spring break

I spent a little over a week in the Kansai region for Spring Break. Most people take the bullet train when they go from the Kanto ( Tokyo) region to the Kansai (Osaka) region. Some people fly, and some people take buses. Very few people take the local train all the way there, but I did just that. Every spring, JR (Japan Railways) sells something called the "Seishun 18 Kippu," which allows you to ride JR trains as much as you want on five separate days during a specified time period. The days do not have to be consecutive. This year the pass was even cheaper than usual – only 8000 yen – and I had time to kill, so I gave it a try. It took about eleven hours and seven transfers to get from my apartment to Osaka Station. I like riding trains and I don't mind traveling for long periods of time, but the scenery wasn't much, and I was exhausted and useless both upon arrival and when I returned. I don't regret the experience, but next time I'm taking the overnight bus. It's almost as cheap.

So. Kansai. I arrived on a Saturday night and my friend Joe met me at Hep 5 (a huge shopping center and amusement parlor topped by a big red ferris wheel) and kindly hauled my suitcase back to his apartment, where he even more kindly let me stay for most of a week. On Sunday I had lunch with my friend Miyuki, who I hadn't seen in five years. We had okonomiyaki and wandered around Umeda. I first met her when I was on the overseas program at Kansai Gaidai in 2001, and then stayed with her family in Mie Prefecture and with her in Osaka when I was in Japan doing research for my senior thesis in 2002. It was good to see her again.

Me & Miyuki:




I spent Tuesday through Thursday with my host family, which was nice. My host sister (Kanako) got married just after I left in 2001, and she has two kids now. The oldest, Kotoha, just turned four. She's really, really, cute:



And here is Kazuha, who was born in November:



My host family's older daughter, Yukie (who is I guess technically my host sister, but she lived in the States when I lived in Japan), was also in Japan visiting with her Taiwanese husband Yushan and their baby boy, Elvin:



Needless to say, it was hard to do much going out with the munchkins around. That was actually nice, though -- it was cool to just hang around the house with them and do family stuff for awhile. Hopefully I'll get to do it again in a few months. I didn't take any photos of the adults, but here are a couple shots from a quick trip to Tofuku-ji in Kyoto:






A good chunk of Spring Break was spent walking, walking, walking with Joe.

We walked around Shinsaibashi/Dotonbori. Here's the famous Glico man:



And one of the famous crabs:



We walked all over Ikeda, hiked through a park, and saw the ruins of a castle destroyed by Nobunaga:



We explored Joe's neighborhood without our cameras.

We went to the aquarium (kaiyukan):





I figure all that walking may have justified gorging ourselves on all-you-can-eat sushi. Between the two of us we had fifty-four plates. The couple behind us did a triple take as we walked out in slow motion. Here's my stack:




On Friday Joe and I met up with our friend Trane and spent hours taking photos at what is probably my favorite place in Japan – Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto:






Then on Saturday, my last night in Osaka, I caught up with my friend Erik for the first time since graduation. We had both the same major (East Asian Studies) and minor (Japanese Language & Literature), so we had a ton of classes together. He currently runs a website about the party scene in Osaka, so when he invited me to the club he was bartending at, I couldn't refuse. My trip ended perfectly – with seven hours of dancing. Here's a party light at the club:




In sum, it was a great trip and I took way too many photos. You can see the rest of them here.