The Continuing Story of a Quack Who's Gone to the Dogs
Picking up where I left off.
Most of this week's classes were okay, but I had a loooooooot of grading to do. I stayed late most of the days last week, including one where I did a mini-conversation class with two sannensei from the academic course. On another day, I helped a ninensei write a speech about Pokemon for her class project. It was the same student who gave me the shiny Kolink, and she is a fan of Eevees so the third paragraph of the speech was about Eevee evolutions. This kid knows the English Pokemon names better than I do. (I apparantly don't know them well anymore, I can't seem to remember to say 'Ditto' instead of 'Metamon' when talking to friends back home.) Anyway, I'm pretty sure it was dark just about every time I left school.
On Tuesday, I had my Japanese tutoring as usual, but at the end of the class I said, "kono hon wa tsumaranai kara, saigo ni wa motto omoroi mono wa dou ya ka?" - this book is boring, so how about something more interesting for the end? - and pulled out the week's copy of Shounen Sunday and we read Detective Conan instead. I read aloud and attempted to translate, and my tutor corrected me where necessary (as well as he could, not speaking much English himself), so it was both pronounciation, reading comprehension and reading speed practice, plus some new vocab. Now I can say "poison" in Japanese. Go me!! My tutor said to bring the book back the next week. :D I think from now on I'll switch between Conan and Yotsuba, depending on how interesting the case is at the time.
Wednesday was Aikido. Damn it was cold! The temperature dropped into single digits for awhile last week, which made 45-minute bike rides kind of suck. Luckily it's back up now. Aikido is going pretty well; I'm still terrible at it but at least I'm getting the dojo etiquette down now, so it's less embarassing. I had 4 classes on Wednesday, to my dismay; it was Friday schedule because we were having a long weekend. Geh.
Thursday was cleaning cleaning cleaning, and Friday was Mel's visit to my place. She'd been staying with Laura awhile and had done the Kyoto thing, so it was time to do the Osaka thing. I'd emailed her some pretty complicated instructions for the quickest, cheapest way to my city, which is located halfway between Osaka City and Kyoto City. I stayed up late enough that I only awoke when the phone rang and it was Mel.
"Hi, I'm at the train station, how do I get to your place?"
"What station?"
"Umeda."
*silence*
"Wh--what are you doing in Umeda!?"
"The directions you gave me were a bit complicated, so I figured I'd just take the Hankyu line to Osaka since I knew where that was, and call you."
She had overshot my place by more than half an hour. u.u; So I had her change to a train line that actually serviced Hirakata, going through an extra transfer in the process, and an hour later she was on my doorstep, quite tired, and unfortunately crippled by a knee injury. A dislocation from years ago had been giving her trouble since the day before, and she could barely walk, but was determined to go out. So she took a hot bath in my three-foot tub, I made hayashi rice for the both of us and we rested up a bit watching Ranma, Black Jack 21, Pokemon and so on before setting back out for Osaka City. First stop was the castle.
I can't claim to know much about Osaka Castle, and I didn't get a lot of time to look at the exhibits as the place closed at 5. Suffice to say that the view was spectacular and I was particularly interested by the pre- and post-fire architecture and the traditional clothes. But mostly the view, from which you could clearly see Namba, Umeda and Tsutenkaku, among other things. From a gachapon machine I got a few mobile straps and a pin, all Osakan symbols. The JR Loop Line Osaka pin is on my winter denim. XD
Mel's knee was really busted up by this point so we decided that, instead of going to the Aquarium and the Sky Building, we'd go to an onsen I'd read about in my guidebook. Much like the public bath I described last time, onsen are (usually natural) baths filled by hot springs and since Japan is pretty volcanic, there are a LOT here. Very few in Osaka as we're missing the necessary volcano/mountain/etc, for the most part. However a hot spring exists just under Tennoji/Shinsekai, and in recent years that spring became Spa World.
Oh my God, Spa World.
