Sunday to Wednesday

Sunday BBQ
For Fumio’s birthday we were invited to a BBQ, which we thought we should attend since we missed Linda’s. We told Fumio we probably wouldn’t eat much (i.e. ANYTHING) but he still made us pay- between the two of us it was $25 and it was the biggest rip off ever. We will never again be going to any kind of BBQ. First of all, we walked about 45 mins (a slow group walk) to the river, Sarah and I talking to Ida and Ayumi. The river itself was nothing spectacular, I was pretty underwhelmed. It was about 30cm deep and you couldn’t even see it from the banks. It did seem to be a popular spot though, as there were other families and groups of friends having their own BBQs. We actually had to pay $10 just to be there. RIP OFF!

^^Fumio, Sarah and I^^


^^ Sarah, Ida and Ayumi^^

Since we had to pay, Ayumi insisted they put food on for us first as we had to leave about 20 mins after we got there! They had “Aussie beef” (cows tongues), Taiwanese meat (intestines) and some other beef in a sauce, which was the stringiest, fattiest, most unappealing “aussie beef” I’ve seen in a while! Sarah and I glanced at each other in horror as everyone waited on our verdict. Our verdict? “Ooishi” meaning delicious (in reality: absolutely horrific). Ida too glanced around in dismay, whispering to us “The last BBQ just had normal stuff, like hot dogs and hamburgers, I thought this one would be the same!”


^^ Ida and I cry tears of horror ^^


^^ Sarah and Ida didn't do anything wrong! Why are they punished?!^^



^^ The sentence: Death penalty ^^

Umeda Sky
Luckily though, after some BBQ corn (the only nice thing), we bailed, heading to Umeda Sky to see the Mexican Festival. The Mexican festival too was underwhelming, there was a big stage with performances and booths with Mexican food (looked kinda greasy and dodgy to me…) and we left the BBQ so late we got up to Umeda Sky just after dusk rather than just before dusk, but we got up there!
Umeda Sky is two 40 storey buildings with a giant donut shaped “floating observatorium” smacked on the top. It’s very high, and the elevator ride on the way up had me thinking “I really don’t want to die! If the cable snaps….”. I realise heights are not so bad as heights + see through elevators for me!

^^ Umeda Sky from below. The things going across the gap are escalators^^


^^ Comforting to know we were suspended over 39 storeys of NOTHING! ^^



^^ But the view was magnificent! ^^

Anyway, we got up to level 39 and took the “across a giant 39 storey chasm of death” elevators to the other side of the top. Well, the view was awesome, as you’d assume, and there were speckles of glowing paint and black lights on the footpath. At one stage, they turned on a giant white light, and we waited in vain for Batman to appear.






^^ BATMAN! ^^

They also had a platform where couples could take photos in front of a giant, glowing loveheart. It was pretty tacky, but we went with it anyway 'cause that's how we roll.
Then we headed down and grabbed some soft cream (we tried Strawberry- it was quite awful) from a multi-flavour shop. Soft serve is different here, each flavour of ice cream comes in a small tub, and is inserted into the machine that then turns it into soft serve. It’s way cooler than our one-flavour soft serve!






Sumiyoshi Taisha Grand Shrine
On Monday we headed to Sumiyoshi Taisha grand shrine with Yoshida and Noriko. We caught the subway to Tennoji and then a tram. Sumiyoshi Taisha is apparently the number one shrine in Osaka/Kansai. It had great greenery and all the buildings had wicked bright red-orange railings and accents. We washed our hands first (as is common at shrines) then stopped at a table. We paid $2 to shake a box of sticks with a hole in it- then we tipped the box and only one stick can come out of the hole. It has a number on it, and you then take the piece of paper with the number you chose. Sarah pulled 13, which Yoshida and Noriko said was one of the worst and very unlucky! I pulled number one (to anyone who watches Bleach, I sang Ichigo’s “number one” theme song the whole time! OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH!) which is the luckiest! Yeah! Because of that, Sarah had to tie her bad luck to a tree, but I got to keep my good luck!




