biba osaka!

today i took a break from cultural sightseeing. i bought a few manga at some second hand book store, mostly erika sakurazawa's stuff and attack no1 (/mila superstar) because it was only 150¥! in the afternoon i put them and some other junk in a big cardboard box and sent it off at the post office because my bag is about to explode. guess i'll have to pay for excess luggage this time. damn.

around 6pm julian and me went to osaka for one last time because osaka rocks! kyoto has nice temples and shrines and stuff but apart from that it's a rather boring and dirty city in my opinion. the only bad thing about osaka is the humidity though. fortunately we arrived in the evening so at least it wasn't that hot anymore. we walked around in namba of course and crazy shinsai-bashi-suji for a few hours, drinking chûhai and making purikura and we were lucky enough to get the last train back to kyoto in the end (although spending the night at the osaka park with the bums would've been fun, too).

trips to various places

universal studios japan.

today was such a fun day i don't even know where to start! i went to the universal studios japan in Osaka with my host family, julian and his host sister. we left Tsu around 5:30am and arrived there around 7:00am, lined up and had to wait till 8:30am when the gates finally opened and the crowd rushed in.

first we went to see the shrek 4d adventure, which was a 3d movie but you could not only see and hear the action, you could also FEEL it. for example when donkey sneezed, it rained or when they flew on the dragon, there was wind. i was scared to death when some spiders in the 3d movie fell down and at the same time there was a stream of air under our seats which felt like the spiders would crawl along there! simply amazing!

the next thing was the e.t. adventure but i'm not a big fan of that movie and the ride was rather dull as was the jaws ride in "amity village" later that day. compared to the rides of spiderman and jurassic park, the back to the future ride wasn't that great either.

after e.t. we went to the "new york" area of the universal studios and lined up at line for the spiderman ride. we had to wait for over 50 minutes but it was so worth it! that ride was one of the funniest, entertaining things ever! we had those 3d glassed and were driving through the streets of NYC when spiderman jumped on our ride and villains appeared and we were actually caught in the line of fire. it was like that 4d shrek adventure but even more fun! we were attacked by the villains with water (raindrops) and fire (hot streaming air) and were thrown around. we laughed and screamed out of joy, it was awesome!!! in the end, spidey saved us (and NYC) of course. thank you, spiderman!

we had an exquisite lunch at "lombart's landing" and afterwards went to the jurassic park. we had to wait there in line for quite a while again for the ride. the ride was on the water and at first, it was quite peaceful watching those dinosaurs till we got to the research center when things started to get dangerous. we were attacked by little dinosaurs and everything was getting darker and scarier till a GIANT t-rex appeared in front of our ride and we suddenly plunged down into the darkness and fell down 26 meters almost vertical into the water!! (this & this is how it looks like when you shoot out of the building after the fall) i got so fucking scared i screamed like a madman! afterwards i trembled and giggled hysterically for a few minutes. fucking awesome.

next on our schedule was the waterworld show. just like in the movie, there was a huge floating fortress. there were "dry seats" (yellow) and "wet seats" (blue) in front of the stage for the audience. as most of the "dry seats" were already taken, we cluelessly sat down on the "wet seats" but soon found out the meaning of the seperated seats: the waterworld guys walked around and poured water on the members of the audience of the front rows. oddly enough, we were spared but when the show started (which was quite good btw with all the stunts and pyrotechnics and stuff), there were guys on motor boats and jetskis driving very close to the audience so one large wave of a jetski hit me and i was literally SOAKED! (as you can probably see here)

it was ok though as it was a very hot day and my clothes dryed rather quickly. after the show we took pictures with one of the waterworld guys. there was this guy at the beginning of the show whom i think was really cute and i wanted a picture with him and also one with the kinky villian but a fat old security lady told me that time's up and chased me away. i'm still pissed off about that.

the salty brass band cheered me up a bit, they were the only cool thing at amity village anyway. we went on the boring jaws ride and sat down and watched the shrek baby birthday parade and then the universal water parade where they poured water on the audience and sang about "summer water fun" so just as my clothes were dry, i got soaked again. duh. we went on the back to the future ride and watched the universal monsters live rock and roll show which was bad, not only the story but especially the singing and the dancing. sorry, guys.

