{"id":267,"date":"2011-03-17T17:30:03","date_gmt":"2011-03-17T23:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/?p=267"},"modified":"2011-03-17T17:41:35","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T23:41:35","slug":"day-trip-to-osaka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/2011\/03\/17\/day-trip-to-osaka\/","title":{"rendered":"day trip to Osaka"},"content":{"rendered":"

So this morning I woke up early, walked to the Nagoya station, and took the Shinkansen to Osaka. I’m trying to avoid spending money, but I’m taking paid vacation for this situation, so I’ll be damned if I sit in the apartment all day glued to the TV. <\/p>\n

I’ve always wanted to go to Osaka, so I departed at 7:30 AM, determined to do Osaka in a day.<\/p>\n

On the way there, I looked up attractions on my iPhone. I got there at 8:30 and went to Namba station area first. Most of the stores were still closed, so I thought I’d go to the Hozenji shrine first. <\/p>\n

I got lost ^^;; and finally found it around 10ish. There was this mysterious moss-covered statue in front of it, and I watched a few people do a ritual of throwing water over it. I did it, too! Kind of creepy-surreal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I walked down the Shin sai Bashi street shopping area, and tried a bunch of different foods. I tried ika yaki, which was a cross between takoyaki, a crepe, and okonomiyaki. Excellent. Then I tried Takosen, which is two tako yaki (balls of fried octopus) in between this squid flavored rice cracker with sauce. SO GOOD.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nA little kaiten zushi and Millet ginger flavored ice cream, and for breakfast, sakura mochi an sandwich. lol<\/p>\n

After that, I wanted to go to the Ukiyoe museum, but it was all the way back near Hozenji (I’d walked for like 30 minutes in the opposite direction). Instead, I walked to Osaka castle and spent time there!<\/p>\n

Then, I wanted to see Dotonburi bridge and got lost looking for it….OH I discovered something! If I hit “maps” on my iPhone, it would pinpoint my location and show me a map and I could find my way and the dot which was “me” would move!! Wow!!
\nDaniel: “Roxy, that’s GPS. That’s been around for a while…”
\nRoxy: “^^;; oh really?”<\/p>\n

So I saw the Osaka history museum, which looked really cool from the outside and even cooler inside, but I\u2019d reached my limit with museums and wanted to get going. I took a train and found it! And actually, I\u2019d passed it on the way, but didn\u2019t know THAT was Dotonbori. Lol<\/p>\n

I took The Bullet train back to Nagoya at 5, reached it at 6, and met my co-worker\/friend fellow Tokyo-ite Daniel! \ud83d\ude00 We had Denny\u2019s and chatted. I found out that out of the 7 co-workers at my SY school, exactly ONE is still there teaching. Everyone else is taking a leave of absence. Other teachers must be covering lessons. I\u2019m really curious which students feel alright enough to come in for lessons\u2026 I know a business can\u2019t just lay down. My company must be hurting because I\u2019m assuming almost all teachers are foreigners. <\/p>\n

So it was so good to see a familiar face.
\nI got back to the apartment and Kris was leaving. I really made fast friends with him\u2026I didn\u2019t want him to go. @_@ I\u2019m glad we met, and hopefully we can hang out in Tokyo again when everything settles down!<\/p>\n

A friend called me from Omori and said that trains are running, the radiation levels are low, so there\u2019s nothing to worry about. But he\u2019s glad I\u2019m enjoying myself, and am I coming back to Tokyo? Well\u2026 not yet, dude!<\/p>\n

Thank you for your well wishes\u2026but don\u2019t pray for me. Pray for the people up north, and for the plant workers fighting for the lives of everyone around the world. I\u2019m fine here so far.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m worried about my friends still in Tokyo.<\/p>\n

I bought a spatula for the guys because theirs is shredding, and one of them called me \u201cone bad-ass house guest.\u201d \ud83d\ude00 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So this morning I woke up early, walked to the Nagoya station, and took the Shinkansen to Osaka. I’m trying to avoid spending money, but I’m taking paid vacation for this situation, so I’ll be damned if I sit in the apartment all day glued to the TV. I’ve always wanted to go to Osaka,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-earth-quake-and-aftermath","category-10","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}