Glory, Glory I’Hava’Phone’a or An End of Week Trip to The Big City

3 Trains. 3 Cities. 2 prefectures. $26. 6 Floors of sparkling electric wonders. This, dear readers, is my day in point form. It just wouldn’t be me if I left it as such and here goes another verbal onslaught this time taking us into the belly of the beast, the concrete jungles. The metal and the glass and the neon and the elevated highways and towering skyscrapers and the rush and the noise. Over two million people and the second largest city in Japan. That’s right, folks, we are going back to Osaka. I hadn’t been here since Mog and I’s trip to Osaka Castle and to tell you the truth I didn’t miss a thing. Big cities and me clash like pink and denim (unless it’s pink denim then you get a free pass in fashion land). I didn’t want to go but the to go but the work God’s summoned me for a quest and who am I to turn down paid travel to remote Japanese cities? You never know what you will find.

My schedule is punctured here and there but what we here in the Company cal Office Days. These are little diamonds in your week because it is basically free time to do anything work related except teaching. These days come about on a teacher’s schedule if there are no classes at your main school that particular day. I have on each week and in the second week of the month I have two. These days are used to plan future lessons and even though they are called office days you don’t necessarily have to go to the branch office to work. Now, you can’t stay home to work either. You can, however, go to one of your schools or even a school that is not yours so long as there are no classes there that day. The visa that I obtained means I have to put in one more hour then some other folks making a usual office days tick in at 5 hours of whatever work related stuff I can figure out to do.

Ah but these diamonds can be devils under a certain set of circumstances. Seeing as how you have this day free should a teacher at another school call in sick, left the company or anything else that would place a lack of a warm foreign body in a classroom folks with these office days may be called upon the fill the hole. Today they handed me a shovel. My jurisdiction is a pretty big chunk of Japan and does not just mean my prefecture. I may be called to duty out of my comfort zone in Nara and be shipped to the Osaka area. Incidentally, you can be called to go anywhere in Japan, even miles and hours away. The company in instances like these call these excursions business trips and plop you down in a hotel, fork over a bit of spending cash and, as always, pay for your commute no matter how you get there (yes, this includes air travel is need be). I was not in luck to be sent as far away to be offered such luxury so as it is when I am unsure where I am going and have to be present there at an exact time I leave ridiculously early to ensure that I am not late. Ridiculously early today was 730am for a class where lessons started only at 345pm.

There was a method to this madness, Horatio. Though I wasn’t to keen about going into the big city that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to exploit it. Mog had pointed out a large electronics store near the station when we were there last and I figured they have to have a phone at a reasonable price so adjusted my travel to accommodate some light shopping. I packed a bit of extra cash then I usually carry (you will be happy to know I am extremely under budget which is just where I wanted to be) and I tried to shake the sickness with some early morning air. The cold just was not going away. It wasn’t getting any worse, though, it was just staying there like an unwanted house guest. Oh, if I could only get an illegal shipment of NyQuil past customs. (Ha! NyQuil and DayQuil, if you don’t capitalize the Q, are recognized by windows without getting a red squiggly line underneath. Interesting.) A nice blue sky greeted me for the trip which was nice because I don’t know if I could bare the distance in the cold wet rains of the last two weeks. I pondered some breakfast at the merchants shops near the Yagi station. One guy always has something new on display outside under his glass case. This is something you get used to in Japan. In the more public of places you can expect to see fake food on display in class cases as though they were in a museum for the hungry. These displays are just perfect for us none Japanese speaking type because we can get an idea of the menu visually and if we cannot communicate what we want to the staff we can drag somebody outside and point. I admit, this happens to me more often then not. There haven’t been any of those wonderful vending machine places since I left the hotel area. While walking by the shops I picked up a packet of free toilet paper. This is another thing you will see constantly in Japan. People will stand outside of train stations handing out toilet paper in little plastic packets. There is not a shortage of toilet paper in local groceries stores but you will enter some toilets, usually of the squat variety, and find that there is no toilet paper in the stall and, in fact, there is not even a place for toilet paper in the stall. The Japanese will carry around little packets of toilet paper for these ocassions although I believe them to be rare. Most places are going to give you some ass whip! You will not find hand towels though in 99% of Japanese washrooms. Back home you have options, right? There are paper towels or there are those little air heaters that blow dry your hands clean. Here you get neither and so companies have decided on a brilliant little marketing ploy. Put advertising on packets and put paper towels in the packets and put young people in front of train stations handing out your advertising on the packets with the paper towels in them that everybody needs. Genius! So, yes, free toilet paper in my pocket I decided to eat in Osaka, snagged my ticket and stepped out onto the platform.

