Last Days and Departure

The trip to Osaka and Tokyo will cover four days of the blog. This will allow me to cover the trip in more detail, considering I was gone for two weeks, and also allow me to waste time in real life playing video games and sleeping in instead of finding exciting things to do so that I can blog about them. Not that I do that normally, but I like to pretend it happens. Here is part four of four. That means it's over!

The ride back to Osaka actually managed to be worse. My iPhone was out of charge so I didn't have any music to listen to. It was a long 8 hour, semi-conscious, cold, uncomfortable bus sit. Made it back more or less alive, though.

It was apparent that Runa needed some space and to spend time with her boyfriend who wasn't able to come with, so I was left to myself for my last two and a half days in Osaka. I was only able to check into my hostel for the first night as there was a holiday that weekend so the place had been booked for months, but they let me in early so I slept the first half of the day to make up for not getting to do so on the bus. So that was nice. Then I went to the arcade and did some shopping on my own, then slept more cause dammit I've been walking around Japan for a week and a half and that's exhausting!

Oh wait, I also saw the Dragon Ball movie. It's possibly the worst thing to go to theaters in years. Worse than Twilight. I'm completely serious.

The next day there was a cosplay parade going on. Again for the less nerdy of my readers, that's when people dress up as anime characters. Was sort of neat to see but I didn't stick around for the full thing. At a recommendation I headed to the aquarium.

Apparently I did so at the wrong time.

I have never seen a place more crammed full of people in my life.



It actually had me irked a bit. Tokyo was very hot, and I don't do so well in the heat. So having kids shove past me to look at the fish that I was paying to see? Screw that noise.

Eventually I hid in a bathroom to recharge the dead battery in my camera, and some security guard came in to use the toilet, caught me, and scolded me like a child in Japanese (For the love of... I'm by myself in the middle of Japan, guy. I know enough Japanese for you to tell me that I'm not allowed to charge my camera in the bathroom). So after that brief reprieve I wound up at the back of the line so to speak, and all the kids had rushed forward. A lot more open spaces, and my mood lightened up.

There was a whale shark that was decently sized, and some sea turtles and sunfish which I got excited about. There was also a manta ray (hell yes!) and some of those giant creepy Japanese spider crabs. So that was a bunch of fun. There was also an otter show and a penguin show at the end. Penguins poop like squirtguns, not sure if you knew that. Probably didn't want to either.

Afterwards I met up with a friend from APU who was passing through the area. We uhh... we went to an arcade. It's what we do. I kicked his ass in the taiko arcade game (And by kicked his ass I mean barely won). Then we got lost in the subway system and he found his way back, while I found my way to an internet cafe. Since I couldn't get a room in the hotel, I wound up there. And I rented a booth with a massage chair.

Oh hell yes.

So I thought. Apparently the chairs aren't very comfortable to sleep in after the massage mechanism turns off. That was remedied by, well.... waking up in a massage chair. Damn, that's convenient.

My last short day there was spent eatin more Indian food, going to the arcade, buying more crap, and visiting some parks and shrines. So all in all, not bad.

Until I had to leave. I left with a good hour and a half to make it to the ferry. About 5 minutes after deciding to make my way there, blisters on my foot that I didn't know I had decided to burst painfully. Extremely painfully. Like, the entire ball of my right foot painfully. Yeah. And walking around limping on that, I twisted my ankle. So, carrying all my luggage, limping on a bum foot, I ended up about halving my walking speed.

That wasn't fun.

I also got hindered due to my color blindedness. There are two blue routes, or a blue one and a purple one, or possibly one of them is green. I DON'T KNOW. Anyway, I went on the wrong one. And then had to backtrack to a different route. And get on there. And ask a station attendant. And then go on that one. And then switch to a train. Finally, I got to the Ferry Terminal stop. And also my ferry does not leave from the Ferry Terminal. That seems.... dumb. So I had to go to the stop I needed and...

By the time I got there, with all the delays, I missed my ferry. I was angry, and sore, and exhausted, and ready to threaten military force on whoever tried to deny my free passage (I am not capable of doing this. My face would have been laughed at). Anyways, turns out there was a second, indirect ferry that would get me to Oita. Fine, whatever, I'll take it. They had to bump me down a class because of ticket change fees, but I was okay with that. Until I saw where I was.

Every bed was filled. So there were no spaces between the businessman next to me, and the guy with his kid on the other side. Very cramped spacing. I curled up with my book and concentrated on not looking in either direction (although the girl across from me was pretty cute).

After sleeping with my headphones on to drown out the noise in the room, I woke up and...started reading again. Then I looked up from my book and there was ice cream on my pillow.

I was very confused.

I took off my headphones and the businessman to my right began talking to me and said the ice cream was for me. He introduced himself, and I introduced myself, and we began talking about random things. He was very friendly. Has a daughter my age. She's studying in China. His mother couldn't understand my Japanese accent. What part of New York am I from? Oh, he's a PC Doctor? That's cool. Here, use my Japanese to English dictionary. Oh right, the snoring. Nah, don't worry about that. What? You have to go get lunch? Alright, thanks again for the ice cream.

And then he came back with cup ramen for me. Sometimes you can be floored by random acts of human kindness, no matter how extravagant. I thanked him as sincerely as I could in a language that is all but completely alien to me.

Before the ferry ended, he asked for a picture with me and gave me his business card. He mentioned something about a homestay. I still need to e-mail him.


I took a bus to the train station, and a train (or 6) back to Beppu, more a result of Oita's train charts being more complicated than Tokyo's than of any need to take more than one.

I finally got back to my dorm, tossed all my expensive trinkets on the floor, fell back onto my cold hard bed in my smelly tiny room, and passed out with a smile on my face.