time. these events begin from 5.30 till about 9pm; everyone has to leave by 9, and the staff will all gently shoo us out.

when we exited the building, the sight that greeted us seemed like the aftermath of a terrorist attack – there were people sprawled on the floor dead drunk with their friends gathered around them, some trying to revive them, others playing a fool and drawing on their faces. puke was on the floor in various spots.

just in this narrow view above are already two terribly drunk people – there were quite a lot more. apparently there were people being sick in the men’s room from about 6.30pm (and had clogged up the sink); there were also ladies throwing up in the toilet when we were leaving. one of the japanese people in our party said that this is something that would only happen in osaka and not tokyo. haha. i’ve seen people unconscious on the floor before on nights out, but never have i seen so many of them at one single place so early in the night. it was crazy! i’m curious as to why this had never occurred before when i’d been to beer gardens though. perhaps it’s really early in the season so people’s tolerance for alcohol is a little on the low side?

JET postings

i’ve heard that postings have been decided and perhaps confirmed?

i wonder who is coming to replace those of us in Osaka who’re leaving.. among us, there’s 1 irish, 2 english, 2 south african, 1 australian, 1 jamaican, 4 american and of course me the singaporean, so it’ll be nice if we’ll get some people from these countries to replace us. i really like the good mix of nationalities that we have, cos you get to learn so much more; it’s a generalisation, but i’ve also realised that i get along with some better than others.

if you’re reading this and have gotten posted to Osaka-shi, do please drop me a line! i’d be really excited to find out who’s coming.

 

PS: Osaka-fu apparently isn’t hiring any new JETs to replace those who’re leaving, which is surprising. i wonder how many are heading back to their home countries this year. all of us in the city who’re leaving are getting replaced, although it’s because there’s only a measly 23 of us.

interesting facts about osaka, trains and kansai

i was reading kansai scene in the office today, and spotted many punctuation, grammatical and formatting errors in the magazine. such time did i have that i wrote a letter to the editor, with a list of the errors i spotted. i wonder if i will get a reply, and if i do, what it will be. the magazine, though, now has some new writers whom i think i quite like. let’s just hope they improve their copyediting.

anyway, there was this article on Hankyu railway celebrating its 100th anniversary, and included several interesting pieces of information:

Umeda （梅田）got its name because:

Hankyu Railway’s predecessor bought the area, filled it (umeru, in Japanese) and called it Umeda, using the characters for fill and field (埋田. The first character was later changed to the more romantic plum (梅).

Also, i’d always thought that Hankyu and Hanshin are rival railway companies, but it turns out that they had been rivals; the former bought over the latter about 4 years ago to form Hankyu Hanshin Holdings, Inc.

Finally, want to know where some of the most expensive real estate in Kansai are located? They’re “north of the (Hankyu) Kobe Line between Nishinomiya-Kitaguchi and Rokko station”. I do know that many diplomats live in the Nishinomiya area, but am not familiar enough with Hyogo Prefecture’s geography to verify if the two facts do match up.

Can anyone enlighten me?

a phenomenally educational night out

this weekend, a bunch of us JET girls finally went out and did what we’d been wanting to do for the longest time – visit a host club!

you see hosts all the time in shinsaibashi and namba (among other places), especially on the dotonburi bridge. however, i think most of us were interested in learning more about hosts, or experiencing what goes on in the host trade, after we watched The Great Happiness Space.

i’d blogged about it long ago here, and i think everyone should watch that show. our experience wasn’t quite as exciting as i’d hoped it would be though, as i think the hosts were intimidated by our foreignness – they knew very little english – and perhaps the size of our group (there were 6 of us).

below, slightly to the left, you can see some hosts plying their trade:

 

they didn’t really flirt or chat nonsense with us that much, although one of us – who knew very little japanese – ended up being next to a host who’d had non-japanese customers before but spoke hardly any english: for most of the time he whispered in her ear that she’s very beautiful, and she’d actually found that quite flattering even though she’s completely aware that he’s saying it only to make her feel good!

i just took the chance to badger my host with lots of questions; he was really forthcoming with information, and i learned a lot in that 1 hour we had there.

