What a crazy trip this vacatin was! I didn’t write anything while I was on vacation becaues I was so exhausted by the time I got back to the hostle each night that I couldn’t bring myself to do it before falling asleep. Anyway, I will try to give the most faithful account as possible.
My day started around five when I got up, got dressed, and tried to do my laundry. Everything was fine, until I realized I hadn’t opened the water valve, so my sheets wouldn’t finish until about fifteen minutes after I had to leave. I left a note for okaasan appologizing and asking her to take my laundry from the machine, and then left. I took the second train of the day to Nagoya eki, where I found not David, but Matt (who I thought would be meeting us in Osaka the next day) by way of hearing his English. As it turned out, David had set his alarm for the PM, so he was woken up by Matt calling him and we didn’t get out of Nagoya eki until about 8:30 (as opposed to our plan of 7:30). It was alright though; we caught a bus to Nara and got there around noon. As it turned out, half of a day was enough to see the sights I wanted to.
We started out from Nara eki and happened upon kofukuji within minutes. There, we took lots of pictures of the five-story pagoda and the Nara deer. Afterward, we walked in search of Kasuga Taisha, but happened upon toudaiji instead. Both Matt and David had been to the temple before, so I went in alone, and the sight was well worth the 500en entrance fee. The main attraction of Toudaiji is the gigantic buddha statue which is about three stories tall. It was pretty much impossible to get a picture that showed how big it was. Outside, the Nara deer were swarming. It was possible to purchase “deer crackers” to feed them, but the problem was; once you feed the deer, they won’t stop following you. At one point, a Japanese person gave Matt a deer cracker they had bought just so the deer would follow him instead, but we were able to lose the animal soon after.
After Toudaiji, we did find our way to sasuga taisha. The temple is really beautiful and has thousands of lanterns. It is wisteria season too, so the flowers were very beautiful. We were getting pretty tired at this point, so we went back toward the main city to find food and shopping. On our way, we passed a large pond with turtles in it and walked the streets of shopping districts that resemble osu. In one of the shops, I saw a postcard depicting the three-faced, multi-armed budda statue okaasan suggested I see while in Nara. We asked the shop clerk where it was, but as it turns out, it is on temporary exhibition in Tokyo, so we missed out. Our trip to Nara was really fun though. I was shocked at how small the city was...
Once we had finished our shopping, we took a train to Osaka station. There, we inquired about getting to the hostles (we hadn’t booked any, but there were three very cheap ones in one area). We wanted to walk there, as possible, but when we asked the station master about it, he gave us a “murida” (“impossible”) and told us to take the chikatetsu. That was our first experience with Osaka, and it was a pretty good one; no talking around the subject, just straight-forward communication and actions. We ended up taking the chikatetsu and to our surprise, there were about five cheap hostles right outside our exit. We shopped around and found the one we would settle on. It was super-cheap (1100en/night) and the clerk let us look at the rooms before we booked. The rooms were truely minimal (small), the bathroom was utilitarian, and the place smelled like cigarettes, but the shower was super-clean, and that was all that mattered to me.
Once we dropped our belongings in the room, we decided to look around for a bit before our 12:00 curfue. As it turned out, we were right in Shinsekai (one of the places I wanted to check out, though it was described as shady and run-down) and next to festival gate (which boasted a rollercoaster). Matt was extatic to be in a real (New Jersy-esque city) as opposed to Nagoya. A lot of the stores were closed on one side of the district, which we attributed to the time of day (fairly late) but the side by Shinsekai tower was literally lit up. There were tons of restaurants (especially fugu and Japanese kebabs) and pachinko parlors, but not many shops.
After exploring a bit, we headed back to the hotel where we planned the next day and passed out from exhaustion.
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