Adventures in Japan

Meat and Yeast

As promised: more pics!


Totally arty, yet I didn't take it, I took this next one.


But I did not take this next one, because I cannot exist in two places at once.

Yet.


Whilst we were all taking pictures of one another and drinking and eating, Carla was spying on a couple of girls. Our group was situated in a booth, walled off from the rest of the establishment. We are often put in this booth in the back. It is where they put the white folk so they don't scare the other customers. That didn't stop Carla from trying to freak these two girls out. She was obsessed with them. Them and their makeup.

Y'see Theo...
Girls in Japan like to put on makeup. They are always putting in on or touching it up. In public. This isn't just a quick procedure, there are implements involved. Bizarre apparati. These two girls had been applying makeup for the better part of an hour. Every few minutes Carla would stick her head over the wall hiding us from the rest of the restaurant and report back to us. "They're STILL at it! They ain't getting any cuter!"

Nate disagreed.


The man just likes to have his pictures taken with cute things.

We Return to Our Irregularly Programmed Schedule

Man, I forgot to mention that some time before Nara Trev bought himself a camera. He managed to save himself some money, and the camera had the option of English menus. So yay him. And yay this picture.


It was taken mere moments after Trev's purchase. And this picture was taken mere moments before that.


The man just likes to have his pictures taken with cute things. Can you blame him? More than just a camera was bought that day, there was a full day of shopping involved. Poor Nate. He is not much of a walker. For a such a fit guy he's in pretty bad shape. To ease his battered body, we decided to fill it with beef and beer.

We supped with Ben and Atsuki and Michiko. As ever we ate a tonne and drank a... grosse? A peck? Whatever. There was a lot of fun had.


More pics of the fun later.

Hello Goodbye

Sorry we haven't updated in the last couple o' days, but we were entertaining yet another guest. The Internet's own Eric Brochu made an oh-so-brief stopover in Osaka at the end of his Asian Adventure. He landed at 7 on Friday night and left at 6 on Sunday night.

On Friday night, we took him out to an izakaya, as is becoming our tradition. We ate and drank and ate and drank. We did not however, eat any raw horse meat.

After that we went to bed, cuz Carla and I had to work the next day.

On Saturday Eric and I poked around downtown Umeda waiting for Carla to finish work. We saw the big red whale and other shopping things and eating things and naughty things. And we went to Wan Wan Land, one of the most depressing pet shops in all the land. Full of small, cute furry things in too-small cages. Plus there is always a goat in there. And sometimes pigs or chickens. And always monkeys. This time, there were three monkeys. One was small and cute, one was big and crazy and one was... It was in a space just barely bigger than itself and it had very human looking, very wet, very sad eyes. Eric and I nearly wept right there.

From there we went to the electronic section of town. We showed Eric all the geeky stuff we could. I saw a VitualBoy game that cost over 700 dollars. Youch. From there we walked to the Dotonbori so Eric could take in all the neon. After that Eric took us out for a very swanky dinner. We went to the Herbis Ent building, the same place Carla, Ryland and I went for my swank birthday dinner. It is a swank place.

We had some upmarket Chinese, we had shark fin soup and Peking duck and lots of crab. I loves me my crab, I don't know if I could ever eat too much crab. After dinner, which was a fairly late dinner, we repaired to our apartment where we proceeded to Wii and Guitar Hero well into the evening/morning. I find having a couple drinks before Guitar Heroing really helps.

The next day we went into America Town to look at all the funny looking kids. We lunched at the Movie Star Cafe. The food was better and cheaper than I expected. You could buy autographs and check the week's box office results as you ate. Good times.

Then Eric left.

Still No Nate

One of these things just doesn't belong here, one of these things just isn't the same.

But to be fair, it's only natural that Trev began hanging out with these guys. You know how Kim is, she dreams about such things. All the time. ALL. THE. TIME.

Seriously. Here's proof.

The Very Next Day

I am not much of a note taker, me. So the following might not follow any sort of proper order.

At some point, Trev, Kim, Carla and I went out to Nara. Nate stayed at home, feeling a bit under the weather. And he had already seen the deer.


Kim had not yet seen the deer.


There are a lot of deer in Nara.


There is also a big Buddha. And nice buildings.





We've (Carla and I've) been to Nara nearly a half dozen times and it never gets less impressive. It's all so big and so old and imposing.


That up there is a picture a drunken Brit took of us after I took an artfully composed and rather striking photograph of him and his compatriots. We got a raw deal.


Okay, the photo uploading thingee has decided to call it a day, so I will too. Be back with more pics soon.

Past Christmas

Trev and Kim were the first to arrive. I imagine this is what they looked like when they landed.

All lost and alone and scared and such. But Carla was there to pick them up and dry their tears. I wasn't there, as I had to work. And I had to work for the following few days. As did Carla.

Anyhoo, when I got home from work, Trev and Kim were already settled in. Hugs were had. Then we took them out to an izakaya near our place. Beers were imbibed and nibbles were noshed. I took off early to pick up Nate at the bus stop. Two hours later, after the last bus from the airport had come and gone, I returned to the apartment with no Nate in tow.

Not really having a firm grasp of this crazy moon language, it limited our options of trying to find him. So we went to bed.

Just as the sugarplums were getting ready to dance, Nate called Carla's cell. I'm not sure how he got her number. Nate, how did you know Carla's cell number? Nate had made it to Amagasaki, which is only one stop away from us by train. Not that that mattered to Nate, as the trains were no longer running. So we told him to catch a cab to Tachibana. Which he did.

Trev and I met him as he exited his cab. We all retired to the pad where he regaled us with tales of his Asian adventures and plied us with nice looking brand name knock offs.

Then we all went to sleep. That was our first day.

Both Carla and I worked for the next couple of days, so the kids got up to their own misadventures. Here are some pictures.


That up there is obviously a belly dancer. There are not all that many places in Osaka that have belly dancers. There were also pictures of strange white people that we've never met before. Nate, just what did you get up to in our absence?

Also, they all went out for okonomiyaki at some point.

That'll do fer now, I reckon.

Here's one of my favourite pictures from this lovely friend filled Christmas. Nate took it, hence his not being in the picture.

Update

I've managed to narrow it down to around one hundred and two pictures. I might need to cull a few more. But the program that we usually use to post pictures is not agreeing with our updated blog, so that is a problem.

Just the Two of Us

The apartment seems much bigger now. Less baggage laden. The kids are all away and gone. Up in the air, or maybe on some other ground in some other land. They ain't here no more is what I am talking around. We hope they had them some funs. We did. Now comes the mostest fun part of typing down what we did and sorting through the gigs of pics and vids and posting it all here for you all to enjoy.

We really should have got them to blog while they were here.

That's a new rule: if you come to stay with us, you must blog at least once.

Of I go, be back later. Hope y'alls had good days of holly and Holy.