Just one more.

These are the three kittens of the feral cat family living on my patio. There are two adults as well, though only one is probably related to the kittens. The kittens have slightly mucked-up looking faces, which you can’t see in the picture, but they are still really adorable.

I’m not sure exactly what to do with them. They definitely aren’t bothering me since I love cats more than anything, and as far as I know they aren’t bothering the neighbors so it should be cool for now if they decide to stick around. A teacher at the school I was working at today recommended I feed them so they stick around and take out the various types of vermin that could potentially get into my apartment (being on the ground floor is not the best, so I’ve learned). I see potential problems arising from adopting, you know, an entire feral cat family, but hey. Yeah.

Osaka-jo, feral cats

Since my last update I’ve been thrown full force into my new job, so I apologize for not writing sooner. Quickly:

On Monday I went to Osaka-jo with Donna. It was pretty neat. I uploaded some pictures here.

Wednesday I attended a free Japanese class run by some sort of community continual learning center in Umeda. It’s a little overwhelming and I had no idea what was happening, but it seems like it might be a good way to meet the non-English speaking international community as well as practice and build confidence in speaking ability. We’ll see.

There is a feral cat family living around my building, and it seems like they’ve chosen my little patio as their home base. For the time being.

I know, right?

First trip to Kyoto

So as it turns out, I will be in Kyoto at least every Wednesday starting this week through March because of work, but I still wanted to give it a visit beforehand, so on Monday I went with Donna (whom I just spent the last couple of weeks job training with) to Kyoto. It was a relatively easy train ride, a straight shot on the Hankyuu line heading out of my home station We were there in maybe a half hour or 40 minutes. Upon arrival we stopped at a Coffee shop and had Coffee and toast for breakfast. I ordered bean paste to put on mine. Tasty! Toast is a pretty serious affair in Japan, it seems. My bread was at least an inch thick!

After that we headed towards Yasaka Jinja. Saw that, and wandered around the surrounding area, finding various shrines, parks, and even a cemetery. On our way back towards the Yasaka Jinja entrance, we met up with Chris, another member from our training group. We got some Taiyaki (bean paste and custard filled fish shaped-pastries) from a street vendor and made our way towards Kiyomizu-dera.

Kiyomizu-dera is up in the hills on the eastern side of Kyoto and was a little bit of a walk, but it was gorgeous. The weather was unfavorable that day: overcast, windy and raining on and off, so after being up on a mountain side for an hour or so we were feeling pretty cold and beaten so we stopped at a little restaurant and had Udon and hot sake. It wasn’t the best of quality, but it warmed us thoroughly.

From Kiyomizu-dera we walked around through some touristy shops and had dinner at a silly little place that served parfaits (don’t be fooled: in Japan, parfait = sundae) and omurice (rice omelets) and headed home. Kyoto is a city that takes weeks to explore, but the Monday was a nice preview. I’m excited to be able to head back there periodically and explore.

I uploaded a photo album from the trip on my facebook, so if you’d like to see more photos you can check them out here.

Sorry if this post was a bit lame, my exploration-type posts will hopefully get a little more epic once I get a better image editing/optimizing program on my Mac. iPhoto and Preview don’t really do it for me. My photos being exported there or uploaded to various places look a bit ugly to me. Blah! I miss Photoshop!

Kaji Hideki’s Love is All.

I’ve been a fan of Kaji Hideki for a while now, and one of the things I was exited about when I got to Japan was that he would be releasing a new album just two weeks after arriving in Osaka (October 21st, happy birthday mom!). The album, Strawberries and Cream, was the first non-practical thing I bought here (this just in: beer is practical). The music video (or, PV, in Japanese terms) for ラブ・イズ・オール (Love is All) was released just the other the day. It’s one of my favorite tracks on the new album so I was pretty excited to see it.

Kaji is a self professed Swede-o-phile and his cheery brand of pop pretty accurately portrays this. He’s been around since the mid 90s and he’s in his 40s now, but his music still retains the same child-like playfulness it did in his early days. He’s doing an Acoustic show here in Osaka on the 21st of November at Club Karma. It doesn’t start until late but I have the next day off, so if I can figure out how to buy tickets I would really like to go. He’s one of my favorites and definitely near the top of my unofficial Bands/Artists to see while I’m in Japan list, so I’ll do my best!

And just for the sake of fun, here’s a link to Kaji’s PV Passion Fruits. It was the single track off of his EP Blue Boys Don’t Cry released last May, but it was also featured on Strawberries and Cream, so there you go. Sad/funny story, but Kaji made the news a bit when they were filming this in Sweden. During a filming break, Kaji was mugged and beaten by some Swedish hoodlums, made much more notable by the fact he was wearing the Pineapple suit.

I am actually in Japan. I think.

Hello everyone! I’ve been in Osaka for close to three weeks now. I’d give a drawn out response about why it’s taken me this long to write an entry, but no thank you. It’s all whiny and related to work anyway and no one wants to hear that. So instead, three things I am enjoying about Japan:

TRAINS
The public transportation here is awesome. You can get pretty much anywhere without a car. But even cooler than the effectiveness of the public transportation is the mad train-riding skills you learn from living here. As in, how to stand in the middle of a crowded train and not fall on someone no matter how badly the train lurches, even without anything to hold onto. I was quite apprehensive of this when learning how to use the trains here, but it’s a skill mastered in only a few days. I’ve never felt more balanced in my life!

CONVENIENCE STORES
Unlike the 7-11 and AM/PMs in the States, convenience stores here are awesome. They’re everywhere. I’ve got one just around the corner, really. Like those where I’m from, you can buy beer and junkfood, but unlike them they also carry a range of food and lunches with actual nutrient. Bentos (boxed lunches) abound, and the onigiri ( seaweed wraped rice balls with various types of filling) are a cheap, filling, and healthy-ish snack. They are like crack though. I can’t ever seem to get enough of them. At some stores, they will sell undershirts and underwear and other such essentials for Business men who missed the last train but still have to get to work the next morthing. They also sell a fair amount of magazines, and it’s not uncommon to see everyone from business men to teenagers hanging out by the racks reading girly mags or the the latest edition of their favorite weekly/monthly manga (japanese comics) anthology. You can always tell when the new Jump is out, as the convenience stores are pretty busy, and you’ll also see a fair amount of adult males in suits reading it on the train.

SHOPPING ARCADES
Shopping Arcades are covered streets that normally go on for a couple of blocks that contain tons and tons of little shops. The one near my home is called Friendly Street and carries everything from food, clothes stores, bag/hat shops, pharmacies, 100yen stores, tobacco stands and restaurants/take out food. There’s tons of small business and it’s really a lot of fun. There’s a little shop on Friendly Street that sells only eggs. Eggs! I don’t know how they stay in business, but there’s something wonderful about the fact they do. As you get into more central areas of Osaka, you’ll find Shopping Arcades like Shinsaibashi that have more technology, fashion, and swanky/tacky cafes. They don’t have the same charm as the neighborhood shopping arcade, but they can still be a lot of fun to explore.

This is a totally underwhelming first entry, I know, and I probably won’t update again for a while, so I’m sorry. But hey hey hey. You know.

See ya!

I’m off, guys!

I’d have a picture of my luggage but you know yeah no.