Hello from Osaka!
We hope all is well as you prepare for the holiday season ahead. Walking around Osaka has really made me miss home recently. There are Christmas decorations and strings of shimmering lights everywhere I turn it seems and I can’t help but think of home and everything that reminds me of this festive occasion. On the other hand, I’m glad I don’t have to be outside in the cold, wet slush. How much snow is there right now anyway? It’s about 10-15 degrees during the days in Osaka and the temperature drops quite a bit at night. I’ve been talking to some of my students about what kind of weather to expect in the months ahead and apparently, the temperature never drops below zero—which means, no snow and no ice. I’m thrilled about that!
Speaking of things that remind me of Christmas, believe it or not, there are clementines in Japan! But here, they are called “mikans” and they’re very delicious. Like Canada, mikans are sold only during the Christmas season and people can even grow them indoors here. One of my new private students is an elderly man who likes gardening and at one of our meetings, he brought me a basket of mikans from his garden. I have quite a few private students right now—five—and I’m really enjoying the challenges of teaching one-on-one. My students right now range from elementary level to extremely advanced. One of my other new students is a doctor who plans on travelling to the US to do gastrointestinal work and wants to improve his conversational skills. At first, I was a little nervous when he said he wanted help learning medical terminology in English, but when I started talking about ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) and asked how common it is in Japan, he seemed genuinely blown away. I think I’ll be learning a lot from him about what it’s like to work in the health care field in Japan.
On Saturday night, Scott, Marcus, and I decided to do something other than karaoke and thought it would be the perfect opportunity to check out a club (since we haven’t been to one yet). After talking to a few co-workers, we decided to go to a club called “Pure” in Shinsaibashi area. We all had a great time and met some really cool people too. A group of Japanese girls even got me dancing with them on the stage. Haha.
Sunday wasn’t too eventful for us. We decided to take it easy since we’ve been doing some mad sightseeing lately. Scott wanted to go to Den-Den Town, which is an electronics district in Nipponbashi area and is overflowing with shops offering all sorts of electronic goods. We biked into Tennoji (which is about ten minutes from our place) and ate lunch at a really nice market-style European cafe and then headed over the Nipponbashi. Scott was in heaven the entire time we were there—looking at every type of electronic good you could imagine. Den-Den Town for Scott is definitely equivalent to Rinku Town for me! Anyway, we were searching for a cheap phone because we’ve decided to get internet hooked up and if you get a land line, it’s apparently a much faster connection. Sitting on the balcony in the cold to steal wireless signals isn’t quite cutting it anymore. If you can believe it, we had trouble finding a simple phone in what seemed to be the electronics hub of the world. Although there were several cell phone shops, home appliance shops, antique shops, used clothing shops, stereo shops, and porn shops, we couldn’t find a cheap phone. Lucky for us, we eventually wandered down a side street that led us to the phone of our dreams and purchased it for 2000 yen.
On the way back to our bikes, we stopped at a really cool shop that sold new, but mostly old game systems like N64, Sega Genesis, Game Cube, Game Boys, and even the original Nintendo. They also had rows upon rows of games that were re-packaged and extremely over-priced. While I was looking for my favourite N64 game, Mario Party, I came across a small package containing some Q-Tips. I thought it was so RANDOM that I took a picture. What’s even funnier is that there was a price tag on them for 399 yen. There are some weird things for sale in Japan, that’s for sure.
Today’s my day off and I biked into work with Scott. We had a nice little Starbucks date and then I decided to check out a department store called Loft. I don’t know why it’s called a department store when it’s absolutely packed with women’s beauty supplies. I started looking around and after an hour had passed, I left the store. The reason it took me so long was because so many of the products were absolutely ridiculous. Japanese women, I found out, are obsessed with white complexions and the cosmetics companies make several whitening creams for the face and body. What’s even crazier is the instruments they use to narrow their noses (kind of like a nose plug) and electric massage-type contraptions to make a crease in the eye. There were also several cellulite rollers and warming creams that promised to “thin legs and hips to attract to guy’s attention.” Haha. No joke, that is actually what the English portion of the tube said. I guess in a way, the women here are no different from the women in North America—always striving to look or feel better about themselves and, consequently, often fall prey to the latest marketing tactics.
I've also included this picture of some people riding their "charinkos" (slang term for bicycle) on a main street near our apartment. Mothers often carry their children in baskets on the front and/or back of their bicycle (and don't wear helmets...eek) and friends often hitch a ride by standing or sitting on the back.
Well, I’m going to test my Japanese cooking skills and make some “okonomiyaki” for dinner! It’s a famous Osakan food, but I doubt mine will be as tasty as the authentic ones sold on the street corner. I’ll let you know how it turns out!
Bye for now!
Jo & Scott
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