Alright, I shall be writing the ACTUAL post about Osaka over several days (says I on day one :P). I plan on trying to get all the details! :D Even though it's been a few days since then. teehee. I won't post this thing till I'm good and satisfied, so...I shall commence!
On Friday the 13th, our teachers decided it was the perfect day to schedule the second midterm. Yup, fun stuff. I wasn't even aware of that fact until right when I was about to leave and Otousan was like "Today is Friday the thirteenth, isn't it" (except he said that in Japanese). I was probably looking something like this O___O as I realized I was about to mega fail my exam. Since that time, I obviously got my score back and...well...I have no reason to doubt Friday the 13th is a real thing.
I was looking forward to our trip though, do a little retail therapy, you know. There was a group of guys also going to Osaka around the same time, so we'd planned to go together, maybe get lunch in the city together before splitting up, but those boys. They were just SOOO slow! Alex, Abby, and I were ready in 3 seconds, and they were just playing on the computer, not packing, even though we were aiming for the 1:25 train. The three of us were eventually like Screw This, so we just took off without them and got our tickets at a mini ticket booth a bit away from the station (which makes in cheaper). The tickets only came to about 2700 yen, so I was really happy that they were so cheap. The station attendant told us to just get on the regular old Himeji-bound train, which is often what we take to get to Hikone from Nagahama anyway. We got there with less than 10 minutes to spare, and we were able to get a 4-person section together and enjoy the hour and a half ride to Osaka. By the time we had reached Kyoto, the train was super packed! By the time we actually reached Osaka, the train was so stuffy and crowded, I was dying to get off. And get off we did, at Osaka station in Umeda, along with practically the entire population of the train.
Osaka station is one of the busiest train stations IN THE WORLD. It's just huge! I mean, on the way home, we walked half an hour through the station to get to our platform, and that was only from the north side to the east side, not even crossing through the whole thing. On the outside, in the evening there were people playing guitars, singing, promoting their albums, it was so cool! But when we got out, this is the kind of stuff we saw.
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| this is a hotel... |
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| Being confused and whatnot |
We walked around for a while looking for a hotel I had found online while searching for cheap options, but the map we got at the station only contained these really fancy expensive looking places. It was rainy, we wanted to stop worrying about the room, so we went back to the station where they had a travel center nearby. Despite our confusedness, we totally communicated in Japanese! I was getting frustrated though, because everywhere this lady kept trying to book us was going to cost us twice as much as I wanted to pay. In Japan, it is not ok to have more people than there are beds in the room, even if the beds are all kings and you are all girls and very willing to share. Unless you are a married couple, one bed for more than one person is dame >_<. So that meant she kept looking for a three person room! I was so mad about that fact. I was willing to just have two of us go up to a hotel and book the room for two and then just walk in with three people, but as I was discussing this with Abby and Alex, our lady informed us that it's only this "cheap" if the travel company books it. I was like, Fine fine, whatever. We had already been there an hour, and there was no way this lady was going to help me do what I wanted to to, so we let her book a room about a 20 minute walk from where we were. I was a little angry about paying so much, but the lady was actually really helpful. We asked her if it was ok if we were slow along the way and went shopping and stuff, so she called the hotel and told them we would be arrive and that we would be arriving at night and if they could find an English speaking staff member to help us, that would be good. So with that all settled, Alex, Abby, and I decided to meander along the way and stop wherever it pleased us.
We found a huge...building thing and I saw a sign that said "Pokémon Center" on the side, and that was that, I had to go in. So we wandered around the building til we figured out where the Pokémon Center was. I was a tad disappointed. It was mostly a bunch of people standing there with their DSes, and a few stuffed animals and pencils and keychains you could buy. But at least now I can say that I've been to the Pokémon center!
