Winter Holiday 1: Osaka

新年好！

あけましておめでとう！

Bonne Année!

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Happy New Year, Minasan. I'm back in Fukui now. I'll be updating about my winter holiday travels throughout the coming week or so. Things did not go as planned, but I'll let you know the details as they are relevant to each post. Let's start from the beginning - a very fine place to start.

大阪

Osaka, the third largest city in Japan, is a vibrant hub of rock 'n' roll, good eats, a characteristically non-nonchalant populace and a dialect of Japanese highly favorable to comedy. I needed to fly out of the international airport but decided to spend a day in the city before leaving the country for Thailand.

I really didn't intend to see much of anything specific. I just like wandering in big cities. This a view across the river in the park in front of Osaka Castle.
I didn't enter the castle, but, gee it sure looks pretty from outside, eh? It's actually a post-war reconstruction (Americans love the bomb), so the interior isn't much too exciting from what I've heard from others.
This is where I spent most of my afternoon. The park around the castle features some free concerts. The bands were all pretty good, but even more entertaining were the people who danced along.
They never seem to spell my name properly in this country, but, man, I sure do appreciate the effort.

In Chinese folk tales there often appear certain characters known as fox spirits. Fox spirits by nature are deceptive creatures who take various forms to trick people. A traveler gets lost on a cold night in a mountain and discovers a hut with an old man to welcome him and give him a bed only to wake up alone the next morning with no hut or kindly old man. Another man marries a wealthy woman who pays all his debts only to wake up several years later with no house or wife. Sometimes they are beneficial, sometimes harmful - but always they are deceptive.

I mention Chinese folk tales because I know that fox spirits are real and they exist today in the form of Fuji Climbing Partner. As it turns out, Fuji was in Kyoto the same time I was in Osaka (only a 20-30 minute train ride away), so we agreed to meet for dinner. We met in a very busy station with probably at least 100 different exits and an underground mall. It took me at least an hour to find the exit for the restaurant we wanted. Shortly after achieving this, the fox spirit arrived eager to help me get lost on the way to Peruvian food.

We left at the proper exit, but never found the restaurant no matter how many times we doubled back and checked side streets. So, we ate somewhere else, and afterward decided to look for the Umeda Sky Building, a tower with a good view of the city. The Umeda Sky Building is rather tall and also reportedly featured a gigantic Christmas Tree in front. I say "reportedly", of course, because we never found it.

Fuji Climbing Partner has also been known to beguile travelers in search of the very-simple-to-find Philosopher's Path in Kyoto and to silence people climbing mountains so severely that onlookers marvel at what they believe to be the austere religious devotion of her victims.


Life lesson, amigos, if you ever come to Japan, be wary of anyone who speaks Chinese. Such a person may be a fox spirit.


Anyhoo, the meandering and failed adventures in Osaka were good preparation for things to come.