Japan - Day 9 - Kyoto

And from Osaka to Kyoto... I started to get used to travelling all time, as if that was my ordinary life. When I arrived in Kyoto I was dead tired. I needed a bed like water... fresh water... guess what? Surprise! when I got to the hostel they told me that the check-in was from 16h, superb!! (at least, they let me leave my luggage there). So, there I was, in the middle of Kyoto, tired and sleepy. I remember myself looking around for a mountain or some place far from the buildings where I could lie and sleep like a tramp.


There was a mountain at the East that seemed to be 4 or 5 km away so started walking for it. In the way I passed by a huge cementery. I didn't know exactly where I was heading for...


By chance, that mountain ended up to one of the most important parts of kyoto with a lot of famous temples and... noisy tourists!! Grr!!


So, I had to climb more and more until I found a quiet place where I, literally, fall asleep (I heard some hikers passing by.. they must thought that I was a strange gaijing hehe). As a symbolic gesture I took a picture (see above) of that comfortable place :D


I went back in the afternoon, see some more temples (yes, thousands of temples in Kyoto, I started to hate them) and had lunch in a Yoshinoya (my favourite place to eat fast and cheap). Then I went to the hostel and I FINALLY had, a great sleep from 18:00 to 9:00!!! Ufff!

Japan - Day 8 - Osaka

When I arrived to my hotel it was already daylight and it was hard to fall asleep.


After sleeping a few hours (see my eyes in the picture above :D), I got up and went to see the famous castle of Osaka.


The castle has been restored recently and it is one of the most important buildings of Japan.


There were a lot of tourists there and I saw some Japanese monks or pillgrims asking for some money.


Back to my hotel, I got in contact with the Spanish guy from Sevilla that I met in Tokyo (see day 1) through an Internet forum. He was also in Osaka and was looking for someone to go out with. I met him in the same disco, Pure, where I also found the guys from Toyota. As it was Saturday, the disco was very lively, full of people and there were some gogos (I saw the black woman in blue and the guy with the tattoos from the pictures bellow for example). While I was dancing a Japanese girl pulled my shirt and smiled at me!. I think she was a bit drunk haha!


The disco closed at 5 a.m. or so with a guy dressed up as captain hook and to girls giving away some T-shirts with the Pure logo (similar to Puma). When I was going back to the hotel I bumped into my Spanish friend and we decided to go to an Afterhours that was nearby.


People in the afterhours were mostly composed of men, some drunk women and some blonde russians accompanying VIP people. I was probably the only one sober so I felt like an objective observer hehe. When I got back to the hotel it was 8 a.m. and the checkout was at 10 a.m. so I couldn't sleep to much either!.

Note: Pictures from Pure have been taken from www.clubpure.com

Japan - Day 7 - Osaka

I left Nagoya and took a Shinkansen to Osaka, where I had a lot of expectations of having fun and see amazing urban views. Some movies, like Blade Runner or the great Japanese Anime called Ghost In The Shell, were based after Osaka to represent an apocalyptic city from the future.


Unfortunately my first impression of Osaka as a tourist was not very good. Most of the signs were only written in Kanji so I hardly could read any of them, and they spoke Japanese with slightly different vocabulary and accent (months of study thrown to the bucket). Also, I found Osaka people less polite and its streets were not as clean as in the rest of Japan. My hotel was called Taiyo and in the surrounding area there were a lot of tramps and strange people. To be fair, I should say that I was very tired and probably my first impression would have been
better after some rest.


I took katsudon in a yoshinoya and then I went to see the wonderful area of Dotonbori. It was amazing, just like in the movies. Full of people, the famous bridges, the lights, the sounds, everything was like in my thoughts.


I decided to have a burguer in the second floor of a building placed right in front of the most famous bridge. From there I spied the Japanese and took some pictures he he.


