davidNeedham

I left Japan and landed in Seattle around 10am. The flight went really well for the most part. I sat next to a really attractive woman about my age that was obviously not Japanese, but spoke it really well. Unfortunately, we didn't really talk. :-p Oh well. I watched two movies on the way: The Chronicals of Narnia (2): Prince Caspian and 21 (the movie about the MIT student who learned to count cards in blackjack). After that I slept for a little while.

Henry told me about a problem I was having with my website, so I looked into it and realized that the files for my site were out of date. I updated in the quickest, least dependable way, and I lost some of my files. All of my blog posts and pictures are there, but my theme and other website functions are missing. I'll be able to restore everything when I get back home to Peoria, but until then the site will look like this.

I really didn't do much after Osaka, so I'm going to combine all of the days into one post.

After I checked out of the capsule hotel, I headed to Shin-Osaka train station and took the shinkansen (bullet train) to Tokyo. I played on my Nintendo DS the whole time, so it seemed like it went pretty quickly. I tried calling Chris from Tokyo to let him know that I was coming, but there was no answer on his phone, so I kept going on my way.

Today started out pretty good. I woke up at the Ramada and ate some onigiri and coffee milk I bought the night before. I checked out and asked them to hold my bags for me so I didn't have to haul my suitcase and huge backpack to Universal Studios.

Universal is an amusement park sort of like Disney. They have their own JR train line, and fortunately my pass worked to get there for free.

Today started out alright. I woke up at the hostel and headed downstairs to check out my room. I checked out and asked if they could hold on to my bags for me so I wouldn't have to haul them around until 2 when I check in at the Ramada. They said it was fine and put them in their back office.

I got up today and planned what I was going to be doing for the rest of my time in Osaka using the map, plan list of places I wanted to go, and the awesome travel book I got from Matthew and Alice for my birthday.

I found out that I could get a 2 day pass with free (or discounted) admission to a huge number of Osaka's biggest tourist locations, so I jumped at that and saved a lot of money. That included unlimited subway and bus travel for those two days, so it was really good deal.

NHK is a Japanese station sort of like PBS. Occasionally they have programs that teach English to the kids. The follow snippet is from one of those shows. It made me very happy. I really like the guitar riff in the middle. :-)

For those of you that are web savvy, the part about calling your friend with a banana, deserves an added lyric after that stating that you can in fact CAN use a banana if it is a banana phone. XD

I got up early and caught the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Osaka. It didn't take long, because Osaka isn't very far away. Once I got to Osaka station, I discovered that it's very hard to get around. There are a lot of pillars throughout the various rooms in the station. The pillars made it really hard to see where to go and it made it even harder to get around the 50,000 people trying to find their way.

Happy Birthday to me! ^_^

This morning, Chris, Dan, and I had our last breakfast together. After breakfast, they took off to the Tokyo airport so that Dan could fly back to Peoria. The hotel was so nice (and cheap) that I decided to stay another day there in a single room.

I'm spending today at the Arashiyama Monkey Park! Arashiyama is a small suburb just outside/inside of Kyoto, just beside the Hozu river. The Monkey Park itself sits atop Mt. Arashiyama. Once I got there, I first had to cross the "historic" Togetsukyo bridge which spans the Hozu River.

I just got back to Chris's from Osaka and I'm basically just being lazy to relax today. I'll probably try to be productive and catch up on my blog tomorrow or maybe tonight. I wasn't able to post at the capsule hotel and by the time I got to the Ramada the day before, I was too tired to post anything. But fortunately I found a way to speed up my image upload process, so things should go a little faster now, I hope.