Nipponbashi and YakiNiku

(Austin)

April 23, 2016

    Elijah, Teresa and I decided to go to NipponBashi because Teresa had never gone before. Like us, Teresa also is a big anime/manga fan, so we really wanted to take her. We went and explored all of the stores in NipponBashi again with her and I spent waaaaaaaaay too much money on buttons and badges (I collect them).

    We went to a lot of shops, but specifically we went to a second hand figure store that had figures for really cheap. The entire time I have been in Japan I was debating whether or not to buy this Luffy figure that was painted to look as if it were in the comic. It had forced shading and I thought it was really cool. I decided to get it at the second hand shop because it was half the price of a brand new version. Now.. I wonder how I'll get it home.

    After coming out of one of the stores we found an anime cafe that was currently themed after the currently airing anime: Noragami Aragoto. Teresa is a very big fan of the show, as are Elijah and I, so we decided to go in. We wanted to get one of the themed drinks, but we were informed that we would also need to buy food and pay for a table. Elijah and I weren't wanting to spend that much money, and after an internal struggle with herself, Teresa decided to stay. So, while she enjoyed the anime cafe, we went to checkout other stores.

    Elijah and I decided to try and find the store that sold second-hand electronics since Teresa was looking to buy a PS Vita. During our search we found a store that had a huge PC setup with a special flight stick system for plane and helicopter simulators. It looks really cool, and I would love to use it, but I imagine it costs a small fortune considering how authentic it looked. I also really wanted the triple monitor setup they had.

    

    About the time that we found the second-hand PS Vitas we received a message from Teresa informing us that she was done, so we went back to the cafe to get her. The second hand shop was in the same direction as the way back to the station, so instead we went to the Animate that was near the cafe. I spent a lot of money on buttons in that store. After leaving Animate and stopping by the store to show Teresa the second-hand PS Vitas, we headed back to the station. It started to lightly rain on our way, so we had hurry.

    We took the train back to Hirakatashi where we met up with Yusaku, Georgia, Natsumi and Ryosuke to go to YakiNiku. Yaki Niku is a style of restaurant where you order raw, seasoned meats and cook them at your table. You usually then put the meat in an assortment of different sauces at the table. We had 7 different sauces to chose from. You can also order and cook vegetables as well. It was all-you-can-eat for 90 minutes. We had 7 people, but the table only sat 6, so we had to get creative with our organization of the table. The food was absolutely delicious and Elijah acted as our cook for the night. Yusaku ordered a few too many rice bowls for everyone, so he had to eat a lot of rice that night, even though we warned him..

    After we ate Yaki Niku, Yusaku, Georgia, Ryosuke, Natsumi and Elijah went to the Karaoke place that was upstairs in the same building and Rachel came and met me and we went to Kuzuha. Rachel and I had decided to go to a Net Cafe to watch movies all night. Neither of us had ever been before, so we were excited to go. We took the bus from Kuzuha station to my home, I dropped off my purchases from NipponBashi, and I grabbed my backpack with my laptop. We walked from my home to the Net Cafe which was about a 10-15 minute walk. The Net Cafe we went to is called Bb Cafe.

    We filled out the required forms and got a small room with a computer and a TV. The rooms weren't actually rooms, but a giant open room with little booths created by medium height walls. It gave enough privacy such that if someone was casually walking by, they wouldn't see you in your booth, but if they walked up to the walls they could see over them easily. It looked kinda like this:

Most likely this was to keep people from doing bad things of any nature in the rooms. Many people actually use the booths to sleep at night due to the fact that they are cheaper than most hotels and can be found everywhere, especially in larger cities. Our booth was similar to this: 

    We watched Big Hero 6, Idiocracy and a few other movies. We stopped and went to sleep at 4-5am because we were so tired. At about 9, we got up, checked out and walked back to my house. After seeing Rachel off at the bus stop I walked back home and crashed. It had been an extremely busy, but fun, day.  The following picture is all the buttons that I bought when we went to NipponBashi earlier that day.

To The Park!

(Austin)

April 14, 2016

    On a bright, sunny Thursday after classes had ended for the day, Rachel and I decided to go to a nearby park. I had actually been to this park before, but that was back during the first week or two in Japan, and it was at night, so I didn't really get a good view of it.

    We took a bus to a nearby stop and walked through neighborhood to get to the park. While walking through the neighborhood we saw many farms and greeted a few people with pleasantries as we walked through.

    The park itself is quite large, including a small lake on one side. There is a small river that runs through the center of the park, so the park designers created many bridges to traverse to the different areas. They put particular effort in one bridge, the main white bridge in the center of the park. It gives a feeling of centrality to the area because you can see the white bridge from most parts of the park. There is also a large bamboo forest in the park that we walked through.

    After walking for a while we sat on a covered dock that jutted into the lake. There were many ducks and a swan near the dock. We even saw a beaver! Or was it an otter? I don't remember. The breeze was quite nice under the cover of the dock, so we stayed and talked for a while in the nice weather.

    We decided to head back, walking through the neighborhood again. While we were walking back we saw two highschool boys kidding around like they were going to fight. It was obvious that they were good friends. When we got close and passed them, one of them said hello to me in English, which I responded to him in English and then in Japanese. I went on and asked what year of school he was in. They seemed surprised. We told them that we went to Kansai Gaidai and they were super excited. It seems that Kansai Gaidai is actually pretty famous. We talked in Japanese for a while longer and then headed back.

    After catching the bus, Rachel got off at the school to walk back to the dorm and I headed to the train station to head back to my homestay. The last picture is a shot from the train platform in Kuzuha station, my home station.

    

Hanami - Osaka Castle (Austin view)

(Austin)
April 2, 2016

    Elijah has already talked about what we did here, so I won't rehash that again. These are the pictures I took of Hanami with my phone. At the end I also included pictures taken by Rachel and by Chris. They are pictures of us instead of pictures of our surroundings.

The following at pictures taken by Rachel and Chris.