I was lucky that it started to rain because the area looked more apocalyptic. I was wandering around for a while seing street after street (I found a spanish flamenco local!) and then I decided to enter a disco. In the hotel, I had been looking in the Internet for discos in Osaka and I wrote down several addresses. However I could only find one of them! It was very hard to figure out in Japan whether a local was a disco or what. If you heard music and lots of sound... it was a pachinko not a disco!. Then there were lots of locals and clubs that looked like.. whore houses?... So, I finally entered to the Club Pure, a very famous club where a lot of gaijins (foreigners) go out. It was a normal disco, a bit small for what I was looking for (that is, a BIG ONE with lots of lights and people) but with an interesting point: you only pay the entrance (18Euros) and you get all you can drink all the night.


I entered the disco too early and there were no people! I had to wait some minutes so people started to come. I met a very funny guy from London who was about to get drunk. He was working as an english teacher in Osaka for one year. I also met some guys from Belgium that were working for Toyota in Nagoya. The music of the disco was awful but at least it was a cheap way of going to a disco in the center of Osaka. When I went out of the disco, at around 5am, suddenly a woman of around 26 year old pull my arm and offered me a massage for 3000 yen (around 20 Eur).

Japan - Day 6 - Nagoya

My second day in Nagoya was quite exciting. I got up early, had a bath in the onsen of the Ryokan and took a metro and a private train line to Tokujun's University. The University was very nice, quiet and modern. While I was waiting in the department of Spanish for Tokujun, who had invited me to participate in his class the they before, I met a Spanish teacher called Daniel Quintero. We had a coffee and shared a friendly talk. He was from Málaga (the second one in two days!) and had been married to a Japanese woman for more than eight years.


After that, I went with Tokujun to his class where a I had the opportunity to give a short talk in Japanese about Spain and the Spanish to first year students and also a group of second year students. It was a very interesting experience for me and I hope they liked it. Then, the group of second year students and I went to talk for a little bit and eat in the canteen of the University. They were very nice and I enjoyed a lot the time I could be talking with them.

They had a special class, with other students, from 12:30 to 14:30 and I attended it with them as if I were another student. It was very funny to see some Japanese students literally sleeping during the class.


After that class, I chatted with another student (3rd year student) who was going to come to Alicante (Spain) very soon and Ayano, one of the second year students, who is willing to come to Sevilla. We exchanged mails and maybe we have the chance to meet in a near future.


I left them and went back to Nagoya because I had to move my luggage from the Ryokan to the hotel where I had made a reservation for the second night in Nagoya. It was very close to the main JR Station and I had no problem finding
it thanks to my GPS. I left there my lugagge, changed clothes and took the metro back to meet Yuki, Tsuyoshi, and ... sorry I forgot the names!, with which I was about to have a lot of fun singing in a karaoke!!.


The karaoke local was amazing, full of lights and sounds. You go there, rent a room for two hours or so, buy something to drink (I had a strawberry ("ichigo") milkshake) and SING!! I had a lot of fun and I am very grateful to them. I sang "Camisa Negra" (Juanes), "La Tortura" (Shakira), "Thriller" (Michael Jackson) and three beatle songs: "Golden Slumbers", "Don't Let me Down" and "Girl". They sang some anime songs like "Drago Ball" and "Evangelion" opening songs, a very funny song that was always saying "Carli, Carlitos", Yuki sang "Underneath your clothes" (Shakira)... Real fun! I ended up with throat ache but It really paid to.


Then we had to say goodbye to each other and I was a bit sad. I share the way back to the hotel with Yuki because she had to take a train from Nagoya's main station, which was near my hotel. She was a really nice person and I could know her better because she spoke English thanks to a stay in Australia (she called herself australian!;D). We had a wonderful dinner at the train station and then, sadly we had to say goodbye again.


One of the good things of this trip was that I met a lot of people from everywhere and every kind. But also, one of the worst things was that they just passed by my life and said goodbye, and that was a bit sad. I hope I can keep in touch with some of them by mail (although I know it's quite difficult) and maybe meet up again someday. So, see you later Nagoya!