Day 3 - Umeda

The highlight of my trip thus far has definitely been Umeda. It's kind of like a much more polite and organized Times Square, and definitely more of what I envisioned Japan to be.

Day 3 began at about 6AM when I woke up after passing out a bit earlier. I went through my normal routine of checking e-mail and getting in touch with the real world, and watched a bit of football online using Korean Matt's college gameplan account (unfortunately the UF vs. Tennessee game wasn't showing). I took a shower and got dressed, and at about 10AM we went to a local convenience store and picked up some sushi. I'm not too adventurous at 10 in the morning so I got what turned out to be rice balls and rice dumplings. The dumplings were basically rice in this slimy sweet eggy batter that certainly did not receive Dane's seal of approval. The trip was worth it though, as we found our first bit of Engrish of the day on the ashtray outside the convenience mart


After eating we made our way back to the dorm where Tim and I watched an episode of The Office and waited for Clare and Dr. Williams to meet us at the dorm. At about 11:30 they came by and for some reason they were shoved out by Papa-San, the dorm father whose name we don't really know (we learned later that we shouldn't call the dorm mother Mama-San, which is apparently the name given to the female supervisor of a brothel).

We made our way to the train station and took the train over to Ishibashi to eat. We went to this place that served these omelette kind of things which were basically egg, lettuce, and some miscellaneous other things. Apparently the Japanese, much like the Koreans, love their pig. When I mentioned to Dr. Williams that I didn't eat pig he asked "oh, so you can't eat bacon then?" Sorry Dr. Williams, I can't eat ham or pork either in case you were wondering. I'm used to not having things to eat, and really I think other people make more of a fuss about it than I do.

We settled on the squid omelette (you know there's nothing else when squid is my best option) and it was alright, not entirely worth all the praise but a good value for the money. It was also my first seafood since being in Japan.

After lunch it started to rain a bit so we went to an umbrella store near the train station. On the way this old lady began speaking to us in fluent english telling us she was going to a buddhist temple nearby. We chatted for a couple minutes and she wished me good karma and left. We spent a couple of minutes deciding what umbrella to get (I was torn between pink and blue polka dotted). Tim decided to get dinosaur and i settled on the blue polka-dots. By the time we went to the train station it had stopped raining (I never really got to use the umbrella because Tim convinced me to open it when it was really windy and it flipped inside out and broke). We made our way over to Umeda which is like one of the downtown shopping districts, where the rest of the day's fun would continue.

The train ride was about 20 minutes or so. After walking around for a few minutes and admiring the area we decided to make our way over to the Umeda Sky Building and, against our better judgement, let Joey lead the way. After about 10 minutes of walking we came to the conclusion that the building we were going to wasn't the building we wanted to be going to, and decided to try asking for directions--apparently the Sky Building was in the opposite direction.

We kept walking and decided to make our way to the huge ferris wheel on top of one of the buildings with hopes of being able to see the USB from up top. We walked a bit longer before stopping to ask for directions, and impeding traffic along the way. Dr. Williams is a pretty big man, and so when we stopped to get some more directions it was as if we'd created a moat in the middle of the sidewalk. A few seconds later the pedestrian light turned green and people started rushing by, only to stop once they reached us. They didn't say excuse me, didn't push, didn't even make contact. They simply stopped and waited for a few seconds till we moved out of the way a bit. What a polite people. Next time I'll get some pictures of the four of us towering above the crowd.

We made our way to the building with the ferris wheel and headed to the top. The view from the top was pretty spectacular


Dead center is a store called Loft that Ashley talks about a lot, which is on my list of things to do. I also want to come back either on a sunny day, at sunset, or at night. We spotted the Umeda Sky Building as well.

After the ferris wheel we made our way downstairs where I saw perhaps my favorite Engrish thus far. We passed by a music store, and right in front was the rap section, or as the Japanese like to call it, the "Black and Dance" section. Man that's why i love these people. The Japanese really tell it like it is. After passing by some of the scariest looking hairdos I'd ever seen we left the building and made our way over to the Umeda Sky Building.

On the way to the USB we caught a glimpse of the west side


and after later research I realized I was reading it incorrectly. The shirt isn't "Straight out of Compton, Dando" but rather "Straight out of 'Compton Dando,'" which is in Southwest England rather than Western California. Ok it makes a bit more sense, but it's still the wrong Compton. We continued walking and got stopped at an intersection where I was standing next to this tiny little woman


and decided to take a picture.

We got to the Umeda Sky Building and decided to rest a bit.


This was where Tim told me to open my umbrella and, consequently, where I needed a new umbrella.

The Sky Bulding is a pretty cool looking building. It's basically these two towers

connected at the top by some walkway.

We made our way to the top of the tower which was a lot larger than we thought (it looked really small when we were on the ferris wheel). It's a pity the weather was so poor, it's definitely another place I'd like to come to at night. After the skytower we all headed back to the train station and decided to go to this conveyor belt sushi place for dinner. By the time we got off the train it was night time, and probably my first time really out in Japan at night. The country seems to take on a whole new persona at night when all the lights come up.

The conveyor belt sushi is really cool, there are basically 5 different plates ranging from about 1-5 dollars and carrying various interesting, delicious, and disgusting looking sushi. I went ahead and got some cucumber rolls to start, followed by some yellow pickled stuff (it wasn't too good) and then decided to split one of these


with Clare. It was pretty good, though to be honest I don't get what's so great about shrimp. After dinner we all parted ways and the guys made our way back to the dorms. It's now Monday, which is some holiday here, and we're all about to go meet Hiro at Ishibashi to possibly go see Osaka Castle. Peace.