After browsing through there for only like 5 minutes, we found UniQlo, which is a well-known clothing store in Japan. They are all the same kinds of clothes you can get in America, except usually much smaller since Japanese people apparently only are allowed to be size 6 or smaller. I did end up buying some cool pants, but seeing as it's 100 degrees here every day now that the rainy season ended, I doubt I'll get to wear them for a while. In the rest of the mall however, we very much a big-city-Japanese-style-mall. I know I still haven't really talking about shopping in Japan, but the low down is that every store looks the same, it's not reeeeally a store-store, everything is totes expensive, and it's all SOOO adorable. This part was called Ufufu girls, and if I could have, I would have bought 80% of all the merchandise. But seeing as nothing fits me anyway, that and the fact everything was ungodly expensive, I didn't get anything. But I swear- by the end of this trip I WILL buy one frilly, ridiculously adorable dress here, and it will look so weird on me since I don't usually wear anything like that, but I won't give a hoot, cause it'll make me happy, so no judging! Ps, taking pictures in those stores is kinda frowned upon. :/ Sorry. So you'll have no clue what I'm talking about for now.
After such cuteness overload/walking for 6 hours, we were really hungry and tired and just wanted to sit. So we headed out again towards the hotel. I kept pointing out places to eat, but neither Abby nor Alex were jumping at them, so eventually I made an executive decision and just walked into a place that looked cheap. The stuff actually was pretty good- I got a yakiniku wrap, which is just...like...saucy beef and I got french fries and a soft drink, and we enjoyed watching the city get dark and the lights turn on.
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| We crossed over the road on a huuuuge bridge :D |
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| Ramen lanterns :) |
Even at this time at night, people were rushing about. But I didn't get the same cold distant feeling from these people as I did from those in Tokyo- and even in Hikone. Japanese people as a collective are very absorbed in their own business and they don't seem to pay attention to anything around them other than their goal. It's why so often they are bumping into people without noticing, cutting people off, almost hitting pedestrians with cars, meandering so slowly while blocking the road so no one can get around even when you ring your bell at them, etc. But in Osaka, the people actually seemed to be aware of their surroundings, and conscious of how what they were doing was affecting other people. They also are really nice! Like, they TALK to us despite the fact we are gaijin! Dear Japanese people, if you are seeing this: Don't be afraid to talk to gaijin! (Especially if it is very obvious they are students studying the language- they WANT you to talk to them). Often times they would love to talk to a Japanese person, EVEN IF their English is bad, and half the time, we are lost and confused anyway, and get people avoid us like we have the plague or something, so there isn't even any way for us to ask for help. I think one day I will have a rant about this sort of thing. But my point about this way that the Osaka people were so much friendlier than the people anywhere else I've been in Japan (which isn't that many places, but still :P). I've always heard as such, but I thought it was such a cliched thing to think, but it's really true! They also talk funny, but I'll talk about that later XD
So we were still hungry, so we stopped at a convenience store where we talked to a couple Americans we stumbled upon, and we also bought some drinks. Because drinks are important. But literally a 20 second walk away from said convenience store we found our hotel. For those of you who are interested, I highly reccommend this place! The quality was really excellent and even though I paid more than I thought I would, considering how good of a hotel it is, it was rather inexpensive for the three of us to split. It's called the Hotel Com's Osaka, and 20 minutes from the station. The walk there is really easy but there is also a subway station connected to the basement of the hotel. When we went up to the front desk, I told them the travel center had booked our reservation and they could tell I was obviously not fluent in Japanese, yet the guy just stood there like, "and?". So I was so flustered, and eventually I just pulled out all the papers the woman had given us from the agency and just handed them to him. He still just looked at them confusedly, but after a while he just decided to stop trolling us and then let us check in.
We got to our room on the 15th floor and found our room. At first the key wouldn't open the door, but then Alex knocked on the door, and suddenly the lock worked. The room was dark and we couldn't see a switch, but then there was a place to hold your key. Once we put our key there, the lights turned on.
