Hey everyone, how goes your Golden Week? For those not in the know, in Japan the end of April/start of May is called Golden Week because several national holidays happen in a 1 week period, giving people a bunch of time off, and everyone hops on planes, jumps on trains and packs into cars to get the hell out of wherever they live and head somewhere else.
This GW I decided to hop on the Shinkansen and head to Osaka, gourmet capitol of Japan. The food was fantastic, I got to see a lot of cool sites I've never seen before, and got to meet several truly interesting people.
The top pic is of a little cafe right outside a station I hopped off at on the way back to Osaka proper after hiking around a small fishing village.
The next pic is of a shopping arcade near Dotonbori (best place to go in the city for real Osakan dining and night entertainment, I recommend Okonomiyaki at Chibo). I like this pic because of the nice look on the guy's face. Gives me a flashback to a trip I took to Chicago one time...
Anyway, I'll post more about Osaka, but for now let me tell you this one little thing that happened to me that I don't think would ever happen in the Tokyo area, and kind of sums up the attitude of a lot of the nice people I met while I was there.
I was hot and tired after walking around the Osaka harbor area and was waiting for an elevator, and an old woman struck up a conversation with me. We talked about the weather, the beautiful scenery and the surprising lack of crowds. After a bit she commented on my camera I had hanging around my neck and grabbed it to see what it was.
She was friendly, but didn't pry at all - she never asked where I was from or what I was doing in Osaka/Japan. We just talked. Like two normal people enjoying their day and killing time in line.
Of course a few minutes later we realized neither one of us had pushed the call button for the elevator. Oops. Neither one of us was in a hurry, though.
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