Osaka Nights!

Dave visited Osaka this week and while his days were spent sightseeing around the Kansai area on his lonesome as I was working, we did manage to catch up most evenings for a few drinks and what have you ("what have you " generally being more drinks). So instead of pictures of us in front of temples and beautiful japanese scenery most of the photos I have are of us out-on-the-town in Shinsaibashi. Here are some of the shenanigans that took place...


We played an AWFUL lot of darts, so much so by end of the week we were getting pretty good. These photos were taken before then.


Drinking. We did quite a bit of that too.


Simply stopping to check your map in Shinsaibashi can have hilarious consequences.


Deciding to combine drinking, darts and Japan in to a single package I took Dave to a local darts bar named "Bull" that I often go to. Here our lack of Japanese skills and the fact that it was 3am at the time resulted in this photo. We think it may have been someone's birthday... we're not sure.

Other highlights of the week included...
- Getting our arses handed to us when we tried to play Street Fighter 4 and Tekken 6 as we couldn't find the "Please don't randomly match me up against other players in the arcade who are ten times better than me" button.
- Seeing the sights of Den-Den-Town (but NOT going to a Maid Cafe cos it would have been WEIRD).
- Watching an English Improv comedy show (The Pirates of Dotonbori) on Sunday night then proceeding to stay out till first trains at 5AM.
- Failing to go to Kobe the following Monday as we nursed our hangovers.

By now Dave has left Osaka, but I'll hopefully be catching up with him tomorrow night in Kyoto for one last night out before he heads off to Tokyo.

Gaijin a Go-Go has a Twitter! ...also DAVE!

Decided it was time to get in on the whole Twitter thing that all the kids are talking about these days. My reasoning being that there are many cool things that happen over here that aren't quite worth an entire blog post, but can literally be summed up in a 140 characters or less and hopefully updated LIVE from my mobile phone.

Something that will require one (maybe more) blog posts dedicated to it however is my friend Dave's current tour-de-force of Kansai. While he's here I intend to show him the sights, teach him the very little Japanese I know and see what sort of trouble our combined lack of Japanese and general "gaijin-ness" can get us into. A more detailed post is sure to follow with incriminating pictures, but in the mean time some highlights include;

- Dave's discovery of the wonders of conveinance stores here and the general awesome-ness of the life-sustaining oni-giri (rice-balls) they provide.
- Clinton finding Dave some awesomely nice and cheap accomodation... in the slums of Dobutsuen-mae.
- Dave's victory over some other random gaijin at foosball.
- Clinton's repeated victories over Dave at Darts.
- Butaman!

So stay tuned...

Castles and Bikes - Clinton in Himeji

Well it's been a while, but I figure its now time to get this blog up and running again. Sophie may be back in Australia, but I'm still here and there's no sense wasting an opportunity to take yourself off to some part of the world you've never been to. In this case that part of the world was Himeji, a small-ish(?) city a little more than an hours train ride from Osaka. Himeji is famous for it's World Heritage listed castle that was built around 1580 and this was the reason that I made the journey out there.



Upon arrival in Himejii I put my guide-book to immediate use and set about tracking down the free bicycle hire place promised by Lonely Planet. I figured this would be a cool way to get myself from the station to the castle. But while I was indeed able to hire a bike at the station it turned out I needed to walk halfway to the castle to actually pick the bike up. Which kinda half-defeated the point of hiring a bike in the first place.

Never-the-less I was undaunted. Himeji City Hire Bike #14, or "Trusty" as I came to call him, was going to ferry me around town for the rest of the day regardless of the relatively short distance. Which was just as well for Trusty who was probably only a few weeks away from dropping the 'T' from his name altogether. The bald tires, the rear brakes that screamed liked a banshee and front brakes that kinda worked were not helping either. But then again I hadn't ridden a bike for a long time, and while it is true that you never really forget how to ride a bike you can get much worse at it.


My steed for the day, "Trusty" #14, together we made the streets of Himeji just that little bit less safe.

Himeji Castle is pretty much the best example of a Japanese castle I've come across. Sure, its only the second Japanes castle I've visited, but Osaka Castle is more like a fancy old building dropped in the middle of a public park. Himeji looks like the real deal, its just so... Castle-ly.

I mean just look at some of these pictures...


The rear entrance to the castle.



From the main courtyard, looking toward the front of the castle.



The view from the top of the castle looking down on Himeji.

I took about 112 photos that day, 95% of them were of this castle. There is just so much castle there and I don't think I even saw all of it! By the time I left I was starting to feel a little castle-ed out. So I sat myself down in the park nearby, drank some truly awful vending machine coffee before returning "Trusty" to the City of Himeji and hopping on a train back to Osaka. A day well spent.