1. go out late, but not too late. the hosts whom we met work 2 shifts: their night shift starts from either 4 or 6pm (can’t remember) and ends at 1am, so you have to enter their club by 11pm if you want 2 hours of their time. their morning shift starts between 6 and 8am and ends several hours later. there’re certainly other clubs that operate beyond 1am – there were so many hanging around when we left the club – but it all depends. our hosts work 6 days a week and rest only on wednesday when the club is closed.

2. don’t play the gaijin card too strongly. we walked up and down the dotonburi bridge checking out the hosts – lots of them arent too impressive by our standards, with the standard host ‘look’ comprising sallow complexion; big, golden-brown, styled to ‘perfection’ hair; tight, skinny pants revealing their very thin physique; pointy shoes; and extremely average looks.

we chanced upon a bunch that looked quite good; here’s 2 of our party below trying to negotiate a deal - note the cutie to the far left. the girl on the right knows very little japanese and she was trying to ask them if they could speak english and so on; what resulted was a longish phonecall between one of the hosts and their club, trying to check if we could go there – they said that they were just checking if there was space, but we suspect that they were just quite concerned about the language barrier, judging by their expressions.

3. it’s ok in osaka to be a host with some teeth missing. before we arrived at namba, a friend recounted her tale of being approached by a host who was missing about 3 front teeth – lo and behold, we did spot one on the bridge who didn’t have all his teeth either. it turns out that in osaka, the selling point of hosts is their gift of the gab. in kyushu, it’s their ability to hold down their drink, and in tokyo it’s their looks. apparently the top host (hosts?) in namba is really ugly (めっちゃぶっさい) but can talk really well.

4. hosts can earn negative amounts of money. yes – they might rake in millions of yen each a week, but if they don’t manage to pull in customers, their salary can go into the negative. by the way, part of their job is to accompany customers to the toilet – they wait outside till you’re done, and hand you a warm towel to clean your hands (which ought to have been washed!).

5. if you want to spend less, lower the host to customer ratio. charges at a host club work something like this. the customers are levied a seating a charge – something like 1000yen per hour for unlimited drinks – but pay for their hosts’ drinks, which start from about 1000yen for a beer to 500,000yen for an expensive bottle of champagne. the cost of the beer sounds okay – until you discover that the cans are half the size of normal ones but double the price. but naturally, given the cost of champagne, it’s unanimously the favourite drink among hosts.

6. hosts’ birthdays are the most lucrative nights. one of the hosts at the club we visited will be celebrating his birthday on the 17th of may; apparently it’s gonna be a huge money-making night. on that day, all the hosts will encourage their respective customers to buy the birthday boy champagne, with will be poured into a pyramid of glasses and drunk. this particular club is busiest on sundays too, as that’s when some of the other clubs in the area are closed.

7. “i love money, and i love drinking”. that’s what i was told when i asked the hosts what made them go into this trade. one of them even had a collar pin stating “i love money”. our hosts were fairly young: 20, 22, 23, 24, 27; the oldest guy has been a host for 7 years, the youngest for half a year and another two started only about 2 months ago. here’s them and 2 of us:

8. you don’t have to be of legal drinking age to be a host. which is interesting, given that drinking is a significant aspect of the job. the legal drinking age in japan is 20 years old, but you can start in the this business from 18 years old. all that happens is customers can only buy them juice or mocktails, which i assume just translates into a lower income for these guys.

9. hosts don’t always style their own hair. like i’ve mentioned before, one of the defining traits of a host is his hair.

 

(i found this really cool picture of 2 hosts in osaka here).

some hosts might style their own hair – like the cutie we had who takes 20 to 30min each day to style his short crop in a simple looking fashion, but this host below goes to the salon every single day to get his hair done. it takes 30min! it does help explain how some of them can get those outrageous hairdos, because doing your hair requires lots of arm strength – trust me, i’m a girl.