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| Eatin' teh German Cake |
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| Drinkin' teh Japanese Drinks |
It's not true that the service was free...they hid the fee in the bill somewhere :P
The three of us just chilled and ate and drank and got cutified since we planned on going to a club later. Actually, at the cooking party we had had earlier this summer, I met a girl who was quite good at English since she had done an exchange in Australia, and since she was from Osaka, I had invited her to hang out with us, show us the cool stuff, etc. The day though, she texted our phone saying that since she had a cold she didn't want to go. Japanese people are afraid of colds. Like really afraid of them. It's very silly. But anyway, this friend also wrote that she had told some friends of hers about us and they really wanted to hang out with us, so she gave them our number. We kept in contact with one girl named Miki, who eventually came and met with us at the hotel after she got out of work. She was super adorable! I didn't want to be seen with her and her like because I am so...awkward and American in comparison! She was rather short, but she was wearing 5-inch-heels, walking around like that all day. She seemed so stylish and cool compared to me >_<. However, we all put on our partying outfits and our makeup and sat and talked about the game plan- which took fooooorever to decide upon.
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| Alex, Abby, and Miki-chan |
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| One of the only existing photos of what my outfit looked like :P |
Eventually we set out on the subway with Miki to a "bar" she said we could meet up with her friends at. I wish I had brought my camera, but I didn't even have a purse with me to hold my wallet, so I wasn't about to carry around my clunky camera. But the bar she took us to was actually someone's apartment where the owner turned his kitchen into the bar area and he served drinks and everyone just chilled and had fun XD. And it was fun! Everyone was impressed that we spoke Japanese and lots of people wanted to talk to us. We met Miki and her twin sister Saki's mom too! XD She was super young and hip :P. I've also decided that Japanese people have some innate ability to perform magic tricks, because it seems to be a popular thing to do here XD. The reason I mention this, is because one guest started doing magic tricks- of course just things with cards that were like "haha, ok, that's clever" but then it got crazier and crazier and more complicated to the point we were all like "omg how did that happen? HOW DID THAT HAPPEN?" XD I wish I could do magic tricks. :P
After spending an hour there or so, Alex, Abby, Miki, Saki, and their friend Shiho, and I all headed out by foot to Club Giraffe, which is the well known club for us gaijin. These poor girls- we walked quite a long ways and they were all wearing like 5 inch heels XD The club was in the Namba district of Osaka (alternately Nanba- Japanese N's before b and p sound like M...so spelling wise, Nanba is more accurate, pronunciation wise, Namba is what it would be). Even at 1 at night we could tell that this was a happening place. There were so many people out and about still and everything had cool signs and lights!
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| Not the best picture of the scene, but the others were blurry |
We arrived there to find a bunch of foreigners milling about outside. Many of them were American based on their accents, but I heard snipits of other languages too. When we got there the staff was busy carrying out some really mega drunk guy and leaving him on the steps to the boardwalk with his friends who were probably pissed off that they had to babysit him. We got in line, but we were told the club was going to close in about half an hour. I wasn't about to pay like $20 to get in just to leave half an hour later, so we were thrilled when a girl passing out fliers outside the club informed us there was a relatively new place called G2 that opens at 1:30 and ladies get in for only 500 yen! When we got there though, it wasn't quite time to open yet, so we stopped in a convenience store and got some snacks since we were having the middle of the night munchies. Once we went in and paid our 500 yen, they gave us 2 free drink tickets and glowing devil horn headbands for us the first arriving girls. We sat in a both for a while since nothing much was going on since it was just opening, but since we were some of the first guests they gave us all a champagne-like drink (I don't think it was actual champagne though, because I don't like that stuff :P). Eventually people began arriving so it became less awkward to go out there and dance. The girls were encouraged to dance on a platform near the front, because why would anyone want to see a bunch of guys dancing above the crowd for all to see? XD
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| G2 at opening time |
We spent so much time there, dancing like crazy and having fun (We were the only Americans there I think, and since Americans are crazy, everyone loved us XD), we didn't notice how crowded it had gotten until some of us had to go to the bathroom. I thought the other half of the group was staying behind with me, but when I looked, I was alone. I tried to swim my way through the sea of people to get my second drink, but once I got it, I was trapped. Eventually I saw Alex and Saki on the balcony scanning the crowd for me, so I waved to them that I was going to come up. It took me probably 10 minutes to slither my way from the bar area to the door even though the club was not large by any means (this picture is taken from the door area and you can even see the bar in the background). By the time I got to Alex, they told me they had sent the other girls downstairs to look for me! We had to wait for them to bully their way through the crowd to get back up so we could leave, because taking that short break from dancing made us realize how tired we were. But I really liked that club- I know it's cliche to play popular songs at parties and clubs, but you know what, it's more fun when you can sing along and be goofy and actually dance to a song as apposed to just bobbing up and down to some otherworldly techno beat. And if you don't want to dance with guys or something, it's easy not to. Japanese guys won't dance with you unless you invite them to, so if you just stick with your posse, you won't get any unwanted attention.
