poor planning
apologies for being so far behind on the blog posts. i am correcting that now.
there are very few photos of today for a couple reasons.
i booked the airbnb in osaka from april 1 - 8. I originally planned to take some trains back in the direction of tokyo, to hakone, to stay at a fancy ryokan there for one night, and then move on to hiroshima the following day. i realized a couple weeks before the trip it was a dumb plan and added a ton of transit and cost to the trip. i’d spend like half the day traveling and then have a couple hours to spend in hakone, a place i have already been on this trip. i’d probably have taken a nice bath and had a real authentic japan experience, but it would have been at the cost of like half or three quarters of a day.
so i decided before the trip to cancel that hakone day and instead make the last 2 nights of my stay be in an onsen town called beppu. this will end up much more memorable, as i will spend the last 2 days of my trip in a maximum relaxation state. however, this caused a problem: i have to find a place to stay on april 8th, as my checkin in hiroshima was on april 9.
with hindsight i should have just gone to hiroshima a day earlier. but i spent a long time over the past few weeks debating what to do with this day. i thought about getting a place in the countryside, and had a few bookmarked that look amazing. but the issue with the hakone night would have been true there too, as going to the countryside tends to abandon the ultra fast shinkansen lines that let you get places fast. most of the places i had bookmarked were 5-8 hour trips just to get there, and then basically the same 5-8 hour trip back to get to the shinkansen line to continue onward to hiroshima the following day. it would make no sense to do this for only one night. lesson learned.
the airbnb i was in could not be extended one more night, so i ended up booking a different place in osaka less than a mile away from where i was.
this brings us to issue 2 of the day. checkout at the place i started was 11:00 am. check-in at the place i was headed was 4:00 pm. so i have to kill 5 hours while carrying everything i brought with me on the trip.
thankfully, the airbnb owner where i was from april 1 - 8 was kind enough to offer a luggage storage service where i could lock my suitcase to a wall for a few hours. but i still had the backpack, which i estimate is 50 or 60 pounds when fully packed with all the stuff i brought. and the camera was packed up in it. i didn’t get it out until about halfway through my 5 hours of time killing, because most of what i was doing had “no cameras allowed” signs.
so on to what i was doing during this time:
hanafuda hunting
so i’ve mentioned this before, but i collect weird earrings. there are two words for earrings in japanese. ピアス (piasu, aka pierce) refers to actual earrings. but you can also say イヤリング (iyaringu aka earring), and i didn’t realize this until writing this blog post, but for some strange reason, イヤリング (iyaringu) specifically refers to clip-on earrings. no idea why.
anyway, today i was hunting for a very specific pair of ピアス. there is a very very very very popular anime series called 鬼滅の刃 (kimetsu no yaiba) in japanese, or demon slayer in english. this is one i have seen and quite like. the main character of this series, tanjiro, wears some very unique looking earrings:
i wanted a pair of them for myself, but also wanted a second pair for a friend who asked me to look for them while i am here.
the reason i brought up the different name in japanese vs english earlier instead of just saying “demon slayer” is because if i asked someone in a japanese store if they have demon slayer earrings, they won’t have any idea what i am talking about. so i had to ask for kimetsu no yaiba earrings. kimetsu no yaiba doesn’t even translate to demon slayer, it means blade of demon destruction. so just google translating demon slayer wouldn’t get me what i needed.
osaka has a street not far from where i was that has a ton of anime merchandise stores. i went into 20 or 25 different stores looking for these damn things and did not find them. i would have taken photos, but they were pretty much all no photography allowed zones.
some of the stores sold brand new merch, but the japanese anime merchandise market is huge, to the point where there are just as many stores that buy and sell pre-owned stuff. usually the stores with pre-owned stuff is specifically figurines, but not always. and those stores that deal with figurines usually also have other stuff. so i went into a couple dozen stores looking for stuff. i asked people in a bunch of them if they had these earrings, and i usually got a weirdly hesitant no right away.
i learned later on that there is a reason these are hard to find. after complaining to a friend about how hard to find they are, he told me i likely won’t find them anywhere in-person for a good reason.
turns out the iconography on them looks a lot like the flag of the imperial japanese army:
the resemblance caused quite a controversy, especially in other asian countries that were traumatized japan’s behavior in world war 2.
as a result, in some countries (notably not the united states, which is why i had no idea about this), the design of his earrings was changed:
so my friend supposes that the reason i can’t find these earrings anywhere, even in stores with giant 10 foot by 30 foot walls of demon slayer merchandise, is because of this controversy. honestly, understandable. i probably wouldn’t want to sell axis power iconography in my cartoon store either.
that unsuccessful mission was about 4 of the 5 hours i had to kill.
aimless wandering
this was beginning to seriously tire me out, because i was doing this with 50 or 60 pounds strapped to my back. i walked around the side streets in this area a bit, and got a couple photos, but nothing too special.
all in all, kind of a wasted day. i got some good exercise though!
airbnb 2
once i finally checked into my airbnb, i was surprised at how nice it was.
it even had a second room with a tatami mat! just to remind me that i am indeed in japan. and i will note that this bed was one of the most comfortable beds i have ever slept on. less comfortable than the one i have at home, but not by much.
only two other things of note happened today.
first, i tried japanese kfc. it is weirdly popular here, especially on christmas. it is a legitimate japanese tradition to go to kfc on christmas. turns out one guy in 1974, the owner of the first kfc in japan, wanted to drum up sales, so he created a slogan - ケンタッキーはクリスマス！(kentakkii wa kurisumasu!, or “kentucky is christmas!” and dressed a statue of colonel sanders in a santa outfit. for some reason this really stuck, and this one marketing campaign for one store somehow became enshrined in japanese tradition.
i had to know if it was the same not very good chicken that i am used to back home. i was starving, having not eaten anything all day, so i forgot to even get photos of it. i can say it was much much better than american kfc. i mean, it is still just fried chicken. it isn’t mind blowing. but i actively avoid kfc in america because i don’t think it is very good. this was good chicken. not mind blowing, not legendary, just good chicken. and it was kind of a welcome thing, because as much as i love the japanese diet, some greasy unhealthy chicken was a nice change of pace. it actually got me wondering if the chicken was actually better than american kfc, or if i just havent had greasy unhealthy food in a while.
the second thing of note was that i think the building next door got broken into.
from around 11:30 pm to 1:00 am, i got to hear this noise:
kind of annoying, but it wasn’t that bad. it stopped going off shortly before i went to bed anyway.