10. the busiest time of day is at 8AM. yes, you read that right – 8 in the morning is when the club is busiest. i was really surprised to learn that, but it made sense when they explained that’s when all the girls in the cabaret clubs and sex industry in the surrounding area get off work. the Great Happiness Space explains that most of their clients are in a similar trade themselves. but wow – i would never have reached that conclusion on my own, as 8am hardly registers as a time for drinking, chatting and having fun.

 

* * * * *

our night didn’t end there. we were ushered out of the club and into the lift with one host to press the lift buttons, while the rest took the stairs and welcomed us with cheers when the doors opened at ground level (the reverse happened when we were brought there). there were still lots of people about – other hosts looking at us, and random bystanders with interested gazes on our gaijin party – and we headed back to the dotonburi bridge to plan our next move and discuss what we’d learned.

within the 10min we were there, we had:

• a norwegian tourist who tried to chat us up - “Where are you all from?”, “We’re from all around.”, “Oh, your country is all around!” *roll eyes* – by first asking if we spoke english, even though we were talking SO loudly in our native language. he thought we were fellow tourists and invited us to go to Sam and Daves – as if; you head there if you want to pick up people or be picked up. puhleeze.
• this japanese guy and his friend who wondered if we’d like to have more drinks in umeda. i’m not sure what his plan was, cos his pickup line was “Oh, we were thinking of going home, but we saw you all and we’re really interested in making foreign friends”, but when we suggested we drink in the namba area gave us his number and said they had to go home. but that was not before he singled one of us out and said that she’s really cute. :)

we were gonna head to one of the gaijin bars for more drinks after that – having spent enough on paid entertainment for the night – when we were stopped by this guy in plain clothes on a corner along the Shinsaibashi shotengai. He used whatever English he had (which was a fair bit, actually) to convince us to go to his establishment; he promised us dancing (“all types: reggae, hiphop, Japanese”), comedy and free drinks for all of 1000yen until 5am. unbelievable! we were suspicious, but extremely curious, and after confirming and reconfirming several times that we were only going to part with 1000yen and nothing more, followed his lead.

he definitely beat the host boys in his willingness to chat with us, his english skills and his energy level – he was talking all the way right up to his establishment, which was off the first left turn from Shinsaibashi station. this is the only picture i have of the night there – photos and mobile phones werent allowed in there; Aran Doron is its name.

see, i’ve known that there’re tonnes of night establishments in japan and especially Osaka, but i never really knew what they were but just assumed they were some kind of karaoke bars, general pubs/clubs and so on. but i never would have imagined what we were in for. we paid the money up front at the counter, and were escorted in – there were about 20 tables, all occupied by between 1 to 4 women.

it was a lot like a host club, with some significant differences. the staff were all men – with the exception of the female cashier cum music controller – they ranged in age, with most in their twenties to a few 30-somethings and one who was very definitely well into his 40s or beyond. it was nowhere as classy or polished as a host club – the place was older, the guys were dressed more casually and had a more relaxed air about them. they also took turns rotating around the tables - at least 5 of them took turns talking to us; chatting for a bit, then leaving, and the next guy would come over a short time later – those who didnt stop to chat still nodded and smiled at us.

it was a pity that we didnt get to talk to any of them for a long enough stretch. we never got much beyond the formalities and they seem to have really colourful characters and i wanted to know so much more! one of the guys is 29 years old and looks younger than me; he had been in the army for 4 years prior to this, but quit because he wanted to be a comedian. another guy had a very pretty face and beautiful curls; he’d previously met some australian english teachers who taught him terrible phrases like “suck my ass” (kiss my ass?), “fuck off you c*nt” and “show me your nipples” – seriously, who the hell teachers others such words so irresponsibly too? another guy was really pale and had more makeup on than any of us – mascara, eyeshadow, foundation and powder – and dyed ginger hair; he apparently is a singer in a rock band and has lived in england – and will be going there again soon – even though he doesnt know much english.

what went on in there was very intriguing too. we’d originally thought that it would be like a club where patrons can dance, but it turned out to be the “hosts” who were the performers. their “Showtime” lasted 40min and comprised groups of them – from 2 to 8 – performing different dancing segments (as promised, they danced to among others, r&b, hiphop and japanese songs) as well as some comedy pieces. i didnt get much of the comedy as my japanese isnt good enough and lots make use of specific cultural or pop culture references.