^^ "If you want to be the best... something something center OF ATTRACTION..."^^




Then we went to the temples, where you toss a coin, shake a big rope attached to a bell, step back and clap twice, then pray. (Though I have seen people pray and then clap). The shrine was very beautiful and had a river with a very high bridge over it. There were turtles and carp. There was also a sign that I felt strongly was telling me that the water wanted to eat me.




^^ Noriko, Sarah, Rieko/Yoshida ^^


^^ "If you fall in the water... it will eat you." ^^


We then had dinner at a “Japanese Pub” with Yoshida and Noriko. I was lucky they had furido potato and gohan (chips and rice) but we also had Gyoza (dumplins), Tori Karage (fried chicken), yakitori (chicken skewers), some sort of weird eggplant stuff. We also had our drink of choice for summer 2010- Cassis Orange! Then Noriko had us try Umeboshi, a plum that’s sat in salt for a year. It is very, VERY salty. Kind of like eating a salty-plum-lemon. We finished with delicious waffles and ice cream!


^^ Gohan (rice), furido potato, beef, tori karage (chicken). More food came later!^^



^^ This is served with drinks before the meal. It's actually eggplant. Gross! ^^


^^ Noriko and her dessert ^^

Chizuko’s Birthday
Wednesday was Chizuko’s birthday (Happy Birthday!) and we went to Miho’s to give her the present… only we forgot the present! *smacks forehead* We spent the day watching the rest of season 3 of America’s next top model (riveting stuff, I assure you) before heading out to take some pictures and video of Miho’s area. Also, maybe, to get soft cream. Then Chizuko suggested we go out for dinner to celebrate her birthday, and we went to a place around the corner from their house. Despite not having furido potato, the gohan was there and they had prawn crackers! I dislike prawns, but those crackers are oiishi!


^^The three boxes are the accompanying dish for drinks, the other, a PRAWN wrap^^


^^Birthday Feast!^^

I also had what I personally think may have been the nicest cocktail I ever had, and can’t wait to try when I get home. It had Strawb and Banana liqueur with pineapple juice! Way cool! There was pizza, but I much preferred the prawn crackers and Miho had something like a chicken schnitzel only with spinach and fish eggs in the middle! Eugh! Sarah had Karage again, and we had the nicest butter corn ever! Plus I think my horrendous chopstick skills may be improving… a little…
Then, we had some of the cake Chizuko’s boss Kelly gave her and it was so nice! It was a chocolate cake with chocolate cream, and it was the first time I’ve ever eaten cake with chopsticks!



^^Saros and I show we can pick up corn with our chopsticks... even if it takes a few tries!^^


^^We eat cake with chopsticks, 'cause we're badass, yo!"


~*~

This morning we were woken up by a storm- we didn’t go to Kyoto today because it was forecast to be raining, but the lightening was incredibly bright and lit up the whole sky. The thunder was the loudest I have ever heard! Maybe it’s because of all the tall buildings amplifying the sound? We tried to get the thunder on video but the storm was quite short.



^^ Look at the escalator! ^^

In other news, Happy Birthday Mandy! We would like to wish Sarah’s mum a very happy birthday (23/9) and hope she has a great day (and gets lots of cool presents)!

We miss our friends and family, and are starting to count down the days until we leave Osaka- that sounds weird now, we’ve been here for so long! Coming up on our itinerary are Kyoto again on Sat, Sam n Dave’s on Friday, and Parque Espana on Sunday, whew! Miss you all, and missing pizza,

Xx Carly

THE EPIC POST! Crepes, Cicadas and Cocktails!

Warning: This is going to be a long post…as we haven’t updated properly in a while…I’m just sayin’… it’ll be lengthy, and there may also be a pop quiz on it next post to see just how closely you pay attention to every single exciting word we post on here (which is definitely all of it!).

Alternatively, you can just scroll down to each highlighted day if you do want to skip out...but we will find you...and hunt you down!

Thursday night was Ayumi-san’s birthday, and to mark the special occasion Nicolas had organised to make crepes with our group. By the time Carly and I came out to the kitchen the batters had already been made up for both savoury crepes (made by Juerg) and sweet crepes (made by Nicolas). I don’t know about carly, but I have to say, the thought of savoury pancake type things didn’t sound too appetising for me… so when Juerg gave me the first savoury crepe with ham and cheese…I wasn’t expecting anything good. Especially if the quality of the meat is anything to go buy in the supermarket - check out that fatty steak!