Our new friends called a friend of theirs who they new was awake to pick them up to go home, so soon after we had to say good bye. Miki left some stuff behind at our hotel room accidentally, so the four of us took a taxi back to the hotel, making it about 500 yen a piece for the ride. Our taxi driver was this sweet old man who kept speaking English to us. It was adorable. And afterwards when we got to the hotel, we told Miki to just stay the night with us. It was 4:20 in the morning and the trains weren't running, so she would have had to take a very expensive taxi ride home. So she came in with us and slept on our couch and she left around 5:30- but I was so dead to the world that I didn't notice and say good bye :(.
The next morning I woke up early enough so that I could shower before check out at 11, and we packed up and left. I was so tempted to take something with me, actually. Like the form fitting pillows, or the complementary yukatas. I decided that I didn't want to carry anything like that, though. We checked out right before 11 and stopped in the hotel's Starbucks for some much needed coffee.
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| Hotel lobby/Starbucks |
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| mine had a smiley face on it :) |
Abby, Alex, and I then took the subway that's attached to the hotel to what we thought would be Namba. Namba is big though, so it wasn't exactly what we were looking for, like the food and the shopping and what not. But that is ok, we just went with the flow. But it was only like 11:30 and the heat was already insanely hot, and we were hungry for lunch. We wanted to go somewhere cheap, so along a covered street we found a traditional Japanese fastfood place. They are very very small, usually just consisting of a counter behind a curtain, and on the outside you buy a ticket for the food you want and then hand it to the cook once you sit at the counter. I ordered Katsudon, because I like Katsudon. It's just a bowl of rice and egg with a fried pork cutlet on top. I also had soup that came with it, which I gave to Alex. Abby ate soooo much food, but she finished all her noodles and soups and main course in the same amount of time I finished my one little bowl XD.
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| walkin around Namba District |
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| Where we ate lunch |
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| My really delicious, really cheap lunch! |
Across the street from this place there was a cool looking arcade which we went into and did some purikura, because purikura is our life. We also were obsessed with winning stuffed animal alpacas, so we spent maybe like 600 yen apiece trying to win them from the crane machines XD
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| The Arcade had such cute prizessss! |
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| Mameshiba + Kyary Pomyu Pomyu = Magic! |
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| My Alpaca :) |
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| The basement had more gambling type games, but I don't know exactly how it works since gambling is illegal in Japan |
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| Even anime themed slot machines XD |
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| The whole street was basically Pachinko parlors and arcades! |
We continued along that street that was filled with adorable item-filled arcades and pachinko parlors, pachinko being a Japanese slots style game. We were getting tired of wandering around, so we found someone who was passing out fliers and we asked her how to get to the street we had been on last night. She set us off in the approximate direction, and luckily enough, I recognized some of my surroundings enough to get to where we wanted to go. We finally reached the Shinsaibashi District and the Shinsaibashi-Sugi Shopping Street, where we had gone to go to Club Giraffe the night before. There and along the way we saw so many kooky buildings, but that's Osaka for you!