We got the subway from Osaka Castle and it deposited us in an extremely seedy-looking area which I later discovered to be called Shinsekai, formerly a symbol of Osaka's modern image as the site of Tsutenkaku Tower. Luckily a Koban (police box, there's one every couple of blocks here, and is probably the reason for Japan's incredibly low crime rate) was within sight, as was the stairs to the building entrance after we'd walked a moment or two. After entering the eight-floor establishment, we bought admission tickets for 3,000 yen from a vending machine (oh, Japan. we got our tickets to the Castle from a machine, too) and exchanged them at the turnstile for green numbered bracelets. The bracelets allowed us to charge anything we purchased upstairs and pay for it on the way out. We stowed our shoes in a locker and took the elevator upstairs.
Spa World has two floors of onsen; the 4th floor is European themed and the 6th floor, Asian. Access is alternated monthly by gender. For November, women could use the 4th floor only, the European baths, which was fine by us. The guidebook had said to bring swimsuits, and we'd both packed them just in case we went to the Tsutenkaku area instead of the Bay. However, everybody else was walking around the locker room quite unclothed, or wearing the free pink pajamas. We put on bathing suits anyway and went into the first bath, Rome.
It was reeeeeeeeeeeally hot. Volcanoes will do that, I guess. ^^;; It took some time to get in and when we did, another customer swam over and told us that wearing clothes in the bath wasn't necessary. She did say it in a joking tone but we were both feeling pretty self-conscious by then (as the only clothed people around o.o;) so we took off our swimsuits and returned them to my locker. Then we continued on to the next bath, Atlantis, from the picture above.
Atlantis' schtick, besides the decor being broken pillars, was a fish tank beside the bath and a shark tank in a glass area under the bath. Small sharks. But sharks nonetheless. We didn't stay long. :P
Third was Greece. Greece was the favourite bath by far; although the water was much hotter than Atlantis. The main bath was tinted a deep pink and scented with roses. The other two baths were sage/rosemary/thyme/lavender and the like. There were plastic recliners where other bathers were napping, and periodically the lights would go down and be replaced with black lights, which accentuated the detailed painting of the Milky Way on the ceiling. We rested awhile in the chairs. The room adjacent to Greece offered full-body exfoliating scrubs for decent prices, chargable to your numbered bracelet.
We moved on to Finland, one of the more exciting and beautiful baths, but problematic in that it was a cold-water bath. u.u; 70 cm of water in a small, rocky grove, with a wooden chalet (containing two saunas of varying temperature) and Aurora Borealis displayed on the ceiling. It took me 10 minutes to get in and I think I would have been warmer leaping into Manuals River in December. Mel put one toe in and that was it. I did make it, though, and the sauna was very nice afterwards.
The next room, which we skipped, was foot baths. You sat at a table or counter, rested, talked, watched TV or whatever while bathing your feet in a warm stream running under the tables. We continued on to some sort of mineral bath that was part of Spain. It was the hottest one yet and pretty much unbearable, which was too bad because it was constructed inside a big cave and the water had a pleasant quality to it.
Next was a salt sauna. There was a giant wooden vat of salt and you rubbed it on your body to exfoliate and such, then rinsed off with a showerhead outside the door. This was neat, and felt very nice. Next door were three massage baths, also nice, and down from that, rows of sit-down showers similar to ones I've described before, with shampoo, lotion and the like. We washed up, then went back to the massage baths, then returned to Rome for a final soak. In the end we ended up getting an exfoliation, pricier than I was prepared to spend, but I'd only bought snacks and transportation all day and a coin from the Castle, so I figured it was worth it for the experience. And oh, was it ever nice. 1,600 yen for a 10 minute scrub that left me a little red but quite happy. Mel's knee was doing great, too; she hadn't had trouble walking since we'd settled into the first bath. Wednesday's Aikido lesson could have been a thousand years before for all I cared. Unfortunately, after a final dip in the rosewater, we decided to cut out before the last train. Being stranded in Namba is one thing; Shinsekai is quite another. So after a final look at Rome's other attractions (sauna and a freezing "gold bath") we returned to our lockers and got dressed with the intention of exploring the rest of the building.
