I Tre Italiani!!

Konnichiwa everybody!! As expected I got a bit overwhelmed with my experience here in the past week. Now I will attempt to sum it all up for you in this blog. Last weekend we had a visitor from Nagoya. He is an Italian native living and working in Japan as an Italian/Spanish translator. We joined forces over the weekend and created some remarkable memories together.

Friday night Diego arrived and suddenly there was an flavorful mix of spoken Italian, English, Japanese and American Sign Language stirring up the evening. As our Italian trio made our way into Namba, a colorful and lively neighborhood of Osaka, we got started at an international bar where our tasty mix of communication was cheerfully welcomed by some Japanese locals eager to practice their English.

A few drinks and some friendly conversation seemed to be the right combination for recruiting some new members to our trio. With our joined forces we took the city by storm and strolled over to one of the many night clubs that litter the main drag of Namba. We suddenly found ourselves swimming in sea of Japanese clubbers, a sharp contrast to the previous environment. We bounced around the club singing along to some familiar American dance hits and also got a taste of some Japanese favorites. If being the only “Gaijin” in on the dance floor didn’t make us stand out enough, our rowdy entourage definitely made our presence known with some carefully choreographed and creative dance moves. As the lights turned on and club staff began escorting waves of sweaty belligerent patrons into daylight, we ended the night in championship fashion.

A few hours of sleep was all we needed to recharge our batteries for a new day of Eastern adventures. Brushing off the dust from the previous night, we started the day with a bike tour of Osaka by day with our destination set on Suma beach for some sunshine and sea salt. One thing you’ll notice about Osaka is the incredible amount of bikes parked along every avenue of the city.

Osaka has a fantastic public transportation system complete with subways, busses, and commuter trains but it seems the day to day locals fancy the bicycle as their main means of transportation. We were fortunately able to arrange bikes for the three of us and under the local experience of Emilio, we enjoyed a tour of the city by bike on the way to the main train station.We decided to make a quick stop for lunch, eventually deciding on Mexican cuisine, of all things, to be the suitable dining option.The restaurant made for an interesting experience with laughable English menu translations and a colorful environment fiilled Mexican themed paraphernalia.

The day was passing quickly so we picked up the pace by bike and took to the streets. Emilio never fails to make the simplest experiences interesting for us and onlookers passing by.

We got to the beach and I was immediately heartbroken with the overwhelming amount of trash littered on the beach. Even more heartbreaking was dodging some of the same debris in my brief dip in the water. This was somewhat confusing given the actual city is remarkably clean. I will have to do a bit more research to find out why the local beach isn’t treated with the same regard. Nevertheless the people at the beach provided some interesting scenery.

Aside from the beach itself, after sun sets there was a small cluster of beach-side bars and clubs that we deciede to browse before making our way back. We were warmly greeted by the locals who seemed to had already enjoyed the watering holes long before we had arrived.

A beer later we hopped back on the train and made a quick detour in Kobe, a nearby city.

Some of you might recognize the name from it’s brand of beef touted among steak connoisseurs back home. Although Kobe is known for it’s beef we preferred to dine at Sakanaya restaurant. I guess the only comparison back home would be one of those diners that have a bit of everything. When I say everything I mean it. Some stand out dishes was horse sashimi...

and, sorry to say this but, whale sashimi...

I want to express even more remorse for actually eating the whale. I guess when you take the politics out of the equation and bring yourself to the present moment in a different culture with different values you have to make a choice whether to challenge your values or abide by them. Obviously since the evidence is clearly on my table you can figure out what my decision was.

Moving past that internal conflict I was faced with yet again another moral dilemma when our sashimi platter arrived at the table. A caution to my viewers…if you are in any way offended by animal cruelty or mistreatment...

DO NOT WATCH THIS NEXT VIDEO.

Well the evening’s dining choices in Kobe was undoubtbly an experience that will be forever etched in my memory. However there was little time for reflection as we had the rest of the Saturday evening calling for the Italian trio back in Osaka. We wasted little time getting back to our bikes waiting to bring us back to our base station to wash off the grit from “trash beach” and punch through another championship outing in the city.

Being a “Gaijin” local in Osaka brings together a tight knit community of foreigners. After washing up, we went to another local club that hosted an event where I was introduced to this community. After meeting a healthy line up of Emilio’s friends I recall the word “family” often used when being welcomed to Osaka.

The English-speaking crowd was a welcomed comfort to say the least, but it was the warm energy from this international crew that made me feel the most at home.Once again we ended the night well after sunrise smiling as we rode home on a serene Sunday morning.

That is the summary of my first weekend in Osaka. As I am now preparing for another weekend here, I will again say to all of you to be patient for my next blog. In my next entry I will share my tour of Kyoto loaded with fantastic sights and experiences that I am eager to share with all of you.

For my “non-signing” viewers, I apologize for the lack of captions on the video segments. In thinking about how I wanted to reach both my audiences, I had initially intended to do all of my narratives in sign language and caption them. However, as my video collection grew throughout the week this proved to be a daunting task. I hope that you are still able to enjoy viewing them and feel free comment or question anything you see in my blog and I will do my best to fill in the gaps. With that said I’m off to get back to living…