And Now for Something Completely Different

This coming weekend Hania's been invited to go kayaking down the Shimanto-gawa (gawa=river), and, unfortunately, I haven't. Whatever, instead of whining about it, I decided to go and see a friend of mine up in Osaka. Casey's been a good friend of mine as long as I can remember, and just by chance, he moved to Japan only a few days after I arrived to teach english for a year. I told him I would be coming up to see him, and now was as good a chance as ever. There was one problem though, and that's that the return train ticket cost nearly $250. I wasn't going to let that get me down though either, so I decided to hitchhike the 200 miles or so up to the big city. Hania dropped me off in Uwa early yesterday morning, and four friendly drivers and 9 hours later, I was in Osaka. Though it was my first go at hitchhiking, everything went smoothly and I'd do it again if I had to. Having been to Tokyo, I thought I knew vaguely what kind of a city this would be, and while right in some ways, I was unprepared for how loud and crazy the place seemed when compared to the Japanese capital. Here's a few pics I took today, the first from Osaka's electronics district, Den-Den town, and the second from the famous Dotomburi-gawa. I'll be here for a week now, and am excited to be spending a bit of time away from the sleepy town of Mikame.