suntory boss is the boss of them all.

we checked out this morning and are sitting in the lobby of our hostel now, killing time till we leave for tsu around 12pm.

yesterday we went to osaka castle, which was quite boring in my opinion. the park around the castle was pretty though but full of huge, ugly cicada. i also got a sunburn on my shoulders. we stayed at our air-cooled room in the hostel during the afternoon, in the evening we went downtown again. first namba and then america-mura. ebisubashi and shinsaibashisuji were pretty cool, too.


my feet hurt like hell when we finally arrived at the hostel. fortunately, i had bought a foot mask at lush (i got 50% off when i told them i work at lush in germany! ha!!) which really helped. oops, gotta go! looking forward to meet my host family. i hope they have internet at home...

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.

when i was your age, pluto was a planet.

everything's finally packed and ready...except me. hobbes is dozing on my bed but i'm too nervous and worried to sleep. too many changes in my life lately, it's getting a bit overwhelming.

my new mobile phone is driving me crazy. that sony ericsson w660i is crap, it just annoys the hell out of me. bluetooth doesn't work, the screensaver is the most stupid thing i've ever seen (the same color for the background and font of the clock - wtf!??!), you can only use crappy themes and it even doesn't have a currency converter! i hope that at least it'll work in japan. also, the ac adapter i ordered didn't arrive in time which sucks. i hope i'll find a good one at the airport.

tomorrow's gonna be a long, long day:
stuttgart - munich - tokyo - osaka
a total of about 24 hours of travelling!
i have no idea if the internet at the youth hostel will work or when i'll be able to update the next time...also, i can't find any clever closing words for this post.

the pink dress.

the weather's awful here in germany, don't mind the smiling frog on the left. by the way i guess you've already figured out that those little animations at the beginning of each posting are displaying the weather at our current location. we're still working on the design and widgets of our travelblog. yesterday we've added a shoutbox, feel free to leave random comments there. still searching for a nice pownce widget though as they're not available for blogger yet. please let me know if you've found one!

idil is no big help at the moment as she is jumping around happily all evening because she finally found this pink dress she was looking for for weeks and even bought it at a reduced price today. oh well. i also have to look after my buddy mico (idil's brother's cat). he is so sad because his big brother left for turkey yesterday for three weeks so he is eating cookies and chocolate all the time like some depressed girl. he even started licking the furniture again. that cat is crazy...

/hobbes

plazes.

a few days ago i watched lost in translation again. as you can tell from my website designs, i really like that movie. ;) japan-guide.com has a list of the locations where the movie was shot and i'd really like to visit the park hyatt hotel for example. hobbes says i'm a dork.

some other places i'd like to visit in japan this summer are:

• tokyo: senso-ji, harajuku, shibuya, roppongi hills, ueno park, national art center, takaraza revue, ghibli museum, park hyatt tokyo
  
• osaka: osaka castle, kaiyukan aquarium
  
• kyoto: gion district, kiyomizu-dera
  
• nara: nara park, todai-ji

if you have more suggestions, let me know. (...) japan-guide.com is a neat website with lots of information on japan and tips for traveling/living there. for example did you know that there are large lavender fields on hokkaido? weird. too bad i probably won't leave honshû though.

i'm still a bit unsure about that plug and voltage stuff in japan as it differs from the european standards. i've ordered some travel plug adapter and i just cross my fingers and hope my notebook won't blow up or something. also, i don't wanna drag it around for nothing. especially not after i've checked the weather forecasts for japan earlier today: average 30°C! apparently i'm going to melt there.

there are still so many things to do! today i bought myself a new sketchbook and ordered my new cell phone. i just hope it'll arrive in time and that it'll work in japan. i also need to think of a name for it...

realization.

this morning i had the last exam for this term. i still got papers to write but i'll deal with those after my trip. anyway, i'm relieved the learning stress is over for now and i'm gradually starting to realize that i'm going to japan for almost 2 months!

i've never been away from home for that long and my longest stay at a guest family was 3 weeks. i got a letter from my host family in tsu today which lifted my spirits because they have two little children (you gotta love japanese kids!) and sound very nice and i'm looking forward to meet them.

nevertheless i must say, the whole thing's frightening me a bit but i'm also excited. i really need some time off of germany and especially tübingen anyway. i'm sure there'll be plenty stuff to take pictures of and maybe i'll even start drawing again!? i wish i already had some kind of crazy art project in my mind for japan. i really miss the art in my life.