After waking up and being treated to my first Japanese style shower (the dorms have western style ones. The hostel had one where you have to sit down, and there is sort of a pump lever to get the water. It's really annoying) I had some time to waste until Runa got out of classes, and I was supposed to meet her at a train station, so hurrah. I decided to grab some breakfast, and from all places, McDonald's. They had this MegaMuffin..thing, that is a weird hybrid of meats and egg and ketchup I think. It's relatively tastey.
But not as tastey as the Indian food I had for lunch. Dear God, UB's Indian restaurant is either awful or I ordered the wrong thing there, because the legit stuff is absolutely delicious. Highly recommend everyone go out and eat some asap.
I spent the first day mostly wandering through Den Den Town again, then going to Runa's town with her, and to her campus. Kansai Gaiadai is a much bigger campus than APU, and their cafeteria food sucks. While there we picked up one of her friends and went... SHOPPING!
Yes, for women's clothing.
No, I did not buy anything. But it was a good opportunity to look at the whatever-it-was-called area, and it's a pretty nice spot. I was also gifted with a Disney Princesses calendar (don't ask) and we got some ice cream before calling it a night.
I really suck at operating the trains/subways, I need to point out. I'm colorblind, and the routes are categorized by color. So when the routes are two similar colours, I look at them dumbfounded and just guess at it. This is apparently a terrible idea, and after jumping on two or three different wrong trains, I started asking the attendants for help and remembering the names of the routes I needed instead of using the color coded maps.
Just for the hell of it I got lost in Osaka the next day (after playing at the arcade). Seriously, the arcade was 6 stories of pure fun! Or well, about two of the floors were fun. But I did play Lord of Vermillion, and by the gods, if that's not on the PS3 like the rumors say by the time I come back to the states, I just might not come back.
Anyways, Turkish food that day, and then I had to find a way to meet up with Runa and Dan, despite not knowing where I was. I managed to find my way to a train station to take it to where they were, and then after I met up with them we went back to the train station I came from. I...what? Oh well. Went to Dotonburi which is the hip area of Osaka (think some mix between Vegas and that expensive shopping area in NYC that I'm too poor to know the name of). It was raining, which is apparently a frequent occurence for them whenever they go down there. We did some window shopping, saw some hobos, and ate some Mos Burger. There are shops there called "Showcase Stores" which are essentially garage sale booths, primarily for anime toys and dvds. So like a very specific flea market. I saw one of the toys I've been looking for since I got here for 90 dollars, and just sort of cried into my wallet.
The next day we went to Nara. This was much anticipated because it's something I picked out to do, and my friends were sick of thinking things up. Also we got to see deer.
Seriously, lots of freakin deer.
They come right up to you too. Had I a better connection, I'd upload a video I took of one trying to eat my bag. They're cute and you can pet them (not on the cut horns though, that pisses them off) and they're really friendly. And they kept running from Dan, which was hilarious, because he really wanted to pet one.
We also had a stalker there. Probably my fault (the deer were coming over toward us and she wanted to pet one, so I stepped aside and motioned toward the deer and said "douzo"), but she totally followed us around. I thought maybe we were just going in the same direction, but we went into a store on the site and she waited outside for us to get out. When we were in there for a while instead of coming out, she left, and we went in the opposite direction from her. Yeah....
The whole thing was a whole bunch of fun, though, and I bought a plushie deer and a crazy hat, so totally worth the trip.
The next day was filled with more shopping (it's pretty much what you do in Japan. Shop and drink.) and then waiting for the overnight bus to Tokyo to show up.
Buses are very much not made for sleeping in.
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