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As recollected May 1992, months after the fact
12/31 Today was calm for me, prolly less so for Jimmy. We checked out of Hotel Ocean View, took the train to Shin-Osaka station where we hooked up with Jimmy's girlfriend, whose name I think is Hiroko. We then headed out to this town 'tween Kyoto & Osaka by ("chikatetsu") The official meaning of this is "Subway", but really it just means a small local train line. Quite often, these lines really are subways, but sometimes they aren't really.
Anyhow. (By the way, I still don't know what the name of the town was. The name of the train stop was Soji ji.) Jimmy was in charge of navigation 'cos he'd spent more time in Osaka than everyone else combined (including Hiroko). The next step was finding the apartment we were going to. It's Hiroko's cousin's I think. I guessed he'd be along eventual-like. For my part, finding the place consisted of watching the luggage while J&H looked around first to find the right area within the cho (we didn't have a map of this area, and were stuck going on signs alone), then the building within the area.
At one point, the helpful proprietor of the local CABIN "tobako" shop came out to ask me questions. My answer of the day was "wakarimasen!" (I don't know! I don't understand!) Hiroko doesn't do English, boku wa nihongo wakaranai, so we don't say much to each other- I pick up little words from what she's saying. In the station, when she said "Denki ga nai," (There's no electricity/electric light), I got out my flashlight, simultaneously impressing her with my knowledge of Japanese and my preparedness. But that's the only complete sentence I understood that whole day. (Eventually, as I became more accustomed to the plain form, I would understand more of what she and Jimmy said to each other. As it turned out the brother/cousin never showed up at his own apartment. He went to another banquet out in the country somewhere. I still don't know if I was the monkey wrench in Hiroko's works to have a few days alone with Jimmy, away from Tokyo. But life is like that sometimes. Anyhow, here's some notes I was taking as the evening wore on.)
I guess there were really two features of that apartment that dominated my experience there. The first was the bathtub. As you may have figured out from my notes, this was not a pleasant part of the experience. This was winter. And of course the steps of bathing are
Of course, if you happen to be more than 6 feet tall, this probably isn't going to be all that comfortable. I washed my hair only one night at that apartment. Gawd, what a miserable experience. It would have helped if it hadn't been winter. But still - not my favorite part of the trip.
The other big feature, this time a pleasant one, was the kotatsu. Nowadays, this consists of a table with a heater underneath it and a quilt on top of it. Basically, everyone sits on the floor with their legs under the blanket. The heater keeps everyone warm and the blanket keeps too much of the heat from escaping. Back in ancient times, there was a different system because they didn't have electric heaters. Something about a sort of pit in the floor. And flames somewhere. I've never managed to get all the details straight. Anyhow, basically all the time we spent sitting around talking or watching TV in this place we spent sitting around the kotatsu.
One thing I think I figured out. We all know that the Japanese are not very wasteful of space or motion, right? We all know the space thing is because they've got none. But I think that the reason that they don't like wasted motion is because of unheated homes and kotatsus. Basically, any time you start to figure out something that you're going to have to do which involves getting out from under the kotatsu, you find yourself planning out every detail of this action so that you can get back under the cover as quickly as possible. If it's crossing the room to get a pen, you know exactly where you will step, when you'll extend your arm, the perfect way to pivot so that you can step and slide under the blanket all in one smooth motion. It may take several minutes of planning before you're ready to do something that involves going into the next room, but it's worth it.
Anyhow, the next day (after New Year's Eve) was of course New Year's. The day that everyone goes to temple to throw money at the backs of the heads of people who are closer to temple than they are. I mean, supposedly you're throwing coins at the temple, but Yumiko had warned me that things can get a little out of control. Like at this one very popular temple that she had visited, where they had needed police around to work crowd control. Where it was about as crowded as a Tokyo train.
The plan was that we would head into Osaka for some sightseeing. Except that people overslept. Not me. I was up in time to eat something and take a page of notes before other people woke up, at about 10:30. Except Hiroko had sort of gotten up without waking up. She really just wanted to spend a day lazing around the apartment. Jimmy and I, on the other hand, wanted to get out and about. So eventually the two of us were on the train to Osaka.
I was starting to get familiar with the main Osaka train station as we transferred trains to get from the suburban line to the Osaka loop. We got off at Osaka-koen (Osaka Park) station, and started the long trek to the castle, avoiding some humongous mud puddles along the way. I memorized the whole route including the train station name and the path through the park rather well, figuring that I would be back here with Hans, Dave, and Brendan eventually.
We made it to the outer ramparts of the castle. Crossed a couple of moats. Approached the ticket booth set at the base of the innermost defensive wall. There was a big sign. I caught the symbols for New Year's. There wasn't anyone in the booth, and people were just walking up to the castle without paying. "Is it free for New Year's?" I asked. "Yeah, but it's also closed." Whoops. So we walked up to the castle gates. We were able to see a well. Actually, it was kind of neat, standing in the inner campus of this castle, looking out over walls onto Osaka in all her frowsy splendor. But it wore thin rather quickly. We wandered over to the castle shrine where a family of native tourists dragged us over so that they could have their picture taken with a pair of huge gaijin.
By the end of the day, I would only have noticed 9 foreigners. And I ended up seeing a lot of people. Because Jimmy decided it would be neat to go to temple on New Year's. It wasn't that hard to find the temple. Just follow all the other people walking to temple.
There was someone on stage doing some kind of dance. There were a few people in fancy kimonos. There was a big crowd. A big, pushy, bustling crowd. In the temple were a whole mess of stands. Jimmy looked around for something to get Hiroko-a poular thing being a piece of paper w/difference between local dialect (Osaka-ben) and Tokyo-ben. No luck. And he wanted to try some cooked dough called kaasteru. Jimmy seemed kind of disappointed with me for not being similarly enthused, but I've had cooked dough from a variety of cultures before.
There were carny games and pachinko at the temple, which were well attended. I sure hope the Buddhist church isn't against gambling, because otherwise, they would have a bingo-style hypocrisy to explain. We threw some coins and got the hell out.
Osaka has a boat tour: "aqua-bus", but we'd missed the last one. Back to the castle gift shop where I'd bought postcards. There they had an Osaka-ben teacup.
At one food area by the castle, while Jimmy was getting a "Soft cream" I had my first kid say "Aro!" to me to which I replied with a "Konnichiwa!" and a smile. After that, conversation faltered somewhat while we grinned at each other like maniacs. I'm sure each of us would describe the other as friendly, but not too communicative.
Eventually, Jimmy and I stumbled into a train station, made our wayback to Osaka train station, then over to the other half of Osaka train station, transferred and back to Sooji-chi.
Hiroko made dinner. This was the night that I tried washing my hair. Yeeurgh.