I have had a fair share of adventures in Japan up to this point, and not all of which I have been able to detail in previous writings. In this edition, I will be talking a bit about the smaller bits and bobs I found so far.
After my Kobe garden trip, my friends and I explored more of the city, and found our way to a dock on the edge of the city, holding the Anpanman museum, a show for children that is wildly popular here, and a ferris wheel. At this point, it was night time and we elected to take a trip up to see the lights of the city with large glowing towers and a building that was suspiciously like the Sydney opera house.
While in Tokyo, our group tried to visit as many Izakaya as possible, which are small hole-in-the-wall esk restaurants that are extremely prevalent in Japan, especially in Tokyo. All of these places had lots of unique charm, and one thing many of these places do is encourage people to write on the walls with supplied chalk pens, of which people took full advantage of. Also on this trip, the location we were staying at in the city was the same one which held one of the massive interactional billboards which played videos of a cat seemingly stepping out of the frame of the building. Lastly was the Shibuya crossing, a famous spot to see hundreds of people crossing a multiple-lane highway at the same time in the middle of the city. This place is prominently shown in a lot of media, but between you and me, it was kind of underwhelming.
A group of us went to Kyoto, as it is very close to Hirakata where we go to school. Kyoto is a well known hotspot for tourism with many attractions in architecture and history. Unfortunately for us, we did not manage to get to the train station in time for the last train home and were stranded for the night. However, this might have worked in our favor. One thing this taught me is that many of the shrines and temples that would normally be swarming with tourists in the day are actually open 24 hours a day. Since we were there when no one else was, the places we went to were essentially empty of other people, allowing us to enjoy a good chunk of Kyoto’s culture without the swamp of people.
Recently, I visited a jazz bar in Osaka. It was a little out of the way, a small room in the basement level of a tunnel with only about 15 people. The owner of the place himself was one of the performers, and they did a fantastic job filling the small place with their saxophone-piano-stand up bass trio.
For halloween, the school put on a bit of a show with a costume contest open to students. A few groups surprised everyone with choreographed dances to earn a few extra points.