Just outside the European spas were things like foot massagers, massage chairs, tanning beds, strength testers, vending machines and etc. Elsewhere on that floor was a "relaxation room" (a hundred reclining chairs, with blankets, and wall-mounted jumbo TVs showing every channel on Osaka's local cable), a massage place, a kids' land, and a vending machine that dispensed hot taiyaki, yakisoba, yaki-onigiri, takoyaki and other such monstrosities. We took the elevator thinking to see the Asian baths (not knowing about the gender segregation) but the womens' elevator actually had that floor blacked out. Inside we went up to floor 8...and discovered a water park.
A water park. On the top floor of a building in downtown Osaka. Right, okay.
Anyway, there wasn't time for that (much to our utter disappointment) as it was well past 10 and the last train left at 11:40 and we hadn't eaten since having yakisoba at the Castle. We briefly checked out the third-floor restaurants, gachapon machines and arcade games (I won a Pikachu card, driving around a Lapras on a pinball/racing combo-style game, very predictibly to the tune of "Lapras ni Notte"), and the gift shop, before checking out. We fed our bracelets into another machine and it displayed the total price for our body scrubs. Paid for that, took the "check-out" card and used it to pass through the turnstile and exit.
We got the subway to Namba and hopped off for a bite to eat. We ended up in Royal Host, a place that's surprisingly ritzy for being open 24 hours. Mel had steak and I had a steak-don; that is, strips of beef over rice. It was delicious. <3 Then we caught the last train out of Namba and headed to Yodoyabashi, and from there, back to my place. We'd intended to do karaoke, too, but none of the places nearby were open and we were too tired to walk to the centre of town. So, we just spread out the futons and crashed; lucky thing because we were going to be up decently early the next day, and also tired.
I also have to be up decently early tomorrow and am tired. So, I'll tell you about the rest of the weekend, next time.
Most of this week's classes were okay, but I had a loooooooot of grading to do. I stayed late most of the days last week, including one where I did a mini-conversation class with two sannensei from the academic course. On another day, I helped a ninensei write a speech about Pokemon for her class project. It was the same student who gave me the shiny Kolink, and she is a fan of Eevees so the third paragraph of the speech was about Eevee evolutions. This kid knows the English Pokemon names better than I do. (I apparantly don't know them well anymore, I can't seem to remember to say 'Ditto' instead of 'Metamon' when talking to friends back home.) Anyway, I'm pretty sure it was dark just about every time I left school.
On Tuesday, I had my Japanese tutoring as usual, but at the end of the class I said, "kono hon wa tsumaranai kara, saigo ni wa motto omoroi mono wa dou ya ka?" - this book is boring, so how about something more interesting for the end? - and pulled out the week's copy of Shounen Sunday and we read Detective Conan instead. I read aloud and attempted to translate, and my tutor corrected me where necessary (as well as he could, not speaking much English himself), so it was both pronounciation, reading comprehension and reading speed practice, plus some new vocab. Now I can say "poison" in Japanese. Go me!! My tutor said to bring the book back the next week. :D I think from now on I'll switch between Conan and Yotsuba, depending on how interesting the case is at the time.
Wednesday was Aikido. Damn it was cold! The temperature dropped into single digits for awhile last week, which made 45-minute bike rides kind of suck. Luckily it's back up now. Aikido is going pretty well; I'm still terrible at it but at least I'm getting the dojo etiquette down now, so it's less embarassing. I had 4 classes on Wednesday, to my dismay; it was Friday schedule because we were having a long weekend. Geh.
Thursday was cleaning cleaning cleaning, and Friday was Mel's visit to my place. She'd been staying with Laura awhile and had done the Kyoto thing, so it was time to do the Osaka thing. I'd emailed her some pretty complicated instructions for the quickest, cheapest way to my city, which is located halfway between Osaka City and Kyoto City. I stayed up late enough that I only awoke when the phone rang and it was Mel.
