Day 10 June 4 Friday

I think today we covered all the most important food groups: dairy, fruit, beef, veg, custard, curry, and mayonnaise.

custard: custard cream puffs for breakfast
Dairy: banana-flavored milk from a vending machine



Fruit: a crepe wrapped around a banana and ice cream, a banana and pineapple smoothie



Curry: for lunch



Beef: beef for dinner
Veg: garlic (on the beef)
Mayonnaise: a “gobo” salad, special pickled veg, swimming in sweet mayo sauce.

We were checked out by 0930 and walking north on the Philosophy Path, a temple walk just behind our hotel. First stop was the Silver Pavilion, so-called because its creator intended to cover it in silver. He never actually got around to it, so the temple was pretty ordinary. The best part was actually a tiny green frog that I spotted leaping through the waterfall, or maybe the toad sitting in a stump further along the path.




On our way out, some schoolteacher ran up to me shouting “Movie star! Movie star!” and ushered forward two teen boys, who slouched up to me for a very surly photo while I grinned embarrassed at the camera. I had a hard time finding D after that, but it turned out he had been waylaid too and was chatting away with another teacher while a swarm of shy schoolkids stared up at him and tried to ask questions about Australia.

We turned around and walked south, seeing more temples, joined on the path by the usual tired gaijin couples and huge groups of schoolkids...

I was getting a bit tired of temples myself.



...then we were off to Osaka. Bus, fifteen-minutes on the shinkansen, and subway culminated in another agonising walk/shuffle/drag with our bags through the blinding daylight to our hotel. We had now come full circle: this hotel was as tiny and as expensive as our first two nights in Tokyo. We showered and changed, bumping into each other every time we moved, and headed out into the nightlife--and boy, what nightlife!
We passed garish scrolling neon advertisements a whole city block long, huge video game arcades with pounding drum sets and air hockey tables and tinny bells and chimes and whistles and claw machines and endlessly shrieking music, pachinko parlors bellowing forth clouds of smoke and lined with intensely staring rows of gambling salarymen sitting oblivious in the crash and rattle and roll of ball bearings.



We met Darryl’s friend Soli for a late dinner, and enjoyed grilling beef on a hotplate at the table while still more smoke drifted in thick clouds below the ceiling, obscuring the lights. He told us about a cruel vending machine in the seedy district where the prize in the claw game was a declawed lobster, about the area called Amerika-muro where all the disaffected teens dress up in their best cosplay to shop at American stores, and about the giant crab figurine by the river—we had already glimpsed giant fish and crawfish down one of the bright wailing neon alleys.




We were in bed exhausted at 1230, waking up 4 or 5 times in the night as ambulances went by with sirens wailing and a mechanized voice chanting, I suppose, telling people to get out of the way.