Britishisms, Osaka Shinsaibashi

After sleeping in for a while I got my act together and headed out to the local shopping center. The living area of my apartment has a hardwood floor, and I’ve discovered that even though I wear socks while walking around, a lot of cold temperature gets transmitted through my feet. I decided to get some slippers to wear around.

Once there, it was tough finding them in my size. The men’s large didn’t quite fit. Finally I found a pair of men’s double large – called “Britishism” on the top of the slipper. They are really ugly – I feel like Thurston Howell III walking around in these things.

On my way back home I passed the construction site near my place. It turns out that this site will be a gigantic Ito Yokado shopping center. Ito Yokado is usually an upscale supermarket, but they also throw in restaurants and other types of stores. It is supposed to be finished in September of this year. There is also a new train station that they are putting in right next door. The upside of all this is that I will be literally next door to a major shopping center, saving me lots of money in train trips every time I want to go somewhere. I’m pretty excited about it – it will mean much easier access to groceries, too.

Antoine called around four o’clock and said that he was planning on meeting some friends in an Irish pub in downtown Osaka. I ended up meeting him at Nishinomiya/Kitaguchi, and from there we took the train into Umeda. Umeda is the section of Osaka where three major train lines meet, so there are a ton of stores and restaurants trying to lure you in to eat and spend.

I found a strange little alley off the main thoroughfare of people, and we walked into a trendy restaurant and sat at the bar. Antoine doesn’t know much Japanese at all, so I was left to decipher the menu. I identified a few things that seemed familiar, and so we ordered up. We had three good fried rice dishes, one with Kim Chee, a decent cheese and onion omelet, and grilled thin sliced beef tongue. Delicious. The waitress was young and very patient with us as we ordered – I’ve noticed that the older the person the less patient they are with my strange mix of Japanese and English.

A girl across the restaurant kept looking across at us, and it was making Antoine nervous. We get stared at quite a bit anyway, but this one kept coming back to look at us again. Since my back was to her, I didn’t have a problem with it. After the meal I was putting on my jacket, scarf, and manpurse, and sure enough, she was burning a hole through us. I bowed and smiled to her, and she returned the smile. We got out of there quickly, though.

Three subway stops later we were in Shinsaibashi, and incredibly concentrated restaurant and bar district. Mostly young people were walking around, and the place seemed pretty foreigner-friendly. Hawkers outside the restaurants tried to get us to come in, but we just bowed and gave them a “sumimasen” (excuse me) and walked right on by.

Antoine got lost – the last time he was at this bar he had been drunk, and he couldn’t find his way back. All the streets looked the same, and without being able to read the signs, it was pretty difficult. Antoine stopped a random guy on the street by saying “sumimasen”, but then froze up when he realized that he had no follow-up. I had to jump in and ask where the place was, but it was no surprise that they didn’t know. This district was huge.

Antoine sent a message with his keitai (cell phone) and one of his friends met up with us, and led us back. His name was also Bryan, and so it was easy to remember. We found the Irish bar finally (we weren’t even close) and met up with a group of folks there. Half of them had just arrived from an “all-you-can-eat-and-drink” dinner, so they were pretty sloshed. Some of the girls were having trouble standing up, and everyone was smoking. Ick!

One of the girls was hitting on me heavily, and noticed that I was subtly ducking the cigarette smoke. She asked me what I thought of girls that smoked, and I told her the flat out truth. She laughed, and kind of shrugged it off, but take that American tobacco companies! An American told her that it wasn’t cool… maybe it’ll stick and she’ll quit.

After three Guinness time was up and I had to head off in order to safely catch the last train. I said goodbye to everyone and backtracked my way to the subway, the JR station, the Sanyo station, and then my apartment. It was a long way to go for three Guinness, but getting there was half the fun.


Leave a Reply