8/7/05—Osaka, Osaka, Osaka and the Universal Language of Fireworks

It was an Osaka kind of weekend. 24 hours filled with city sights, sweaty weather, new foods and experiences and some interesting observations about Japanese culture. On Saturday morning, I met up with Ayumi (my hip-hop dancing friend from Gobo) and headed to the Gobo trains station. Part of the difficulty in getting around and doing many day to day activities, is that everything for the most part (especially in small towns) is in hiragana, katakana and kanji. So, even when I know words and phrases, I cannot yet read them. This makes things as seemingly simple as getting on a train towards a certain city difficult (ordering food at a restaurant is very tricky as well). A bit like a child, I was very thankful to have Ayumi with me on this first train ride in Japan. We boarded a “limited express” train to Osaka, one that would only be making two stops. Apparently there are “limited express,” “express” and “local,” among others. I sat by the window, watching as we passed all the small towns on our way north, asking often for names and finally getting a better grasp of the geography and set-up of the land around me. We arrived in Tenoji station at around 1:30 and immediately sought out food. Above the station was a mall of ten floors, so we headed to the top to have some pasta. Now I figured that when Ayumi said “pasta” that we would be eating at an Italian style restaurant. I was wrong. Instead, I had my first taste of Japanese pasta (and I can happily say that it will not be my last). I never knew that there was Japanese pasta. After a bit of resistance and reminders to myself that it’s good to try new things, I had pasta (spaghetti noodles) with salmon, fish eggs and a mayonnaise, shoyu sauce, nori (seaweed) sprinkled on top. Sounds questionable, but it was great. After the huge meal we set out to do some shopping. Waiting for the check, Ayumi expressing her sleepy, full state of being, to which I responded, “I know, food coma.” “Food coma?” “Yeah, you know, food coma.” No, of course not. Why would she know? Not only is it an expression in a foreign language, but one that probably no other cultural equivalent, considering Americans may be the only people to eat themselves to this point. Anyways, the next fifteen minutes consisted of my sad attempt at explaining to her first what a coma was and second how it could relate to overeating. Somehow a consensus was reached, but not before I had somehow divided life into three distinct states of being: “you know, there is being alive, being dead, and being in a coma.” Ah, if it were so simple. 
Being in a big city, I finally got a better look at some of the fashion trends that are circulating. First off, the Miami Vice look is big. Light brown hair cut into a mullet, white sports coat and you’re ready to hit the town. Mullets of some form are also big on women. Most everyone has some top-heavy cut. Don’t know if I’ll be adopting that one. But as one of my friends recently put it, "you know you've been in Japan too long when the mullet begins to look good." I guess I will have to wait a little longer. Many of the women’s clothes are baggy; shirts that hang long, off the shoulder, bigger pants with heels. This is not to say that tight pants aren’t seen quite often as well though. But the baggy look goes along with the bohemian, knit, tie-dyed peasant look. Also layering, to my delight is pretty fashionable. 

After shopping for a few hours, we headed to Ayumi’s friend’s apartment in another part of town. Her friend is a hip-hop dancer (as is Ayumi) and she along with some others, were going to be dancing at a club later that night. We dropped off some stuff at the apartment left to walk around. This particular part of town had a lot of cute boutiques and coffee shops, a young, chill area. Ayumi took me to one of her favorite stores, a thrift shop, with a lot of used REI and Northface backpacks for 6,000 ($60) en, and up. Actually everything here was real expensive, cute, but expensive. Afterwards, we stopped and had some tapioca tea and beer at a tea shop/lounge and then headed towards the fireworks. 

Something that I noticed, while sitting on the sidewalk, helping pack the streets with hundreds of others to watch the celebration (fireworks for the sake of fireworks are big in the summer months), is that the language of fireworks is universal. Aside from the occasional “segoi (wow/cool/tight/etc)” and “kire (beautiful),” I could close my eyes and be anywhere. The “oohs,” “aaaahhhhs,” laughter and clapping at the sight of the exploding lights in the sky is common language and an easy one to understand. The fireworks were amazing and went on for an hour and a half, perhaps the longest set I have every seen. Ayumi and I sat next to a row of bicycles, sipping beers, attempting to capture the sight on digital film and enjoyed the Saturday night in Osaka. The finale came sadly at around nine o’clock at which time Ayumi was kind enough to guide my childlike, illiterate ass to meet my friend Megan whom I met at orientation and who was in Osaka for an office trip. I found her and some other ALT’s from Mie-ken along with two of their Japanese co-workers. Well, not co-workers in the traditional same office sense, rather people that work for the city in some capacity. One thing about living in a small town and working at the town hall or the board of education, is that you are the center of the show. The city funds your paycheck, pays for part of your rent, as well as office functions. You meet the mayor and many of the other head honcho’s (in the case of the school board, he is titled Kancho) and are pretty much a celebrity. I have already been in the paper twice. Not bad for being here two weeks. Anyways, point being that Megan and her friends had never met these guys before and the nice ass hotel that they were staying was basically free of charge. This job has many perks. 
Guided by the drunkest one, we launched a search for a Karaoke joint. This does not take long in any Japanese city and soon enough we were in our singing room, belting tunes and drinking beer. Karaoke was over in about an hour, tends to be around 2000 en each for an hour, not too bad. Megan and I decided to meet up with Ayumi and her friends at a hip-hop club near the hotel, where her friends were going to be dancing. 1500 en cover with a drink card, pretty standard I assume. The club was small, bar in front, dance floor and elevated DJ booth towards the rear, with some tables. The crowd consisted of what I would classify as hip-hop heads, Megan and I being the only gaijins (foreigners). Once we got there and had retrieved our essentially non-alcoholic drinks we made our way to the back, we saw that a group of girls were dancing. The dynamic of the women dancing and the mainly male audience struck me. It is not as though it was pole dancing or took place in a cage, but it was provocative hip-hop and the dancers were pretty scantily clad. The dancers were talented, but all were female, while most of the audience was men. Hmmmm. Anyways, the dancing having finished, the DJ took over and played non-stop American hip-hop, a good selection, which nobody really danced to. Instead, which I have now heard is how things are done here, anyone on the dance floor stood facing, watching the DJ. Any dancing was ever so slight. We stayed for a while, but I admit I was a little disappointed at the lack of energy among such a well-costumed bunch. So we headed out and on the way to the door noticed that the bathroom in this place came equipped with a nail salon. Man, had I known.