Amerikamura & Osaka Castle

Yo!

So today is the 12th of November, a Saturday. I decided we should see Osaka today so I took us to the station to try and navigate our way to Amerikamura (America Village, much like a Chinatown in the USA). It was confusing at first to simply find the Midosuji line (subway) but eventually we found it and proceeded to Shinsaibashi Station. Once we arrived though, we stumbled around for awhile longer until we actually found Amerikamura. In some of the shops, they sold iconic American clothes like old football jackets, camo jackets, clothes with Mickey Mouse on them, and even a what looked like a variation of the screaming hand logo local to Santa Cruz.

Its interesting to see the fashions they chose from American culture to sell.

There was a big shopping center complex called Big Step in Amerikamura, but it wasn't open until 11:00, so we went to Starbucks and I bought what I think may be my first ever drink from a Starbucks; a mango frappuccino blended cream. おいしい！ It was delicious. So after the complex opened, we browsed the stores. One store in particular was rather fun for me. It was a kera (lolita-esque fashion magazine) style fashion store, and it was playing Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's CD. I sung along happily while looking at the extremely trendy clothes. If I had a girlfriend, I would buy her lots of stuff from Japanese fashion stores and dress her up to my liking, haha.

Have you ever seen a curved escalator? I haven't.

Be warned future lover of mine, you will look like this. Maybe.

Afterward, we ended up in shinsaibashi-suji shopping center. Its a long row of shops along one of the main streets. After more stumbling we finally found the station again and proceeded to Tenmabashi Station via the Keihen line. From here we stumbled around even more to find Osaka Castle. In Osaka Castle Park, we found a wild cat walking around by the bushes and eventually it walked over towards two more cats resting under a bush. Near here was an older woman painting a gorgeous painting of Osaka Castle in the distance. And just beyond that was a group of 20-somethings practicing some kind of hip hop dance to Hatsune Miku. They were even in sync with each other. After getting closer to Osaka Castle, we opted to not go inside and proceed back to the station to have lunch. We had bento boxes with four different kinds of Yakitori, rice with some weird spice on it, miso soup, and a small salad of sorts. This was the first meal I didn't fully enjoy. Some of the yakitori was good, and I ate around the spice on the rice and had some miso soup, but as all together it wasn't my ideal meal.

Osaka Castle from across the moat.

I hope when I'm her age I'll have enough free time to do stuff like this.

My Neko friend.

We headed back to Shin-Osaka Station after transferring at Yodoyabashi Station and reserved our seats for tomorrow's trip to Kyoto via shinkansen. Now we're back at the hotel relaxing until dinner. We aren't going anywhere else tonight, so I think I'll loiter around the station trying to converse with school girls. You know, chasing skirts and what not?

Until next time,
Daniel