the other girls found the dance segments very bizzare – the performers went through so many costume changes and danced to so many pieces; there were glittery outfits, strobe lights, fake smoke, etc – and they’d never seen anything like that before. according to them, even tacky boyband videos couldnt compare, even though it might be the closest thing to this they’d seen.

for me, the dance segments reminded me of what background dancers accompanying singers on PSC night (赢万金，游万里，欢乐周末夜) some 12 to 20 years ago used to be like. kinda like you never really knew what they were doing there, and what they did wasnt always related to the song that’s being sung or even the mood of it.

the dancing also seemed like what my friend termed a reverse Takarazuka at some points. one particular dance segment featured old japanese music. men dressed in casual kimonos, carrying a lantern and wearing a tanuki (fox) mask stage-walked their way on stage to the music. then, a kimono-clad woman started dancing in (‘she’ was actually the heavily made-up guy); she was carrying a red parasol too. a while later, this samurai-like guy came on stage and started dancing – with some definitely ballroom-like moves – with another kimono-clad woman, who was of course, one of the other guys – the pretty boy in fact.

there was also a segment that reminded me of one ballet that i’d seen which was set in europe (perhaps italy) and featured a masked clown, as 2 characters in that dance had a similar mask, and the segment appeared to be some sort of expression on the dead being escorted down to Hades. there was also a fairytale/musical box piece with a prince, princess and tin soldiers. it was all very very weird!

who are these people and what made them work here? and how does this place, Aran Doron, work? we only paid 1000yen – perhaps because we were first-timers – but the women just sit there and watch the performance, during with you’re requested not to chat among yourselves and arent able to order drinks or food. they have several performances in a night; the guys attend to the customers in between shows, although not all of them there performed. are there other places like this in Osaka, and how many of them are there? what would make a person go there? the entertainment, while watchable, is nowhere near being top-notch, and i’d personally like to be able to chat and walk around and dance if i want to.

it’s all very curious, but a most interesting experience!

christmas in osaka

is pretty cos there’re lots of bright lights! i suppose singapore’s the same too, but perhaps it’s a bit nicer here cos it actually feels like winter!

there’s a german Christmas market every year at the umeda sky building, my favourite place in osaka. there’re always duicy and delicious german sausages. german christmas decorations, sweets and so on. apparently the german food that most of the world is famous with is from south germany – north german food is rather different, and there isnt anything that can be considered a signature dish.

the main attraction of the christmas market is the amazing mulled wine though. i was there for that, hence these are all the pictures i’ve got:

those are the stalls at the bottom of the pic, and below, is the stand where they were offering some photo-taking service.

kobe has their illuminarie event in early december, which is in commemoration of the great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake. i went for that last year, but missed Osaka’s Hikari Renaissance event – a light-up of several areas in Nakanoshima, the island on which the City Hall – and my BOE – is located. managed to catch it this year though; i believe it’s purely for christmas.

the first of which is the west side of the island, where the osaka university of art is located, as well as one of the art museums.

these are made out of PET bottles and were kinda cool, even though i didnt think they were the most attractive exhibit

there was a sand exhibit too

that little penguin is so adorable

so cute!!

this is the art museum. it looked really nice from afar, but it wasnt as nice seeing it up close. i didnt take this picture, but it makes the museum more attractive than it actually was:

this is city hall, where i work every monday and on days when i have no school. this was the central section and was much busier, because it’s more accessible. i’d never seen so many people at city hall ever!

the colours also change to yellow, and blue.

midosuji avenue is the main street that runs through central osaka city. it connects the centres of umeda and namba/shinsaibashi, and city hall is along it.

right outside my BOE:

more snowmen

this kid was really cute; i saw him jump up on the polar bear. this was put up by tennoji zoo, and i think the only reason why it was there is because polar bears = white = snow = christmas.

this was by a french lighting company, and i believe they might have been the same people who did lighting work for the Singapore National Museum about 2 years ago. they made this building very pretty :)

next to the central section was the east section, where little light-dolls were displayed among the rose garden. i’m not sure why they didnt light up the roses too; i really wanted to see the roses and they would have made everything even prettier.