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| Dinosaur theme park |
While we were busy standing around and taking pictures of people and buildings and men advertising for a host club (yay!), we say a woman with a microphone and a man with a camera lurking in the crowd. You would think after my traumatic interview incident in Germany (why does this always happen to me!?), I should have been more wary of said camera crew. But no, I was just thinking they were going to film something for the news about the town, but LO AND BEHOLD they came up to us and asked us if they could ask a few questions (she asked in English, but then asked afterwords if Nihongo was ok). I thought it would be just about like "How do you foreign peoples like Osaka?" and since I know how to say "It's fun! I love it!" in Japanese, I thought it would all be daijoubu. But she starts asking us what we know about cervical cancer. Um...my Nihongo is not THAT daijoubu! She was asking this first while the cameras weren't rolling, so we kindly just explained that we didn't know very much about it and/or how to explain that in Japanese, but then she asked us about the vaccines. We started answering that as well in Japanese, and next thing I knew, cameras were on us. rolling. GAH, WHY??? Luckily though the lady spoke to us in mostly standard Japanese, and what Kansai dialect she used I was able to understand. So although we probably sounded silly, Alex and I BOTH used complete sentences and talked about cervical cancer vaccines for about 3 minutes XD. There was one part near the end that we answered in English, and we didn't really make any blunders other than not being able to explain and just saying "eh, I don't know how to explain in Japanese" XD. I wish I knew whether we got on tv or not. Reporters like hearing from foreigners about things- Japanese people are rather sheltered in regards to the customs and habits of the rest of the world, so they are always eager and surprised when they hear the opinions of foreigners. :P
So I have mentioned the Kansai dialect a few times before, and let me explain what that really means. It's like studying Queen's English and then being thrown into the American South and hearing people say someone is "fas'er 'n a bell clapper en a goose's ass". You'd be like "hummanuh?". Not that Kansai is supposed to be country bumpkin, it's just that it is so different than the norm, has so many weird colloquialisms, that never having spent any time in Kansai, you wouldn't understand it at all. And there is also not necessarily one single Kansai dialect either, from what I gather. For example, I've heard people refer specifically to Kyoto-ben or Osaka-ben (ben meaning dialect). Otousan deffiately speaks it, but when I mentioned it to Okaasan she says he doesn't speak Kansai-ben, yet it has many of the same traits. For example, the negative form of a verb is verb+nai. In Kansai-ben, they change the ending to hen, so for a word that would normally be like shiranai, Otousan says shirahen. Before I knew anything about Kansai-ben, I would keep getting confused because the word "hen" in Japanese means "strange", so I kept thinking he was saying something was strange XD. Kansai-ben also has a lot of set phrases, many of them comical, since Osaka is known as the comedy capital of Japan. Often whenever there is a jest, you are required to respond with "Nande ya nen!" which...in standard Japanese doesn't mean anything, but in Kansai, it's like "what the heck?" There are also so many other weird word transformations, along with differences in intonation and also a very expansive usage of onomatopoeia words. English has a few, like "The rain pitter-pattered on the glass", or "The spark zapped my finger". But Japanese uses them quite often to add variety to their verbs, and in Osaka, I heard them used soooo often. Luckily, literally the day before in class we had covered these words in class, because otherwise I never would have understood half of what people were telling me XD.
Alex, Abby, and I assaulted the giant 4-story H&M, which was having a mega mega sale. I was so excited- the clothes-they fit me! It was amazing! And even though it wasn't the cutesy cutesy Japanese style we saw around everywhere, but it was slightly more geared towards Japanese fashion than what you would find in the U.S. After my wallet was so assaulted, we decided to actually walk down that Shinsaibashi-sugi shopping street. Everywhere was having sales- GOOD sales too, not like when you see sales in those Japanese malls where they are like "this dress is on sale for 8500 yen!". Like, the shoe store we found was packed wall to wall with people because all the shoes were 1000 yen. For convenience sake, that's like $10 (except not since the dollar sucks right now). I was wanting to cry while Alex and Abby tried on shoes and clothes to their heart's content. Shopping in Japan is so disheartening for me. Especially shoes. In Japanese shoes I would wear a size LLLLLL. That doesn't exist. But I know for a fact that some people have bigger shoes sizes than a LL- my friend Hirona for example, was 5'6'' and wore a 9 and a half and so could never ever find shoes in Japan. Mean Japan. Why you do this? I also can't fit the clothes usually- even when it says F size, meaning Free fit (one size fits all), it's always too tight. **cries** woe is me :'( But I was really happy when we found a 340 store, where everything in the store was 340 yen! I bought jewelry and hair things and a backpack there and stuff :D yay!
