Osaka Girls' Weekend

On Friday night, Julie, Sasha, Chelsea and I drove up to Osaka for a girls' weekend. It's roughly a 4 hour drive from Kochi; we took Julie's car, and she drove the whole way. Driving was much cheaper than all of us paying for bus tickets,  but road trips here are considerably more expensive than they are in the U.S. because you have to pay expressway tolls. Depending on how far you drive, it can really add up; one of the long segments of the drive cost about $50. Overall, the drive went pretty smoothly; since we arrived somewhat late at night, and since our place wasn't too deep into the city, even the city driving wasn't terrible. Personally, I don't think I could ever drive in Osaka. There are huge streets, and tiny narrow streets full of pedestrians, and bypasses all over the place. It's crazy.

After arriving on Friday night, we stayed up a bit late taking odd pictures of the bunch of us wearing the hotel yukatas (cotton robes). It was like a very strange photo shoot. So we slept in a bit on Saturday before going shopping. We walked most of the length of Shinsaibashi, a very long covered shopping arcade. It's full of all kinds of stores, some of which are very cheap. We each found a number of cool things. H&M was having a crazy sale; among other things, I got a metallic blue skirt for only about $4.

Our plan for the evening was to go dancing, so once we were shopped out we headed back to the apartment to get ready. We spent a good chunk of time getting dressed; with the clothes we had brought and the things we'd bought that day, we had some critical decision-making to do in terms of fashion. I think it was around 10:00 or 11:00 that we were all finally put together.

Our first stop was The Hub, a British pub that is popular with both foreigners and Japanese people. It was pretty busy when we arrived, but when we came in it felt like everybody was staring at us. There weren't a whole lot of women in the place, I guess. As we were looking for a place to sit, a table of guys got up and came over to invite us to sit with them. They were young and relatively good-looking, but a little odd (more on that later) and somewhat aggressive, so we went to sit somewhere else. We ended up at a table next to an American ex-pat and his Japanese friend. The American guy turned out to be fairly obnoxious, and his friend was just sort of awkward, so it got a bit frustrating when they wouldn't leave us to our own devices. It's one thing to have a friendly conversation with the people who sit down next to you, but when you're hitting on a group of completely uninterested girls who are nearly half your age, maybe you need to rethink your strategy. But after a while both of the men left, and for a bit we had an empty table next to us.

Soon, however, the young men from before came over to join us. The leader of the group, who called himself David, was wearing a denim miniskirt. I think it was actually a few sizes too small, because it was torn up the back so that you could see his black shorts underneath. They weren't exactly underwear, I don't think, but those were not shorts that were meant to be used as outerwear. David was odd but very engaging, and his English was quite good. His friends were Tom, who was shorter but more muscular; Kom, who looked slightly older than the others (though they were all 24); and Dai, whose English was probably the weakest of the group. It turned out that they all worked in securities. Although we had some misgivings about them at the start, they turned out to be a lot of fun. We played a few drinking games and talked, and things got pretty rowdy. At one point the entire table ended up singing part of "We Will Rock You". At another point, Sasha tried to show David how to salsa dance, and instead he picked her up and spun her around. I was kind of surprised we weren't asked to leave.

Eventually, though, we did leave. We all went dancing together at a club called Joule. None of us had been there before, but we'd looked it up earlier on Julie's iPhone, and it seemed promising. It turned out to be a pretty good venue; the music wasn't great, but it also was not house or trance. The bartenders were not terribly friendly or helpful, but the dance floor was spacious and the crowd wasn't gropey or weird. I suppose we might've been left alone more because we were there with a group of guys; Sasha did get some unwanted attention when there wasn't a guy with her from our group. But overall it seemed like a decent spot. I spent most of the time dancing with Kom. He was being friendly but not pushy, as he knew I had a boyfriend. He had some rhythm and was good enough company, although eventually he did try to make a move. The conversation went something like this:
"Can I kiss you?"
"No."
"...please?"
"No."
After that, he seemed a little disappointed, but kept dancing with me anyways. Though I would've preferred him not to have asked for a kiss in the first place, I did at least think it was decent of Kom to have asked my permission rather than just attempting to make out with me (which is the more typical approach).

Around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, we decided to head home. We said goodbye to the guys and took a taxi back to the apartment. Ordinarily after a night like that we would've slept in, but check out time was 10:00 am, so we had to get up and go in the morning. Although I hadn't been drinking excessively, just the lack of sleep was enough to make it a bit of a rough morning. Our original plan for Sunday had been to go to Universal Studios Japan, but since it was raining we went to the aquarium instead. And perhaps it wasn't such a bad thing not to be riding rides after a night of partying. The aquarium was great, but the whale shark wasn't there. I'm not sure what happened to it. The whale shark is sort of the main attraction, so it was a little strange not to see it in the giant tank. But there were plenty of other fish to look at, so it wasn't too disappointing.

After the aquarium, we took Chelsea to the capsule hotel she would be staying at Sunday night. She had an appointment on Monday morning to get her student visa for the U.K., which is where she's headed next. We dropped her off and hit the road. Getting out of Osaka was a bit stressful, but thanks to Julie's iPhone and Google Maps, we made it. The drive back was pretty tiring, even as a passenger, but the views were beautiful. When we reached Sasha's town they took me to the train station so that I could catch a train into the city and Julie could take a shorter route home, and we said goodbye.

Last night and this morning I was pretty dead. I took a nap today but am still feeling a little out of it; hopefully I'll be fully recovered by the time we leave for this weekend's trip. Next up is Hiroshima for a K-pop concert! I'm excited, though also somewhat nervous since we still haven't arranged for transportation. But we have our concert tickets and a place to stay, so I think we can make it work.