i like this time of year :) merry christmas everyone!

living costs in osaka

i just realised that i’ve always intended to blog about this, but never got down to doing it.

i remember worrying before i came over, whether my pay would be enough to cover living costs and so on, and looking back now, it seems so ridiculous because the pay that JETs receive is incredible.

i get about 285,000yen a month after taxes and so on are deducted. a quarter of that goes to rent, at a bit more than 61,000yen. i think this is the most that any JET would ever pay, unless you’re living in the city in an apartment that’s larger than 6 tatami mats with a kitchen and bathroom (the other osaka JETs in the bigger 2-bedroom apartment pay around 80,000yen).

utilities – gas, water and electricity – average to less than 6000yen a month. it increases a bit in winter when i turn on the electric heater and in summer when the aircon is on, but i think my expenditure is fairly low because i dont leave my heating or aircon on the entire night, whereas i know many people who do.

food-wise, it depends entirely how much i go out that month. a dinner out will often be around 2000yen, lunches 1000yen. drinks are in general about 500yen or 700yen, depending on where you go. i definitely dont scrimp on eating out or grocery shopping, and i’ve spent between 31,000yen and 50,000yen a month. i bring bento to school most times though, so i eat lunch out only about once on weekdays. dinner on weekdays would perhaps be once to a max of 3 times – it’s usually once – and on weekends, anything goes. i think i go out a lot, but that’s the price of having company and socialisation. no choice.

internet – i share that, but it’s 4000yen for KDDI’s wonderful fibre-optic service. not all apartment buildings have fibre-optic, installed, but broadband should be around that price, unless you get a package deal. usually when you first sign up they’ll give you a really good discount – for us it was 2000yen for the first 6 months, but JETs who came this year got a far better deal.

mobile phone – all depends on how much internet you use on your phone. in japan, you can only send SMS to people who subscribe to the same company. to contact people with another phone company, you have to use email or call. calling is really expensive though, but the internet is very useful. i use it to check train times all the time, and sometimes the weather. but my bills are on average about 2600yen i think.

transport – is expensive! i already cycle to school most days of the week, but i think i easily spend almost 10,000yen a month. if i didnt cycle to school, i think i’d be spending maybe at least 15,000yen?

apart from those, there’s also expenditures on things like household items ( e.g. toilet paper), toiletries, clothes and shopping, etc. those all vary, and it’s difficult to give an estimate for stuff like holidays too. but i think it’s reasonable to say that a 7 day trip somewhere in japan would cost around 100,000yen, how much more or less would depend on how watchful you are of your wallet. i think that estimate is for a comfortable holiday, where you dont splurge but do spend some on enjoying yourself.

today

was a most eventful day. for some reason so many teachers wanted to discuss lessons, and me having to cycle all the way from school to the bank and back took a fair bit of time too.

i’m going home in dec/jan, and the SGD is so low now! or perhaps the yen is strong, but whatever.

much time was spent too, on recording my answers for the CLAIR translation and interpretation course. seriously, who these days still records to cassette tape? it’s such a huge hassle, and i had to go around the school finding a tape recorder that actually could do that well. and when i found one which another teacher had used before, i sat there for quite a while fiddling with the controls so that my recording could actually be heard, not to mention the time taken to rewind and playback to check the recording.

somehow, 2 drivers today also tried to knock me down by turning – dangerously! – when the ‘green man’ was on. that has to be one of the things that annoys me A LOT about japan, because all these idiots assume that just because the first batch of pedestrians have crossed, no other people would be using the crossing. i mean, cant you at least look both ways before driving?

ah ha, another thing that has been bugging me – classrooms with windows and doors wide open, yet with the aircon turned on. just about all the classrooms on the 4th floor in my school are like this, which is such a huge, huge waste of resources. and you have students complaining that they’re cold when the aircon is on, or students grumbling that they’re hot and stand up to lower the temperature while they’re in 3 layers of clothes in summer. or classrooms with the aircon set at 27, when simply opening the windows and doors would give you a nice, cool breeze that’s less than 27 degrees.

yet japanese keep talking about being “eco”, or environmentally friendly. pish pash.

