Ange's birthday in Nara

We spent my birthday on Sunday Feb 18th in Nara, a city east of Osaka. It took us about an hour's train ride to get there. Nara is known for its temples and shrines, eight of which are listed on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites. We only managed to visit 3 of them - they are quite spread out.

The three we visited are located in a large park which even the locals use to do their daily exercise and walking their pets. There's not much grass in Japanese parks, but at least there were quite a few trees. A nice change from the bustling city of Osaka.
One thing that was lovely to see was deer freely roaming the park, Nara-koen. Apparently they're sacred and thought by Buddhists to represent messengers of light from god. They are so tame and friendly! The males have had their antlers shaved off though. I guess its for safety reasons. You could buy 'deer biscuits' to feed them too. Rich loved them...

We did lots of walking that day. But it was well worth the effort as the views were magnificent. The temples and pagodas were really great wonderful architectural pieces of art. They're all made of wood and without any nails! To think that some of these have been standing since around the 14th century. Some have been rebuilt since then.



We then headed back down towards the city. Its quite small and much quieter and more slowly paced than Osaka. There are quite a few little cosy bars and restaurants in the heart of the city. We found a noodle place for lunch. I had a dish called 'nabe' set meal, a noodle soup cooked (?) in a claypot with sides of mackerel sushi and tea. Yum! Rich had an udon set meal. In Japan, you can get set meals which consist of a main dish served with sides such as pickles, miso soup, salad, rice, and/or tea. Quite good value for money as you are definitely very full after one of these! They cost anywhere between $7-20.
After stuffing ourselves, we then went in search of a bar, and stumbled into 'Woo Koo Bar?'. And yes, even with the question mark. Not sure why. But this place was really cosy. The owner, nicknamed Obi-wan (for you Star Wars fans out there) was great and was quite excited to find out we were from Australia. His English was quite good. He told us that he'd lived in California for awhile and loves surfing. His bar had quite a wide range of beers and even had beef jerky!
Well, all in all, I really enjoyed my birthday. I really do miss the lovely parks of Melbourne.
PS. Oh, we had just enough money left to grab a couple of little birthday cakes on the way home...

Needle in a haystack

Here's our place in relation to Osaka:







Google map link here.

Snowing again today....

More photos from Namba and its shopping arcades....

You might recognize the famous 'running man' billboard.


This is a huge arcade called Shinsaibashi-suji. It's just endless shopping and eating!

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We awoke to more snowfall today. Its soo cold! And the apartment is definitely not so cosy at the moment. Probably up for more cold weather this week.
Yesterday, we headed to Umeda, another district filled with more departments stores and shopping arcades. We spent about 2 hours in this electronic store called Yodobashi. It has 5 floors, each selling cameras, PCs, mobile phones, and even clocks! Just imagine the brightness of 7-eleven and then enlarge that image by a 100 times. It's filled with noise from lights and store attendants shouting out specials, and also the large number of people that crowd that store on the weekend. We couldn't take a photo, so you'll just have to take our word for it!
Then at about 5pm we went up Sky Building, a massive twin tower complex (45 storeys), which looks like a modern version of the Arc de triomphe. We went all the way up to the observation deck at the top floor. This deck is built in between the two buildings and is accessed via a glassed-in escalator. Very cool, but not if you're prone to vertigo. We were just in time for the sunset. So beautiful!
Osaka just seems like an ocean of buildings. It really drove home the expanse of this city, and how different it is to Melbourne.

Yattai! (We did it!)

We arrived to a rather barmy 5C in Osaka on 12th February. The weather did not abate our excitement at starting a new life in this city. After what felt like endless weeks of partying, cleaning up Rocklea Rd, more partying and dining, and finally saying teary farewells (thank me for that!), we were definitely ready to begin a new phase in our lives.
Our new abode is in a quiet area about 5km out of central Osaka called Abeno-ku. We are surrounded by two train lines and two tram lines, convenience stores are bountiful as are vending machines selling beer, cigarettes and even batteries! So we will not starve, get thirsty or run out of energy.
The apartment is quite large, with three separate areas: lounge/TV room, bedroom with double bed and kitchen.

Bathroom and toilets are also separate. One downside is the toilet - it's a squat toilet! There's barely much room in the toilet itself, and squatting just makes it even more interesting. Really gives your knees and thighs a great workout! There is a seat you can place over the hole, but it does make it very difficult to manouevre around. Another downer is the lack of natural light. It's very dark in the apartment until about midday when the sun finally creeps in.
But aside from the darkness and the poo-hole, the rest is quite cosy.
We have spent the last three days getting to know Osaka - doing lots of shopping and going to the 24-hour supermarket. It's quite a novelty figuring out the products. Haven't had any misses here yet!
Apart from the very exciting sight of snow falling (!!), the first day was definitely the most frustrating, with lots of misses. As we were going to be here for quite awhile, we had to first get ourselves Alien Registration at a ward office (council) which our housing agent, Patrick, had pointed out when he picked us up from the train station the night we arrived. After 3 tedious trips back and forth to this ward office (2 for not bringing our new address and work details, and the required passport photos), we were finally told that we were in fact at the incorrect one. Luckily we were only 15 minutes walk from this place!
Then, the rest of that day was spent waiting for our luggage to arrive from the airport. Bad luck struck again as we missed this delivery by about half an hour, and wasted a whole night waiting.
Oh the wonders of communicating in Japan! It's definitely going to be an interesting time here.
By the way, we now look quite Japanese with our newly acquired jackets!