"Hi, I'm at the train station, how do I get to your place?"
"What station?"
"Umeda."
*silence*
"Wh--what are you doing in Umeda!?"
"The directions you gave me were a bit complicated, so I figured I'd just take the Hankyu line to Osaka since I knew where that was, and call you."
She had overshot my place by more than half an hour. u.u; So I had her change to a train line that actually serviced Hirakata, going through an extra transfer in the process, and an hour later she was on my doorstep, quite tired, and unfortunately crippled by a knee injury. A dislocation from years ago had been giving her trouble since the day before, and she could barely walk, but was determined to go out. So she took a hot bath in my three-foot tub, I made hayashi rice for the both of us and we rested up a bit watching Ranma, Black Jack 21, Pokemon and so on before setting back out for Osaka City. First stop was the castle.
I can't claim to know much about Osaka Castle, and I didn't get a lot of time to look at the exhibits as the place closed at 5. Suffice to say that the view was spectacular and I was particularly interested by the pre- and post-fire architecture and the traditional clothes. But mostly the view, from which you could clearly see Namba, Umeda and Tsutenkaku, among other things. From a gachapon machine I got a few mobile straps and a pin, all Osakan symbols. The JR Loop Line Osaka pin is on my winter denim. XD
Mel's knee was really busted up by this point so we decided that, instead of going to the Aquarium and the Sky Building, we'd go to an onsen I'd read about in my guidebook. Much like the public bath I described last time, onsen are (usually natural) baths filled by hot springs and since Japan is pretty volcanic, there are a LOT here. Very few in Osaka as we're missing the necessary volcano/mountain/etc, for the most part. However a hot spring exists just under Tennoji/Shinsekai, and in recent years that spring became Spa World.
Oh my God, Spa World.
We got the subway from Osaka Castle and it deposited us in an extremely seedy-looking area which I later discovered to be called Shinsekai, formerly a symbol of Osaka's modern image as the site of Tsutenkaku Tower. Luckily a Koban (police box, there's one every couple of blocks here, and is probably the reason for Japan's incredibly low crime rate) was within sight, as was the stairs to the building entrance after we'd walked a moment or two. After entering the eight-floor establishment, we bought admission tickets for 3,000 yen from a vending machine (oh, Japan. we got our tickets to the Castle from a machine, too) and exchanged them at the turnstile for green numbered bracelets. The bracelets allowed us to charge anything we purchased upstairs and pay for it on the way out. We stowed our shoes in a locker and took the elevator upstairs.
Spa World has two floors of onsen; the 4th floor is European themed and the 6th floor, Asian. Access is alternated monthly by gender. For November, women could use the 4th floor only, the European baths, which was fine by us. The guidebook had said to bring swimsuits, and we'd both packed them just in case we went to the Tsutenkaku area instead of the Bay. However, everybody else was walking around the locker room quite unclothed, or wearing the free pink pajamas. We put on bathing suits anyway and went into the first bath, Rome.
It was reeeeeeeeeeeally hot. Volcanoes will do that, I guess. ^^;; It took some time to get in and when we did, another customer swam over and told us that wearing clothes in the bath wasn't necessary. She did say it in a joking tone but we were both feeling pretty self-conscious by then (as the only clothed people around o.o;) so we took off our swimsuits and returned them to my locker. Then we continued on to the next bath, Atlantis, from the picture above.
Atlantis' schtick, besides the decor being broken pillars, was a fish tank beside the bath and a shark tank in a glass area under the bath. Small sharks. But sharks nonetheless. We didn't stay long. :P
Third was Greece. Greece was the favourite bath by far; although the water was much hotter than Atlantis. The main bath was tinted a deep pink and scented with roses. The other two baths were sage/rosemary/thyme/lavender and the like. There were plastic recliners where other bathers were napping, and periodically the lights would go down and be replaced with black lights, which accentuated the detailed painting of the Milky Way on the ceiling. We rested awhile in the chairs. The room adjacent to Greece offered full-body exfoliating scrubs for decent prices, chargable to your numbered bracelet.