* * *

on a happier note, the weather has cooled down – the nights are really cool and require a cardigan of some sort, and that basically applies when there’s no sun!

anyway, here are some pictures from outside my front door on a beautiful summer’s day. i’m glad the heat’s gone, but i know i’ll be miserable when winter arrives:

 

 

spa world

i've been in osaka 9 months, and today was my first time in spa world, this amazing ultra-huge onsen “theme park” place that everyone who has been raves a lot about.

i call spa world a “theme park” of sorts, as it somewhat fits the characteristics of a one. you enter, suspend belief, are transported to another world for a period of time, then re-emerge into the real world when your time there is up.

spa world is cool because it brings together “onsen from around the world” within a single building. there are 2 floors of themed onsen – european and asian – and each has onsen from various countries in that area. on odd months, the european floor is for women only, on odd months, the asian floor is for women while the men get the european floor.

it’s really cool inside, as the onsen are all themed such that you’re supposed to feel as if you’re in the country that the onsen is originally from. on the european floor, they have onsen from greece, rome, spain, finland and italy. in greece, there’s a mud spa (for women only) that’s meant to make your skin really smooth, and a herbal bath that i really liked. finland had wolves on the roofs of the sauna houses, of which there were 2. one was really hot, and that was the one i went into. it was rather nice though, as the heat was enough to make you feel like you were benefitting from the extreme temperature.

spain was awesome as well, as there was an open-air area with a ‘waterfall’ and deck chairs that you can relax in.. i really love the open air onsen, as they allow you to breathe well, and the juxtaposition of the cool air on your face and the warmth from the water increases the pleasure of soaking in the onsen..

italy was the best though, as there was a “grotto” with royal jelly, honey and milk. there were also a few tubs with oxygenated water that bubbled on your skin, and also the best part of all – a salt spa. there, you basically rubbed salt scrub all over yourself, then remain in the sauna room where and slowly see the salt melt on your skin. sooo amazing!!

it’s good, and even better that i was there on a weekday afternoon when it wasnt busy and hence relaxing. plus, they’re having a campaign where entrance is only 1000yen, which is a lot cheaper than the 2400yen or thereabouts for a weekday. shiok.

tokyo accounts - やっぱり大阪好きやねん！

the first week of may in japan brings several days of consecutive public holidays, hence that week is known as golden week. golden week means that almost everyone goes on holiday, and flights overseas double in price and popular tourist destinations are packed with tourists. since going overseas wasnt an option, we decided to go to tokyo instead, figuring that since it's going to be crowded at any time of the year, golden week is as good a time as any to head there.

tokyo however was surprisingly less crowded than i'd expected. probably because offices and businesses were closed, so less people poured into the city, and whoever lives in the city had escaped to the countryside or something. anyhow, it wasnt any more crowded than osaka, and we didnt have trouble sightseeing or getting into places of interest.

there's a rivalry between tokyo and osaka, and having now visited tokyo in person for 5 days, i can say that, based on personal experience (albeit as a tourist), that osaka is better :)

tokyo is nice in that it's cleaner, better planned and more spacious. osaka, in comparison, is grittier and grimier; the trains and subways are older, as are the buildings. tokyo is like singapore, with its gleaming and shiny high-rise buildings, whereas you certainly get the sense that osaka is a bit more rundown, and that buildings developed haphazardly, this way and that. the roads and pavements in tokyo are wider too, which means that you can see more of the sky between buildings, hence feel less like you're being closed in by the city.

however, despite all that, tokyo annoyed me more than osaka does. it could be because tokyo is a sprawling metropolis, but despite its maze of subway and train lines, there wasnt always a direct, straight route to get from one place to another (and sometimes the trains were late too! trains in osaka are NEVER late, unless an accident has occurred). we often found ourselves having to go around on the JR yamanote line or the ginza line, even though, looking at the map, it seemed like there ought to be a shorter route to where we wanted to go.

