I woke up early this morning in Osaka, and had a quick breakfast with Kuniko before she had to go back to school. I can tell she’s really exhausted from all this work. The good news is that she’ll be given some compensation days later on. Hopefully she’ll be able to use that time to recharge. In the meantime, I did what I could to help her relax, and just chatting quietly over a bowl of noodles in a dark restaurant in the “pink light” district near her house seemed to do wonders.
After seeing her off at the steps of her apartment I went to the Shin-Osaka station, and kind of merged with a group of athletic looking guys heading to the bullet train. As we turned the corner lots of people appeared looking for autographs and taking pictures. Amazingly, they didn’t want to talk to me.
Apparently these guys were members of the Osaka soccer team, headed off for a game somewhere. It was good to be upstaged and ignored, I just cut through the crowd and grabbed the next train out of there.
The trip back was nice – it was early in the morning and the weather was still cool. There was a nice breeze blowing as well, and I had a nice moment of zen on the Sanyo train platform listening to Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street”. Once I got home I answered the call of my futon and was zonked until late morning.
I spent the day studying Japanese and doing laundry – two things I’m becoming very good at. For dinner I ran down to an okonomiyaki place that is pretty close by. It has erratic hours, but today I was lucky. The only downside was that it was seriously hot in there, especially once he started cooking my dinner.
It was a nice mellow Sunday. Now I’m recharged and ready to go back to school tomorrow.
