Wow! This past week seemed to have flown by for us! That's always a good thing, eh? On Thursday we decided to go and check out Osaka's "other" downtown. People have told us that Osaka has two main areas: Namba (which we have been to several times) and Umeda.
We took the subway to Umeda to go exploring. We heard that this area is where the "rich people" are from, but in my opinion I would have never known that had someone not told me. It is a very old part of the city and very, very industrial. Not only that, but there seems to be a large population of homeless people (we have rarely seen any homeless people since we have been here----it's very different from Vancouver). However, the stores in this area are very posh.
We decided to find two things that Umeda is famous for. First we went to the Umeda Sky Building. We saw it from the train station, but getting there proved to be quite a trek. Japan doesn't really have what we know as side-streets, so if you don't know where you are going it can take a while.
We finally made it to the sky building and wow…..architecturally speaking it is spectacular! Many offices reside in this building, but the neat thing is you can take a see through elevator to the rooftop corridor and take in a complete 360 degree view of Osaka. It was pretty cool and man oh man….is Osaka ever BIG! I think if we ever go back there again (maybe with some visitors from home J), I'd like to go just as the sun is setting.
After that we made our way to another hip spot in Umeda called Hep 5. This commercial and amusement complex contains over 160 shops and a large ferris wheel that takes you over 100 metres above ground. We did some window shopping and I have come to the conclusion that there are way too many sweet sneakers here! I think I am in trouble once I get a pay-cheque! Anyway, eventually we decided to check out the ferris wheel and once again the view was great.
When we got home we decided to go to Tins Hall (that gaijin friendly bar I spoke of in an earlier entry). Thursday nights are acoustic night, so we thought it would be nice to chill to some English tunes! Two brothers from Canada were on stage for the night and they were awesome! They played everything from Toad the Wet Sprocket to Jesse Cook and Coldplay to Led Zepplin. We drank a few beers and chatted it up with some of the locals. It was fun.
For some reason the next morning when my nephew called he knew the word "hungover" because he asked us if we were! Ha ha ha!!
The night before we met some other Nova teachers at Tins for a drink, but it was pretty dead, so we tried to get into a 280 yen place (everything—drinks and food is 280 yen). That place was packed so we went to another place called Air Bar. It was dead as well, but some people wanted to get something to eat, so we stayed for a bit. They had the movie 'The Butterfly Effect' playing on all of the T.V's, so we were all thrilled. It has been a while since we have watched something English on the tube. It was nice to hang out with everyone, but it turned out to be an early night as the majority of people had to work the next day. 
We think that we will be spending most of our Thursday nights at Tins Hall. The people are cool, the food is awesome, the beer is a little pricey, but that is o.k. because the staff is so much fun! Who knows, maybe Tins will become our very own Cheers!
September 16, 2006
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