We moved on to Finland, one of the more exciting and beautiful baths, but problematic in that it was a cold-water bath. u.u; 70 cm of water in a small, rocky grove, with a wooden chalet (containing two saunas of varying temperature) and Aurora Borealis displayed on the ceiling. It took me 10 minutes to get in and I think I would have been warmer leaping into Manuals River in December. Mel put one toe in and that was it. I did make it, though, and the sauna was very nice afterwards.
The next room, which we skipped, was foot baths. You sat at a table or counter, rested, talked, watched TV or whatever while bathing your feet in a warm stream running under the tables. We continued on to some sort of mineral bath that was part of Spain. It was the hottest one yet and pretty much unbearable, which was too bad because it was constructed inside a big cave and the water had a pleasant quality to it.
Next was a salt sauna. There was a giant wooden vat of salt and you rubbed it on your body to exfoliate and such, then rinsed off with a showerhead outside the door. This was neat, and felt very nice. Next door were three massage baths, also nice, and down from that, rows of sit-down showers similar to ones I've described before, with shampoo, lotion and the like. We washed up, then went back to the massage baths, then returned to Rome for a final soak. In the end we ended up getting an exfoliation, pricier than I was prepared to spend, but I'd only bought snacks and transportation all day and a coin from the Castle, so I figured it was worth it for the experience. And oh, was it ever nice. 1,600 yen for a 10 minute scrub that left me a little red but quite happy. Mel's knee was doing great, too; she hadn't had trouble walking since we'd settled into the first bath. Wednesday's Aikido lesson could have been a thousand years before for all I cared. Unfortunately, after a final dip in the rosewater, we decided to cut out before the last train. Being stranded in Namba is one thing; Shinsekai is quite another. So after a final look at Rome's other attractions (sauna and a freezing "gold bath") we returned to our lockers and got dressed with the intention of exploring the rest of the building.
Just outside the European spas were things like foot massagers, massage chairs, tanning beds, strength testers, vending machines and etc. Elsewhere on that floor was a "relaxation room" (a hundred reclining chairs, with blankets, and wall-mounted jumbo TVs showing every channel on Osaka's local cable), a massage place, a kids' land, and a vending machine that dispensed hot taiyaki, yakisoba, yaki-onigiri, takoyaki and other such monstrosities. We took the elevator thinking to see the Asian baths (not knowing about the gender segregation) but the womens' elevator actually had that floor blacked out. Inside we went up to floor 8...and discovered a water park.
A water park. On the top floor of a building in downtown Osaka. Right, okay.
Anyway, there wasn't time for that (much to our utter disappointment) as it was well past 10 and the last train left at 11:40 and we hadn't eaten since having yakisoba at the Castle. We briefly checked out the third-floor restaurants, gachapon machines and arcade games (I won a Pikachu card, driving around a Lapras on a pinball/racing combo-style game, very predictibly to the tune of "Lapras ni Notte"), and the gift shop, before checking out. We fed our bracelets into another machine and it displayed the total price for our body scrubs. Paid for that, took the "check-out" card and used it to pass through the turnstile and exit.
We got the subway to Namba and hopped off for a bite to eat. We ended up in Royal Host, a place that's surprisingly ritzy for being open 24 hours. Mel had steak and I had a steak-don; that is, strips of beef over rice. It was delicious. <3 Then we caught the last train out of Namba and headed to Yodoyabashi, and from there, back to my place. We'd intended to do karaoke, too, but none of the places nearby were open and we were too tired to walk to the centre of town. So, we just spread out the futons and crashed; lucky thing because we were going to be up decently early the next day, and also tired.
I also have to be up decently early tomorrow and am tired. So, I'll tell you about the rest of the weekend, next time.