Pokemon Center (Osaka Trip, Part 2)

-Austin

It was incredibly hot at the festival, much too hot for me.

So we raaaan, we raaaan so far awaaaaaay.

We decided to leave the festival after about 2 hours and go to a place that Nygel wanted to go. A place that ALL Pokemon fans must go when visiting Japan. One could call it the mecca for Pokemon fans. Yes, that is right, I am of course speaking of the Pokemon Center!

Before going to the Pokemon Center, we took a break near a fountain to plan our travel path.

We fed the pigeons too. Tons of pigeons in Japan.

After our brief planning, we set off on a bus to a nearby JR Loop Train station.  The Osaka JR Loop is a railway that runs in a circle around Osaka. Many cities, including Tokyo, have a similar railway. For those of you living near Charlotte, NC, the JR Loops functions similarly to the interstate 485 around Charlotte, except with trains instead of cars.

After we arrived at Osaka station, I took a moment to take pictures of the superstructure of the train station. It is actually quite amazing (at least to me).

The Pokemon Center in Osaka is located at Osaka Station on the 13th floor. Osaka station is actually a huge tower that has 27 floors with a hotel and restaurant at the top.

So, finally arriving at the Pokemon Center, Nygel went off to go.. nerd out over Pokemon. Elijah and I wandered around the store looking at stuff. I decided to take pictures, so.. here is a LOT of pictures.

I warned you :p

So yeah, after that we headed back towards home. Was fun and we will be returning to Osaka in the future to actually explore the city more. And probably more Pokemon. Definitely more Pokemon.

---------

Note: The second line of this post was reference to the song called "I Ran" by the band named "A Flock Of Seagulls.  Good song.

The Active and the Lazy. Two sides of the same coin.

So this is our first real "weekend" since being here.  Sure, we've had a weekend since being here, but it was basically just extended vacation.  Now that classes have started and we've settled into our homes a bit, it finally feels like a weekend.

On saturday, we decided to get together for a bit and go have fun.  We met up at the lounge of the Center for International Study (CIE). Well, I would say we met up, but someone took forever (coughcoughNygelcoughcough).  Our group ended up being Elijah, myself, Nygel and Nobu, our recent japanese native friend.  We were all starved due to a lack of breakfast, so we decided to go get lunch.

We went to Hirakatashi Station by bus and went to a Ramen shop.  Let me tell you, this was GOOD ramen. Very very good ramen. I took a few pictures. My ramen is the one on the bottom left.

Yes, those ARE french fries. 

These foreigners are takin' our jobs ramen!

Delicious (minus the bean sprouts)

Without Nobu there to help order with us, it would have been a train wreck haha. 

 So after we finished eating we decided to go to a book / movie / music / manga / anime store.  While I have a bus pass that lets me ride the bus for free, Elijah, Nygel and Nobu don't, so we decided to walk. Along the way we passed by a police station and a canal. The canal was very pretty and green.  It continually feels weird to see so much foliage so close to the city.

We also passed by, what Nobu called, a Three Dimensional Parking Lot. It looks really interesting, not quite sure how it works though.

   

After quite a long walk, we arrive at the store. The store we went to is called Tsutaya. It is a very dangerous store...for your wallet. It took amazing amounts of willpower for us to not spend all our money in this store.

One of the games at Tsutaya. Very good story.

After Tsutaya we decided to walk to an arcade that was nearby... if you use nearby in the loosest definition of the word. The arcade we went to is called Sega World. 

Yes, that is Nygel's head on the left.

In that back corner of the arcade is the rhythm game section. A rhythm game is a game where you press button or tap the screen in sync with the rhythm of a song.  The easiest example would be Guitar Hero.  Anyways, we are all huge fans of rhythm games, so this is where we spent our entire time. Sadly, I didn't take many pictures inside the arcade. My phone camera takes wide shots, so I would have needed to stand far away to get a good picture of the machines.  Here is the one picture I did take.

Yes, that IS Project Diva: Arcade on the Left. It is HARD.

This is just 2 of the rhythm games. There were quite a few there, all incredibly fun. 

This arcade is close by so we will be going back for sure.

After that we walked back towards campus where I grabbed a bus and headed home. It was loads of fun.  That was the active day.

Now that it is sunday, I proceeded to sleep until 10:30. Call me lazy but man it felt great.

Active and Lazy. Two sides of the same coin.

We walked a minimum of 4.2KM or 2.6 Miles. If you want to see the exact route we took, here it is:

Our Walking Route