Japan! Adventures in Osaka

Everything you've ever heard about Japan from anime is 100% true. Okay, so maybe that's a slight exageration, but Japan is pretty different.

So we arrived in Kansai International Airport and went through quarantine. They gave us a face mask and a pamphlet pretty much saying to report people who get flu-like symptoms. After we got through customs, we had to find our way to the hostel in the Fukushima district of Osaka. Since we arrived so late, we missed the last train to downtown, so we had to take the bus. The good news was that it was a 'リモシーンバス,' or 'limousine bus,' which is what they call the big tour buses. The ride was about an hour to Osaka Station. From there, it was supposed to take 15 minutes to walk to the hostel. The problem is that most Japanese streets aren't named. So after about half an hour we finally found the hostel, after almost walking past it. Once we got settled in our rooms, I took a picture out the window:

In the morning we walked down the street to Fukushima station to find something to eat for breakfast. We found a little shop run by this adorable old man who was only capable of communicating via shouting and repeating what we said. He ran the entire place, took orders and cooked. We ordered 'Ham egg toast' which turned out to be a plate of big party sandwiches. They were decepitvely filling and also the best breakfast food I have ever eaten. Holy crap. And it only cost about 4 bucks. This was the beginning of what I'll call 'Bad food doesn't exist in Japan.' After eating, we decided to make our way back to Osaka station to take the train to Shin(new)-Osaka for the train to Kanazawa. On our way I took a picture of a passing commuter train:

Once we got back to the station, we took about 15 minutes to decide which train we had to take to Shin-Osaka and then decipher the ticket machine in order to buy the correct tickets. The train itself was fairly empty, only a few people had to stand. In Shin-Osaka station, we had to kill about 3 hours before we could take the train to Kanazawa, so we looked around for a drink machine, and we found this:

It's important to note that there were at least 4 more machines on each side of these. One thing you quickly learn in Japan is that they're obsessed with seeing an example of what you're getting. Every single drink machine has empty bottles or cans of each drink, instead of pictures like in America. Also many resturaunts have a display case out front with fairly realistic looking plastic plates of food. There's big business in making realistic-looking fake food. Even in the お土産 (souvenir) shop had a display box of the food on the top with the real food boxes below it.

We boarded a mostly vacant train around 4:15 (i guess no one goes to Kanazawa on a wednesday?) for the 3 and a half hour ride to Kanazawa. I'm pretty sure at some point we passed Obama, or at least a station that had a train going to Obama. When we arrived in Kanazawa close to 8pm we saw a lot of high school kids in uniforms scurrying about. They probably just got off of cram school and were on their way home. After killing some more time and trying the teriyaki burger at McDonalds in the station, we walked outside to wait for the shuttle and saw this:

At this point we realized that when they said that Kanazawa was a small city, what they meant was that it's a big city. There were tall buildings all around and lots of people out and about. While waiting and wandering we ran into some other non-Japanese which we immediately figured was other people on our program. And, of course, they were. At about 10pm the shuttle finally arrived and took us on the 30 minute ride down to the school. We were awkwardly introduced to some of the japanese students from SGE (students for global exchange) who helped us to our rooms and taught us how to make our futons. (in Japan, futon is not a couch that folds into a bed, it's just a mat that you store in your closet during the day and take out at night to sleep on) Once they left, I passed out.

That's all for now, stay tuned for more ADVENTURES IN KANAZAWA！　いいですね！