we passed on the terminator show and went to the spiderman and jurassic park rides again instead. in the evening, we watched the peter pan's neverland show at the lagoon where the actors were soaring high above the ground! after the show, the universal studios closed and we left. on our way home i was so tired i imagined i was sitting in a ride instead of a car and when we finally arrived at 12:30am, i was so exhausted i immediately fell asleep.

convini-hopping.

still not feeling too tired considering i didn't sleep much the last few days, my feet hurt like hell though. we walked a lot today. in fact we walked from one chilly airconditioned convini to the next because you can't stand this heat for more than 5-10 minutes.

we went to tempozan today, a huge area where the aquarium, the santory museum and a giant ferris wheel are located. the disney exhibition was really lovely, i especially liked the sketches of sleeping beauty. afterwards we decided against the aquarium because it was just too expensive and went to a huge electric store in namba instead. i finally got my ac adapter (although the clerk told us that it's not the right one and that it would be "abunai!" (dangerous) to use the plug in japan but my notebook didn't blow up till now so me=happy) and i'm already about to upload pictures. :)

at the moment we are waiting for the other students from germany to arrive at the youth hostel so we can go get something to eat together.

maccha daifuku.

insomnia got me last night. after being exhausted all day long i was suddenly wide awake as soon as i went to bed. couldn't sleep till 5am and woke up two hours ago. strangely enough, i'm feeling quite well right now. eating maccha daifuku (small green tea mochi filled with red bean paste) for breakfast and waiting for julian to wake up who couldn't sleep last night either.

i found this great website, the osaka visitor's guide, which says that there is a disney exhibition at the suntory museum tempozan. i also wanted to visit the kaiyukan aquarium...which i think julian is not too keen to do...but as it is in the same area as the museum, we should probably go there and postpone our visit to the osaka castle as it already closes at 5pm.

rosehip-mint chewing gum.

these weather icons are getting boring...

we saw the grossest insect on the street on our way to tennoji. fortunately it was dead but it was about as big as my hand! ugh. we ate dinner at our new favourite restaurant (a small cup of delicious soba for only 200￥, that's about €1,20!) and i bought rosehip-mint chewing gum. they have lots of crazy food here anyway like kiwi chocolate, salt candy and banana-flavoured baumkuchen.

jetlag.

i'm fucking tired. last night we explored the neighbourhood of our hostel before we went to bed. it's definitively not one of the most beautiful areas of osaka (bums and lots of pachinko parlours) but if you walk a while you reach the tennoji ward which is quite nice.

today we went to namba to look for a japanese lush store. after about 2-3 hours of wandering around quite aimlessly we finally found it in the huge namba parks shopping mall. i had to pull myself together as to not to buy any more soap as half of my bag is already filled with them. (but boy i couldn't do without my therapy massage bar! i was feeling so depressed this morning and the neroli really cheered me up! ...and NO they don't pay me for writing this!)

afterwards we ate lunch and the first thing when you enter a restaurant here in japan is that you'll get a cup of ice cold water or, even better, iced green tea! yummy! i ate a delicious noodle-shrimp-salad dish (i actually choose it because i liked the photo on the menu) which turned out to be a cold dish which was of course perfect because of the heat - 36C today! later i got myself a honey milk latte and some sort of cake with macha filling at a coffeeshop - yummyyyyy!

unfortunately, i still can't post pictures. we found an electric store (denki ya) today and bought ac adapters but they don't work for the plug of my notebook. maybe we can find a denki ya at the tennoji ward later. and maybeeee i should buy me an energy drink or something.... *headdesk*

ion!!

somehow we have arrived in osaka and met up with julian at our youth hostel. the humidity here in unbearable and the journey was long and exhausting, especially the flight (i almost fainted and threw up three times, it was just horrible).

still feeling a bit weak and i could really need some sleep. hobbes is dozing upstairs in our permanently air-conditioned room while i'm trying to keep me alive with pokari sweat and oishii onigiri and all that funky stuff we bought and the supermarket earlier. i'll write a better update and post pictures as soon as i get an ac adapter and can use my notebook again.