Christmas 2011: Japan with Jaime (Night 1)

 Jaime has been in Japan for a while now, but I’m pretty sure this was her first time to Osaka, which made getting around a bit interesting. 


She knew we needed to take the train to get from the airport to our hostel, and that it was about an hour away. Ironing out the details was a bit complicated though. To make a long story short, it took us about two and half hours to get there. Why did it take us so long? Well, we managed to lose the paper the directions were scribbled down on (actually, pretty much our whole weekend itinerary was mapped out) while waiting at the train station. We realized this as we frantically searched for them when it came time to transfer trains. I had thankfully written down our hostel address and phone number though, so Jaime was able to call them for directions. We called them a grand total of five times, in the midst of taking three wrong trains and getting off at a completely random station. 

I'm going to cut us a little slack, however, given that the directions were given to us accordingly: “Get off at Tsunsurro (or something to that extent) stop. Then exit the station, turn to the right, and go down the street with lots of colorful lights and people. You will see a Mr. Doughnuts. We are next to that.” Ok. First of all, pretty much every street in Osaka is bright and colorful and heavily populated. Second of all, all of the stops sound the same. Tsunsuro, Tsunshimmi, Tsunsushi, etc. Nonetheless, we tried our best and got off at a stop that sounded right. We exited the station, turned right, and went down what we perceived to be the brightest street. When we didn’t come across a Mr. Doughnuts we stopped and asked a street vendor where it was. He looked at us like we were crazy. So, we went back to the station. We called our hostel back to double check the stop. Go figure, we were at the wrong one. So, we asked again, how do you pronounce it? Um…right. Heavy accent, confusing syllables. Tsunsurro, Tsunshimi, Tsunsushi??? We asked him to spell it. The first letter he said was M. What the heck.

We eventually made it to the right stop. Exhausted and carrying heavy bags, we decided not to risk it and just hopped in a taxi. The taxi driver didn’t recognize the name of the hostel though. This was not looking good. So, once again, we called the hostel. When we gave the phone to the taxi driver, he talked for about 30 seconds and then started laughing, glancing back at us periodically. It cost us $7 to drive one block. We were apparently right next to it.

Given that we were so excited to see each other, though, all of this was actually quite funny to us. Thankfully.

We dropped our bags off at the hostel, freshened up a bit, and then decided to head over to a Christmas festival and sight-seeing tower to take in the view of the city. As we’re standing outside our hostel, trying to make sense of our map, two Japanese men asked if we needed help. They ended up taking us to the festival, seeing the sights with us, and showed us a great little tavern-style restaurant where they ordered all the traditional foods…including some very questionably-textured raw seafood dishes. At the end of the night, they helped us get back to the hostel, and bid farewell. Completely random, but fun and helpful.

Needless to say, we crashed into a deep sleep the first night.