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| PEOPLE ERRYWHURR! |
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| So many people in the shoe store |
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| The only existing pair of size 9 girl's shoes in all of Japan |
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| Lolita<3 |
And then my camera died right as I was about to take a picture of some cool people playing taiko drums while on a raft floating down the river XD. There was so much other stuff we could have done, but we were all practically out of money (as in I had only $6 to eat and to get to the station XD) and we were just exhausted from clubbing all night and non-stop walking for two days. They also don't really do the whole "public bench" thing in Japan. Only every once in a blue moon, and it's usually because there is some bench-worthy place, like a park or a train station. So we just ate a quick dinner at trusty ol' Japanese McDonalds, then found our way back to the main station.
However, there was only one sign outside saying which trains were going when, and it said the rapid train with end destination Nagahama (how convenient) was just about to go. I hurried inside, but I didn't know which platform it was on since it labeled them by region. We ran back to the station attendant at the gates, since even in such a huge station as Osaka's main station, the workers are never walking around to help you if you need it. We asked him which platform, but instead of telling us quickly, he was like, "well, there will be one in an hour at..." and I'm like "NO! there is one arriving now! where!?" and he's like "eeeeeh". If he hadn't been like that, we would have made it- it was the closest to the gates. He told us we would have to wait an hour to get on a train to either Hikone or to Nagahama, so we were pissed. But at the station we noticed that the next train would be Maibara, which is the station right after Hikone. Why the man did not feel like this was pertinant information since it obviously goes through Hikone, I don't know. Maybe because it wasn't a rapid train. We could either take that train and arrive home around 8 or stand at the platform for an hour (for no benches were in existence at this station) and take the rapid and arrive at 8. So we chose the slow train. Even though it wasn't THAT slow and it wasn't THAT late, we were so exhausted- we just slept the whole way home. As soon as Alex and I got back around 8:30, we ate a quick dinner and went straight to bed, with wonderful memories of Osaka dancing in our heads.
I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THIS POST BECAUSE IT TOOK ME ONE WEEK TO WRITE IT!!!!!!!!!!
Show me the love, kay? ;)
Mary
Location: My bed, during all this
Mood: Weeee!♪♪(((≧▽≦)八(≧▽≦)八(≧▽≦)))♪♪
Listening to: the sound of homework procrastination (along with a bazzillion songs from my Epic Music playlist)
Japanese for the day: ルームメートはいつもグーグーとするため、頭がガンガンして、ふわふわなピローがあるのに、ぐっすりと寝られへん。ru-mume-to wa itsumo gu-gu- to suru tame, atama ga gan gan shite, fuwafuwana piro- ga aru no ni, gussuri to nerarehen! - Since my roommate always snores, it gives me a headache and even with my fluffy pillow I can't sleep peacefully!
(Just wanted to do something silly with onomatopoeia words ^_^ I'm not sure if it's perfect- onomatopoeia words are complicated and some have to be used with the "to do" verb, some with the particle "to"...it's confusing to me :P)
I was looking forward to our trip though, do a little retail therapy, you know. There was a group of guys also going to Osaka around the same time, so we'd planned to go together, maybe get lunch in the city together before splitting up, but those boys. They were just SOOO slow! Alex, Abby, and I were ready in 3 seconds, and they were just playing on the computer, not packing, even though we were aiming for the 1:25 train. The three of us were eventually like Screw This, so we just took off without them and got our tickets at a mini ticket booth a bit away from the station (which makes in cheaper). The tickets only came to about 2700 yen, so I was really happy that they were so cheap. The station attendant told us to just get on the regular old Himeji-bound train, which is often what we take to get to Hikone from Nagahama anyway. We got there with less than 10 minutes to spare, and we were able to get a 4-person section together and enjoy the hour and a half ride to Osaka. By the time we had reached Kyoto, the train was super packed! By the time we actually reached Osaka, the train was so stuffy and crowded, I was dying to get off. And get off we did, at Osaka station in Umeda, along with practically the entire population of the train.
