June 7th was a good day. I’ve been in Osaka since the 3rd, and it’s been a blast. At least, as much of a blast as it could be. Perhaps that statement could use a bit of clarification.
The last time I was in Osaka, as bizarre as it seems to myself upon typing it, was over a year ago. As with most fondly remembered experiences (I’m projecting here, but I’m guessing I’m not too far off), it feels like I never really left. I went to JCMU in Hikone for the Spring semester of 2007, and given that Osaka was only an hour or so by (relatively cheap) commuter train. My problem is that, when presented with a plethora of options of things to do, such as visiting historic temples and shrines, hitting jazz clubs and faux-British pubs, going to museums, karaoke, finding some bands I wanna see, etc… I have the unfortunate habit of not doing anything at all, maybe going out and drinking alone if I’m feeling adventurous. I’ll sit there at the bar, getting the stinkeye from some salaryman, ordering in Japanese from a bartender who repeats every noun and adjective to make sure he knows I know what I’m saying, and everything’s all right, if a little too low-key.
So really, I owe an enormous debt to my friends, who for some reason enjoy my company enough to take me along places (they’re fantastic people, though, and shouldn’t be judged guilty by association). In particular, a couple friends of mine henceforth known as my kyoudoggs are responsible for my continued love of a place here in Osaka known as Den-den Town, but more affectionately known by us as simply ‘the Den.’ As the name perhaps implies, it’s almost a place that welcomes, someplace you go back to when you want to relax.
Den-den town is Osaka’s Akihabara, except swap the cosplayers with a bigger focus on airsoft and electronics, and maybe car models. Basically, it’s awesome. However, the last time I was here, something was different. I had to walk around the Den for a couple hours the other day before I realized what was bothering me. Going around to all the gachapon stores, comparing prices on figures and cd’s, heading into the backrooms of comic shops and flipping through stacks of doujinshi, it didn’t feel the same as last time. I was the alone.
Once it hit me, the difference felt much more profound. A large part of the fun in going into some of the weirder stores there was spotting something particularly odd/funny, and running around the store trying to find your buddy, so you could share a laugh in it. When you go in there alone, you just feel dirty. That, or bored. I still saw things that made me chuckle, but I couldn’t just turn to the nearest Japanese guy, who would most likely prefer that nobody acknowledged his existence until he was at least 100 feet from the entrance, and get the same laugh out of him that I was getting out of some fighting game character getting railed on by some Pokemon or whatever. You’ll have to trust me when I say this is amusing. He’d probably get nervous and look around for a policeman.
So, I’ve contented myself with being alone in my amusements. But goddamn if one of my buddies wasn’t around yesterday when I saw a guy walking by with a shirt that had but one word written on it wasn’t there for me to point it out to: “BALLS”.
That was but the start of what turned out to be a pretty good day. I got to the Den around noon, and I was hungry. I got into a bad habit in middle school of never eating breakfast, as I couldn’t wake up early enough to have enough time to do anything but brush my teeth. That continued throughout high school and into the present, to the point that if I eat before, say, 10AM, I don’t feel well. Having woken up at 8AM yesterday, I was looking to get some grub. Luckily, I quickly stumbled across an Osho. Osho is a dirt-cheap and delicious chain known primarily for gyoza and yakimeshi. I should emphasize once more that their food is amazingly good. So, I popped in and ordered one each of the aforementioned. Having situated myself at one of the stools, while I awaited my order, a gentleman wearing a black baseball cap sat immediately to my right. It was then that I got eigo-sniped something fierce.
Eigo-sniping is a phenomenon that the foreigner is particularly susceptible to, less so in the big cities, but it still happens. The unsuspecting foreigner, who has to be obviously foreign and most likely from an English-speaking country (ergo they must be black or white), will be approached by a Tanaka-san who is 1 – enrolled in an Eikaiwa school, 2 – was enrolled in an eikaiwa school, or 3 – spent some time abroad, didn’t master the language, is not enrolled at an eikaiwa school, and now looks at every Westerner as free, walking practice.
As it happens, the gentleman to my right was #3. To his credit, however, he was pretty good. He told me that he had gone to an Australian university in pursuit of a Masters Degree, never got to what it was supposed to be in. In between marveling at my “amazing” Japanese proficiency (his words, not mine) and marveling at my somewhat unique reason for being here, studying Bunraku puppetry, we shared bits of silence as we wolfed down our gyoza.
It should be known that the Japanese really do excel at treating guests to the country like gold, and that the more general sort of kindness, that not necessarily based in the guest-host relationship, is also widely practiced. The man who practiced his English with me, this Akira-san, helped to make my day. Though I normally don’t like getting eigo-sniped, since as a study abroad student, I’m paying for the privilege of not being surrounding by my native tongue, Akira-san seemed a decent enough fellow, so I went along with it. For the slight kindness of giving him the opportunity to speak English with a native speaker, he bought me my lunch. I’ve been here long enough to automatically refuse such offers a couple times, but I had to remind myself to do that. I really wasn’t expecting a complete stranger to do that for me, simply for talking a little about myself. It really lifted my mood, though I wasn’t in any particular funk at the time, and I can only hope the conversation we had was worth that 300 yen of gyoza.
After wandering around the Den for a couple hours after that, I found a bar in Nanba station that had a real nice dark oak finish all around, lots of smoke and men in suits with the ties loose, a warm place. I sat there for a while getting the stinkeye from a salaryman, and slowly wore down a 大ジョッキ of ハーフ＆ハーフ. It was getting around 10PM, and I remembered a suggestion my teacher and a friend had suggested I do – ride the giant ferris wheel near Umeda Station. By the time I got there, my eyes were swimming pretty good, but I could walk a straight line. In other words, I was in the best possible state to ride a ferris wheel.
This one in particular was BIG. I’d been told so before, but it was truly a site to behold, and words, I could see, really weren’t enough. Even better, it’s on the top of a department store, so by the time you hit the apex, you’re looking over pretty much all of Osaka, and probably a neighboring prefecture or two. Standing up in the carriage, slight buzz going, stomach full of curry rice, watching trains come and go from the station and letting the shiny insurance company signs leave trailers, it was all good. I’ll just have to bring my 仲間 along next time.
