Osaka Beatbox and the Great Okayama sleep in

Man I gotta get this tale a’ woven, the work-a-day world of suits and ceremony is starting to make me forget my vacation already. I’m sure it’ll all come back to me for the storytelling festival that is the Toyama-ken weekend.

Ok so in Osaka after going around the loop expressway several times, we found our hotel…and it had roller coaster. Nah… just kidding we stayed at the annex to the annex of the roller coaster hotel. The place itself was pretty mundane. Parking the car wasn’t.

So the hotel fella’ gave us a map that at first glace looked pretty easy to follow. Go under the tracks and turn left make a right, park the car, no problem. He failed to mention that we would have to go through Crackdown (kuraku taun) Osaka. Seriously when we crossed those tracks it was like walking into City of God; this place needed a Shinto-class cleansing. At about 10:30 at night, grimy homeless Japanese people (who didn’t look Japanese) were constructing cardboard forts. It was pretty bad. We ended up getting a little lost and had to turn around. As we did, we found ourselves right behind a parked small car full of people. Jake and I both recognized instantly that a drug deal was going down. So we free-based with them and had some peyote and a generally good time. According to the Hells Angels rulebook, because they gave us drugs, we let them have first go with our women. Then we parked the car.

Actually Osaka was really fun, we caught a good beat box show (Sara drunkenly thought it was orgasmic, but it was just reallly good) where I got a bit too drunk and waxed sentimental, Jake hit on girls, guys hit on Francie, and Sara just freebased a bit more.

Hangover and sleepy, we woke up late and hit up the 14th day of the Osaka Sumo Tournament. Seeing Sumo live is kinda hard to describe (especially with the sake flowing). It’s very ritualistic and formal, but it’s fucking amazing. The crowd is polite and somewhat muted unless the fight lasts for a while then they get really into it.. The final bout we saw was between the Mongolian yokozuna Asashoryu and Kotuoshu and was fairly anticlimactic… and I was pretty drunk. That night was a full on karaoke/genki drink (here to referred to as gummy berry juice) blowout that to be honest I don’t really remember too well. But it was pretty damn sweet.

After Osaka we cruised into the lazy little city of Okayama, had a pleasant bento and casually strolled around the town and castle grounds, later had a good South East Asian meal, and promptly fell asleep for about 14 hours.

In the morning we went to the 3rd most important garden in Japan, it was lovely, I believe we enjoyed, but I'll have to check that... But this was no time for idily hoofing like a goof, so we loaded up our trusty steed and headed south up and over the Honshu-Kyushu bridge.

Next up:

A Beer at the Pier-side Fukaoka Snowboard Park and Grovin' like Gen. Grant in Nagasaki.