in addition, the sheer number of train lines made deciphering the transport map difficult. furthermore, there's the tokyo metro AND the toei subway lines, but they werent clearly distinguishable from each other on the map, the importance being that there's an all-day-ticket for the tokyo metro lines, but NOT the toei subway lines. we ended up not using the all-day-ticket though, cos the best way to travel, as we discovered, was using both the subway lines AND the JR line.

signage in tokyo was frustrating too, as we often spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out which exit we should use to get to our location. a sign might point you in this direction to the central exit, but as you follow the arrows, signs might disappear along the way just where there are 3 directions you might take, so we had to amble down each of those to find out where exactly we ought to be going. or, as it was more often the case, we might be told to exit at A1, but after walking a long way to A1, the map at that exit informs us that we ought to use exit C3 instead, which was sometimes further ahead (just when you thought you had reached your destination!), or somewhere behind, having passed it on the way to A1, or somewhere in the opposite direction from the spot where you were wrongly informed that you ought to be getting out from A1.

you get the sense too, that osakans are friendlier and easier-going than tokyoites. we encountered some rather rude train staff, which is a rather stark contrast to what we're used to because train staff here are always polite, and sometimes friendly too. politeness is more obvious when you're speaking in japanese, as unlike english, there are set forms, words and patterns of speech when you're speaking politely, as compared to when you're using more casual or informal language. in addition, there's honourific language in japanese too, which service staff always use (and train staff often use it too), and the absence of it can be very glaring. in tokyo, we encountered train staff who didnt use the ~desu/masu form, didnt apologise (much less go 'moushiwakenai') and spoke in a rough, curt tone to us. it was all very shocking, especially since you'd think that the sheer number of tourists in tokyo means that staff would be politer so that they'll project a good image.

our surmise was that it's probably cos they're miserable - being the guy who guards the ticket gates isnt really the most awesome job around - but their job cant be any worse than those guys in osaka, so the only reason why they're so rude must be because they're sad tokyoites, whereas osakans take things a bit more easy and try to make the best of their situations and have more fun.

we also hypothesised that the lack of alcoholic drinks in convenience stores is linked to the happiness level of people in tokyo. any convenience store in osaka would stock a fairly decent - ie largish - amount of alcohol in its various forms and brands. you'll always get a range of brands and types of beer, as well as a good selection of sweet, tasty drinks similar to barcadi breezer - those are the type that i favour. tokyo, however, not only has fewer convenience stores (or at least they werent in convenient locations cos it wasnt all that easy to find a convenience store at times), but has a smaller alcohol section with fewer selections. quite a few didnt even stock any sweet alcoholic drinks, while the rest had only a few types. even their non-alcoholic drinks didnt come in many varieties, which was somewhat disappointing cos i ended up drinking the same type of tea (i was looking for sweet fruity tea) twice in two days.

i think i also prefer osaka because it's smaller and thus feels cosier.. tokyo is quite a lot bigger, and its underground complexes are sprawling. i think i also like the down-to-earthness of the place, and the fact that its a bit old and a bit dirty makes it rather comfortable to live in.

the thought of this, however, leaves me a little concerned - if tokyo somewhat reminds me of singapore, might this mean that i could find home a little too clean and shiny the next time i'm back??

spring and sakura in kansai

although winter officially ended when march began, the weather only turned warmer from the start of this month. unfortunately, spring has sort of abruptly disappeared into early summer - day temperatures have reached 25 degrees but feels far hotter because of the sun blazing down on you. i'm currently down to dressing the way i would if i were back in singapore, with a cardigan in my bag for if i'm out when the sun has set.

the very weird thing about osaka weather - not sure if it's something that occurs in other parts of japan or not - is that seasons arrive very suddenly. in autumn, it gradually got cooler up till a point, and after that temperatures took a sharp dip overnight. same for spring; it remained cold up till end march and gradually got warmer by a few degrees, and suddenly temperatures shot up about 5 degrees over a day. it's crazy!! thankfully the weather is forecast to cool down a wee bit from tomorrow, and i'm really looking forward to that.

