Friday 29th January - Osaka

Today was the best day ever. We basically went to Osaka from Kyoto to go shopping and it was awesome.

We got up a bit late and walked to the station, taking a "local" train to Osaka which was about half an hour. At Osaka station, we got completely lost looking for a Tourist Information Centre where we could get a city map. Eventually we found it and got a map.

Our first item was to go to the head shop of Chrissy's favourite lolita brand "Victorian Maiden". The head shop is in an apartment building which seems totally weird. They seem to have another apartment in the building which I guess is their office where they run the business, so the shop is their special show room.

Anyway, the tricky thing was, Chrissy sent an email (in Japanese) saying when she would like to visit their shop but they didn't reply which was a bit upsetting. We decided to go the shop anyway but the directions on their website was in Japanese and really confusing. So we went out to the place on the map which was tricky in itself and followed the directionts to the highlighted building, but it didn't seem right. In fact we went up the correct apartment and it just seemed like a normal apartment. Then we went to about 3 other local apartment buildings looking for the right one. Eventually we decided to have a break and get a coffee. In the shop, I was looking at the map and asked the waitress if she knew where to go, she got her manager who knew about it and led me outside to point to where to go.

After our coffee we went out again and found it easily. We had been in the right place, but on the wrong side of the block. Their aparment letter box and intercom were labelled so we knew we were right. In hindsight, the google translated directions make sense, kind of. The "Coffee Museum" is the coffee shop we stopped at.

We had to call up the shop to work out how to use the intercom but eventually we got to the shop and a shop girl came down from the office to meet us, I think she knew we were coming even though she hadn't replied to the email. Christina will tell all about her adventure in trying on clothes (even I had a pretty nice time).

Christina:

I had attempted to do my hair nicely to visit Victorian Maiden, and I actually did a pretty good job, but what started as an up-do ended up as a side-down-do. Slippery hair?

At the VM shop, there was a small ante-chamber where there was a mannequin and some bits and brochures. The main room had several racks of clothes, two small tables and a display cabinet with beautiful hair things and jewellery and ornaments, a fitting room, and the soundtrack was Easy Piano Duets (a book I know well). Frilly parasols adorned every other place. Everything was old-fashioned and pretty. The shop girl was extremely cute and helpful, although she couldn't speak a word of English. I tried on lots of clothes, many were too big for me. Here is a list of all the clothes I tried on:

Noble Stripe Pintuck Blouse in both brown and blue. It fit like a glove. I didn't like the brown so much, but it was hard to find something nice that went with the blue one. It's made of light semi-silky fabric which is slightly striped.
Tulip Garden Scallops Skirt in the dusky colour. This skirt fit well because it had lacing at the back. It is lined and the fabric feels delightful. I liked this skirt.
Charlotte Mermaid Skirt in black (they didn't seem to have the cream). I really loved this on the website, but in real life it didn't fit me at all. I don't get it, it just looked completely wrong. Too big for me, and so it sat too low on my waist, and so it ruined the hipline.
Christina Dress in black. Everyone knows how much I love this one. The girl got it out for me especially because she realised that it is NAMED AFTER ME. I had high hopes, but it was too big. It should be called the Slightly Bigger Than Christina Dress. The collar was cool though, I would have liked another like that.
Ribbon Mielche Dress in red flowery. It was pretty but a bit overwhelming and too big for me.
Lady Check Mermaid Dress in black and white tartan. It was a totally weird fit. Looked cool on the website!
Reginental Stripe Frill Dress in light grey. This was really beautiful. It fits well and has a nice shape. The fabric is beautiful. I can imagine myself wearing this one to work!
Dorothy Dress in pink. What a lovely dress! It fit well and suited me, and had the look of a collar at the top - all pintucks and lace edgings. Super lovely.
Adele Bustier Dress in black patterned. This was really nice, I tried it on twice actually, once with my blouse and once with the VM blouse. It was really pretty and fit perfectly.

I got two items. Can you guess which ones? Guess first and then read. Go on.

I spent a good hour and a half in the shop, because I wanted to be sure about my purchases. When I bought them, the girl also put two postcards and a lovely VM phone strap in the bag too. She told me they were presents and we had a small conversation. Charles told me later that she'd been writing me a postcard every time I was in the changeroom (often) using a little translator which beeped (I had been wondering about the beeping) and she'd asked him which colour phone strap I'd prefer. Then Charles took a photo of her and I together in the part of the shop where photography was allowed. She told me I was cute! The cutest girl in Japan told me I'm cute! I didn't stop smiling all day.