The roll on the other hand actually looked pretty good:

I was overly surprised to find it was probably one of the tastiest things I’d had so far in Japan! It was awesome, and now I’m afraid I’m going to have to go googling for some sort of recipe…. I think Carlos will agree we also need to cook the sweet ones again too. After watching Nicolas for a bit, I decided to give it a go at cooking crepes too – the first one, needless to say, turned out a bit stodge – too thick and over buttery, I sneakily put it on the plate for everyone anyway, hoping that some poor soul, who wasn’t me, would take it and eat it (my plan was a success!). However, my crepe flipping skills became much better after the first one, and Nicolas and myself had a ‘flip off’ in which I became the new master flipper and got upgraded to the large fry pan.

Meanwhile, as all this was going on, Carly was in the background concocting suspicious crepe parcels for Nicolas, Juerg and myself. Apparently, if we were to turn around before she was done; we would find Tabasco sauce in them as a special treat.

When I finally bit into my parcel Carlos had made, I found that she had carefully planted all three different sauces (kiwi, mango and strawberry in the shape of a smiley face) into the middle which exploded out of the crepe and all over my hand, arm and plate.

It was a delicious burst of flavour and I do not regret getting everywhere in any way…even if I did totally forget about the crepe I still had cooking on the stove…for another unsuspecting victim! So, Carly became the crepe saucing master after Juerg and Nicolas also appreciated her special parcels.

OH! We have an Italian update! After keeping us up again til 2:30 in the morning, being their usual douchey selves, we found out that it was their final night and that they were leaving the next morning! Needless to say, there was much joyous celebrations in our room, so no more haggling the manager to try and move rooms. I think we’ve actually got one of the best rooms in the house…as we heard that the higher storey rooms are almost a third smaller than ours, and we are the only room in the house with two singles instead of bunk beds; and compared to the mattress’ on the bunk beds, we scored pretty well!

Also, if any one was looking for pet mould balls, we found some:

Friday marked the awesome free movie day and the discovery of another 100¥ shop! Seeing as I totally missed out on seeing Inception before I left, I couldn’t believe it when Yoshida offered us free tickets to go see it with her! Once again off to Tennoji station, we met up with Yoshida-san and her niece Ryoko who lives in Nara (about an hour away from Osaka). We found that similar to us, they also sneak in food and drink into the cinemas, which was great when we saw the 100¥ sign. I was very happy to find Pringles and Peanut M&M’s to have during the movie, while Carly found some chocolate/strawberry triangle things, plus a coke each and all for $1 each! (How we do love being stingy!)

In the actual cinemas, I was pretty excited to discover they sold frozen coke, only to discover it came in a shittely small cup not even fit for small toddler. After two sips, that was gone (yay…) and all for a nice overpriced $2.50.

However, I was delighted (as was Carly horrified) to discover the release of a new Pokemon movie that’s out! Only to horribly discover (to Carly’s delight) it was only in Japanese :-(

We were a bit early in the cinema, and while we sat waiting for it to start, we couldn’t help but laugh at the fact the cinemas were playing deep suspenseful music, while calmly showing us not to put our feet on the seats, or that the candy bar was still available.

For those of you that haven’t seen Inception, we would definitely recommend it, even if like us…you’re not really Leonardo DiCaprio fans. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any better, Yoshida gave us all 1000¥ gift certificates at the local mall in Tennoji. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find anything on Friday…but as it is the equivalent of shopping in Myer, with anything from Tiffany and Co. jewellery to Victoria Secret Lingerie…it was a bit hard to find anything within our price range. However, Yoshida-san being as awesome as she is - just sent us another message with more free movie tickets (Win or what!). Carly is also organising to teach Yoshida and some of her students English – so we will keep you all informed on how that goes! Apparently, there is also a Café about an hour away that hires foreigners per hour to participate in simple English conversation…so we’ll see what happens there too…

Saturday night was our first night out on the town. We met up with Miho and Chizuko at Tennoji station and went to a small bar called Tin’s Hall to see Chizuko’s boss Kelly play in his band with his brother Corey. Here we had some cocktails, and Carly's Mango Daiquiri looked pretty awesome!