spring in japan is of course all about cherry blossoms, and i've gone hanami - sakura blossoms viewing - 4 times in the past week. sakura are rather useless trees though (to quote a friend), as they're pretty for literally only a week when the blossoms are out in full bloom. after that, the leaves start sprouting - at a rapid rate, mind you - and mar the sea of pink with green. it's when the leaves start growing that the petals begin to fall too, which means that you see green leaves, brown branches and the reddish remnants of the blossoms after the petals are gone.

booo.

i think i've had my share of hanami though. i went to arashiyama with my parents, sakuranomiya in osaka on my own, another part of kyoto with the boy and yoshino with a few friends. with my parents, we sat on the Sagano-Arashiyama "Romantic Train" that runs from JR Umahori station down to JR Sagano station, and cost 600yen.

the train ride is anything but romantic unfortunately, and it's certainly not because i was there with my parents! the view is only on one side of the train for half of the ride and on the other side for the other half, so you dont really get to see that much. plus people can stand in the aisle - that's the best thing to do actually, cos you get a far better view standing than seated - so you cant really see over to the other side of the train if you're sitting down. furthermore, the seats are arranged in 4s with 2 seats facing another 2, so unless you're sitting facing the direction in which the train is moving, you dont get a very good view at all!

as the train passes through a mountain range - it's roughly the same path of the Hozu River Cruise I went on a bit more than a month ago - it passes through about 6 or 7 tunnels, one of which lasts close to a minute! so part of the short 15 to 20min train ride is spent in darkness. the train also screeches AND is somewhat rickety rackety, so the noise is not very pleasant at all.

the flowers in the meadow next to the train station were gorgeous though:

the sakura were kinda pretty as well:

arashiyama has pretty sakura too:

 

the prettiest temple there, tenryu-ji, had gorgeous sakura too, especially this one that bloomed in two different colours:

with dual coloured light pink blossoms:

there're even row boats on the river, which is really nice:

more pictures of arashiyama can be found on facebook HERE.

 

i went to sakuranomiya, a fairly popular spot for hanami in osaka city, just 2 or 3 days after arashiyama, and already the leaves were fairly large. i also very stupidly forgot to bring my camera; luckily i didnt really intend to take many photos!

the petals had all fallen, and the most beautiful part, i think, was seeing the petals fall like snow when the wind blew:

my shadow amongst the petals

i walked all the way from there to the outskirts of Osaka-jo park, where i saw these two kitties:

i visited the path of philosophy and heian jingu in kyoto on saturday, and it wasnt that pretty anymore.. the shrine's garden was so super packed though.

the entrance:

after going through that huge structure:

inside the garden:

my camera doesnt take very good pictures unfortunately.. the same scene looks so much better using a dslr! sigh.

check out the crowd, and imagine the ENTIRE garden - that was pretty big - like that!

the philosopher's path is meant to be super famous for sakura, but we went a bit late and the blossoms werent so pretty anymore:

more pictures from that trip can be found HERE on facebook too.

 

yesterday was spent in Yoshino in nara, which is supposed to be one of the best spots japan for hanami in japan. it has 3 layers of sakura that bloom at different times, so the blossoms in general are meant to last over a period of about 1 month.

the thing about yoshino, however, is that it's SO far from osaka. it took an hour and a half from Tennoji station (which is more than 30min from my house) to Yoshino station, and add that to the fact that it's hanami season and the japanese are crazy over it, which means that EVERYONE is heading there, and you get one HUGE, tremendously stressful crowd. we had to queue to get on the bus that took us from the station to midway up the mountain range, and that took a while too.

thanks to my friend's friends who were, to tell the truth, rather disgustingly late, we reached there in the afternoon and only spent about 2 to 2.5 hours chilling and enjoying the view before having to catch the last bus down the mountain at 5.30pm - and 2 hours seems rather long, but time passes quickly when you're relaxing!

i dont really have nice pictures of the place cos i was too busy relaxing, and the journey home was so super stressful that all of us were EXHAUSTED when we were finally back in osaka. i dont think we'll ever go to yoshino again, but would stay in osaka - like sakuranomiya - instead!

here are the few pictures of yoshino that i have:

already you can see that there are lots of leaves out, and that they've turned brown!