(I bought the pintuck blouse in blue, and the tulip garden skirt in dusky. They go well together and I'm so happy with them!)

Back to Charles:

After VM we realised we actually had no plan about what to do. We looked in our city guide from the information booth and decided to go to the south shopping part of the city which is imaginatively named Minami (south). We had been here last year for a little bit but still thought we could find something new. We took a JR train on the Osaka loop line for a while and then remembered we were hungry. As the train pulled into a station, Christina spotted a "Lotteria" burger place on the platform and we jumped of the train and right into the shop.

We hadn't tried Lotteria yet and the food was not super great, but passable given how hungry we are. Burger places in Japan have an "American" feel and definately play themselves up as novelties. They usually have jazz over the speakers which is nice and are filled with people who buy some chips or a coffee and then sit down to sleep/study/chat etc. We're kind of sick of cheap Japanese food and the burgers are usually good quality.

After Lotteria we got back on another train and worked our way to Namba station with one change to a different line (? Mysteriously). Namba has a huge underground mall "Namba Walk" which we got lost in for a little while. Actually I thought we were in a DIFFERENT underground mall called "Crysta" but all underground malls look the same and I was completely wrong. Our plan was to walk through cool places and find a shop we had been to before called "Aranzi Aronzo" which sells cute things. We escaped Namba Walk and ended up on Shinsaibashi street which was awesome because it is probably the most fun street in the world. Mum and Dad - you've seen Teramachi covered arcades, but Osaka is king of covered arcades. Shinsaibashi is sooo long and it has others going in each directions as far as you can see. It is madness.

We stopped for a coffee at Starbucks and people watched for a while, Osaka people have a distinct and rad style compared to Tokyo and Kyoto. After coffee we walked out to the river which bisects Minami and features awesome lighted signs and lots of suspended giant crabs. I got to see the big "Glico Man" sign which is a famous landmark of the area. Everybody else on the bridge was taking photos of it as well. Also a guy was beatboxing by himself and was good.

We walked through the arcades for a while and I decided that I wanted to find a musical instrument store to buy my little Korg controlled in BLACK. We found one small one but it was really only a Yamaha shop. Christina and I were discussing how hard it is to find a musical instrument shop when we suddenly saw an awesome shop right in front of us. I went in and asked for what I wanted and got it. Yay. Also, Japan wants me to buy a Yamaha Tenori-On. Even Christina likes them. I would but they're kind of a Toy with a capital T, and also about $800. A Korg Wavedrum is a possibility as well, but I don't think I will buy one.

We also went to Loft which was fun and then hightailed it to Aranzi Aronzo, seeing all kinds of fun shops on the way. Osaka is full of cool bikes.

In the end, Aranzi Aronzo was not that good, but we bought some little postcards we liked. We plotted our route home to a subway station and walked back down a different street, aiming to get a small park where kids gather to have fun. On the way, *I* saw a lolita shop and Chrissy stopped to look while I went to an awesome book shop called Village Vanguard after the New York jazz club. Village Vanguard is a self-proclaimed "Exciting Life Book Store" and sells CDs, novelties, fashion accessories and magazines. It's madness in a Village Vanguard, they feature CDs throughout the shop with each one in it's own CD player playing all at once. The books are organised by kind of genre with little enclaves of particular interests (fetishes?). My interest was piqued by a corner of books about industrial architecture/abandoned buildings/bizarre places featuring my favourite Japanese magazine "Wonder Japan" and also picture books about dams, floodgates, expressway junctions photographed at night, etc. Chrissy got lost in a lolita fashion section. This particular store was giant and we had to leave because it was too overwhelming. Wow.

We decided to break for dinner since Chrissy saw a "Freshness Burger" which is her favourite burger chain. On finishing our burgers, we realised it was 9 oclock and would have to start going home. We quickly found a subway station and zipped back to Shin-Osaka hoping to get a shinkansen back to Kyoto. We got the last Hikari at 9:33. The ticket lady was hesitant to give us tickets since it was 9:27 but she underestimated our shinkansen catching abilities and we were fine. I think it the last one because there was some damage to the line further up from Kyoto as illustrated on a little sign at Osaka. At Kyoto their was a huge crowd of people at the Shinkansen gates who were all stuck because of it and were being dealt with somehow. We squeezed through to escape unscathed.

Finally we walked home from Kyoto station dodging parties of good-tempered business people out for their Friday night drinks.