Well, it was. I made some changes and went over by a little...

I went to Osaka with Bethany and Sara today. It was pretty lame. It was like Kyoto, but more spread out, with less space to walk, more people, and the shops were more expensive. Watch me stick around Kyoto for shopping. Bethany and Sara have both been picking on me quite a bit, and it’s getting on my nerves a little, so I have to admit that watching Bethany fail at the train made me feel good. You’ll recall that I did the same thing yesterday. (Edit: By the way, I talked to Bethany about it, and I think she must've mentioned it to Sara. Yesterday was much more fun.

That said, it wasn’t a complete waste of time. We stopped at a マックド(McDonald’s) and I had my first taste of Japanese McDonald’s food, which was, unsurprisingly, just like American McDonald’s food. I mean, imagine that! … Yeah.

Roxanne has some bizarre obsession with ice, and the ice is different here. It’s smaller, a little jagged on the edges to improve surface area and thus cooling speed, and very soft. Perfect for chewing. The picture is McDonald’s’ ice, but that seems to be standard, ‘cause it’s the same stuff I got at the Mr. Young Men’s later.

We found a random escalator outside. I’m not certain how they keep it from dying in the rain, as it seems like it would be a pain to waterproof that kind of thing. Oh, and right next to the escalators was this nice fountain… thing. Is that a fountain? I don’t really know. It’s in the picture, on the right.

So once we decided that Osaka sucks, we headed back to Kyoto and got off at Kawaramachi, the shopping district. You’d think that shopping with two girls for a whole day that they would’ve bought something. As far as I know, the only things that were purchased by them were train tickets and one bottle of water because Bethany was getting pretty thirsty. Anyway, I lost them/they lost me somewhere in one of the shopping arcades, so I started wandering around on my own.

There are a number of interesting shops in the area, such as the two army surplus stores (one of which I checked out, and it has decent prices), a couple kimono shops (between $50 and $3,000 here), about three dozen (not kidding!) Japanese confectionaries, and a couple of convenience stores. It’s so weird to find a 7-11 indoors. Well, there aren’t any actual doors, per se. You know.

But right by the not-a-door entrance is an お好み焼き(okonmiyaki literally translates to “what you like, fried”) where I got a very delicious ラブラブお好み(“love love okonomi”, a heart-shaped お好み焼き with fish flakes and beef on top). I thought I was watching her make it, but she kept making other people’s orders. Right when I was about to ask about how long was left on mine, she pulls it nearly completed from a nearby countertop oven. At my request, she added ベニショウガ(pickled ginger chopped into cubes or Julian-style – it’s the red stuff with a strong smell), which is one of my favorite condiments/ingredients.

You can be certain that I’ll be going back to that shop in the future. It’s that Mr. Young Men’s I mentioned earlier. Sounds weird, but the prices are decent for that kind of eating. And they have an English menu that’s actually translated decently. First one I’ve seen in two weeks of being here.

Now that I had eaten my fill of delicious egg-pancake-pizza stuff, I headed towards the area that Sara had described as “Kyoto’s own little Denden town”. Denden Town is Osaka’s very own little Akihabara. We had meant to go to Denden town today, but we got off the train about three miles away and the girls are… girls.

This area was quite a lot of electronics on its own, so I can hardly imagine what Akihabara must be like. In any case, I found a place called Camera Naniwa that had all kinds of, you guessed it, camera stuff. It was a very decent store, and had two of four floors with interesting stuff. The other two were scrapbooking and an art gallery.

In any case, I ended up wandering around that place for about, oh, a good hour. Except, I had gone rather far south and had to walk about ¾ of a mile north to get to the station entrance. Then I got lost in the department store that leads to the train station. Seriously, a square turtle-load of overpriced crap. Oh, and a couple パン屋(basically a bakery), which I ignored due to it being very overcrowded.

Obligatory car-a-vator. See left.

So. I finally get on the train and get back to my part of Kyoto. I then proceed to get lost (vaguely in the right direction, though) due to it now being night and chat up a random family that’s walking home from… somewhere. Forgot to ask. I get to the mall about ten minutes later, wander around for a few minutes, accost some random woman and tell her about the supermarket’s really low prices on something she’s holding, and head home. As I step inside, I realize I’ve forgotten something.

So I toss all the bags (three of them) on the ground and go get my bike from Sara’s place, where we met this morning to walk to the train station.

And that concludes today’s freaktastically long entry. They say a picture is worth a thousand words; I have 929 here, and, what, six pictures?

Damn, I’m getting long-winded.

Transportation Price Breakdown
From		To		Cost		Running Total
City	Area	City	Area	JPY	USD
Kyoto	Saiin	Osaka	Umeda	¥390	$ 3.94	$ 3.94
Osaka	Umeda	Osaka	Namba	¥230	$ 2.32	$ 6.26
Osaka	Namba	Osaka	Umeda	¥230	$ 2.32	$ 8.59
Osaka	Umeda	Kyoto	Kawaramachi	¥390	$ 3.94	$ 12.53
Kyoto	Kawaramachi	Kyoto	Saiin	¥150	$ 1.52	$ 14.04	Total

Actually, my pride mandates that I also put one last picture up. You see that? It says the fare is ￥150 from Kawaramachi (the red one) to Saiin. Sara said it was ￥230. We got into quite a debate over it, so I’m glad to at least be somewhat right. She may be thinking of from a different station or something. I’m not certain.

Well, that’s one thousand words.