It was pretty old school stuff (ie…Led Zeppelin) so not really our sort of thing, but we still had a good time having cocktails with Chizuko and Miho, as well as Ryoko who also came down to see us. Ryoko (right) and her friend.

Chizuko bought us a round of interesting drinks which were fun to try – one tasted horrible and we all pulled faces as we tried then gave it back to Chizuko who actually liked the taste! (Yeh…if you like the taste of raw gasoline with a hint of mint!) The other three were really nice – we had Mango, Pineapple and Orange daiquiris.

We left Tin’s Hall at 11 and said goodbye to Chizuko at the station. There we met up with Miho’s friend Shiho, who had stayed in Adelaide with Miho and headed off to Shinsaibashi - the largest and most well known shopping district during the day and nightclub scene during the night in Osaka. On the way to the Pure Osaka Club we stopped at one of those classic Japanese photo booths and this was the result:

Our eyes look crazeh!

Finally, we made it to Pure at around 12:30...everyone goes out so late here because the Taxi's are a minimum of $50 so everyone just waits until the subway starts at around 5:30 then catches that home for $3...which is definitely worth it! We got in the club within 10 minutes and paid our $25 for unlimited drinks. The free drinks menu was limited...but they had vodka sunrises, so we were set! We also tried a few different drinks - I liked the Peach Oolong and Carly liked the 'Moscow Mule' and the 'Screwdriver', and we both liked the 'Fuzzy Navel'. Most of them were just mixed with different juices or tea and were nice and sweet. Apparently my drink choices were poor and shitty, and Carly's were awesome - but I like Oolong tea...even if it does taste weird! Hmph!

So Pure was tiny, and it was quite hard to dance, but we were very impressed with some of Shiho's dance moves, we thought she was all quiet then BAM she just came up with these ultra cool dances and a few people stopped to watch. Apparently she does African dancing...so Carlos and I want some lessons. Kim - I know you'll want us to learn some to teach you when we get back!

Carlos, Shiho and Miho!

Oh, also, unlike our VIP rooms in clubs...theirs was not only upstairs, it was hidden behind a secret bookcase door which led to a private bar and room that overlooked the dancefloor with chandoliers, and red walls and carpet and really nice leather chairs...just a pity it was the VIP room and we couldn't go up there :(

After we'd had enough of Pure Osaka (it gets sooooo hot in there) we left for some fresh air and headed to our first Japanese Maccas experience around 4am to wait until the subway opens. It was also apparently the place to get some sleep before the subway opened...

I also managed to successfully order Futatsu (2) Cheesubaagaa's with cheezu to (and) meato to ketchup and Furido Potato an futatsu coca-cora's. Amazingly, they got my order correct...even though it was a mix of English grammar and Japanese words strung together or made up completely. Carly was quite impressed! We were also very impressed at the fact that they are only $1 here, and THEY TASTE THE SAME AS BACK HOME! Quite possibly the first pre-made food item still full of delicious flavour...just a pity it's unhealthy :-( We left maccas around 5:15 to head to the station and Shinsaibashi was still filled with drunken teenagers roaming around everywhere. As we crossed the bridge, the sun was just starting to come up, so here's Shinsaibashi with the river flowing through the middle.

We also found this crab rather appealing, and thought that Ben would appreciate its awesomeness:

Lastly, we saw a group of guys carrying one of their passed out friends to the subway, who had obviously had a big night haha

Then, among the giant crab we found, we came across this giant Whale in the middle of Namba station. The station was desserted...so we took the opportunity to pose with the roped off whale.

By this time, we were so overtired it wasn't funny, and couldn't wait for the subway to arrive already. It was now around 6am by the time we'd taken photos and said goodbye to Miho and Shiho.

Shout out to J-Hoop...this image is for you buddy!

On the subway home, we met up with Oche, our friend from JF who is from Cairns. He'd also been out all night and couldn't wait for bed. Walking back to the house together, we thought we'd record the cicadas that were chirping in the trees. Those shitty things are so loud, Carly, Oche and myself had to shout above all the noise just to speak to each other. Enjoy!

And finally, we are done. Apologies for this lengthy post...we hope it was worth it!