This would be a test of how established my Japanese train navigational skills have become because of the three transfers I would have to do. Now, remember I told you how wonky the train system is here? I believe I mentioned that some stations have similar names and some trains will be going in the direction you want to be going in but won’t stop at the station you want to get off at. Okay, well, I think I failed to also include another maddening facet about the train system that I just learned today. Some trains are of different color. They are going to the stop you wanted and pull up at the platform you read that you need to be at to go where you want to go but because these trains are orange they are called Limited Express and are more expensive. I didn’t realize this when I stepped on to it thinking that I had entered a palace of the tracks. These trains are the best looking and most comfortable outside of the bullet trains which is why, I guess, you are smacked with a larger price tag to ride them. Nobody may have noticed that I have stepped on this train having only paid a fraction of the price if I hadn’t been showcasing my ticket, the wrong ticket, when one of the train guys walked by. I have come into the habit of clutching my tickets like they were precious jewels ever since loosing one during training. You all know how I hate spending money needlessly. Well, I burned myself there this time because the train guy say I had the wrong ticket and asked me to pony up another five bucks. I asked if I could just get off the train but nothing doing. I was in for the ride and out went five bones that could have been saved if I knew that these Orange Blossom Specials are so upper class. Well, live and learn. I got to Osaka a lot quicker then I originally word anyway so there was a bonus that allowed me more time to shop.

After my first transfer which takes me on the Osaka loop line (just as it sounds, a line that runs in a complete circle all day) I stepped off into busy Osaka station. This place is not as impressive as the Kyoto station construct but because it is a touch smaller means you are fighting your way towards the exits like Scottish highlanders charging on the battle field. One wrong turn or misstep, for example if you think you see a wide opening it probably means it leads to the wrong place, then you are a retarded salmon spawning again the current. I’ve never called myself a retarded salmon before but today I was a retarded salmon. Boy do the Japanese ever hate when you walk into them. You’d think you were breaking some kind of train station commandment. Actually, I probably was. You realize soon enough, however, that you are going to get nowhere if you push again the mighty assailment of business suits and school uniforms so you just turn with them and let the stream carry you hopping to come out in one piece on the other side. Man, that Mr. Donut really looked good but if I had to choose a limb over a donut I’d prefer to keep my arm. Unless they are Krispey Kreame donuts. Then it’s a toss up. Who needs an arm anyway. I have another! Onward traveling retarded salmon through the perfume smells mixing with the McDonalds bending with the tantalizing aromas of Japanese bakeries. Bakeries and little shrines have something in common: they can be found all over the place in large numbers. I have seen more little bakeries here then I have McDonalds. There is always something good awaiting you on the shelves but when you are a salmon trying to make it upriver you just have to let the snacks go by.

Outside now and with all my vitals I set forward on the task of finding this electronics store. I new that it was close by but couldn’t remember where Mog and I were standing when you showed it to me. Ummmm, that tunnel looks good and under I go and wouldn’t you know that tunnel takes me into the electronics store. I didn’t know it at first but soon clued in that all these cameras and microwaves and washing machines and computers was just where I wanted to be. Above the loudspeakers are playing out a Japanese pop version of Glory, Glory Hallelujah. It just keeps repeating. It stops only for sales announcements. Ahhhhhhhhhhh! Why do the Japanese feel that constant repetition is a good idea when it comes to sales? I mean does this actually work. It nearly annoyed me out of the store but maybe, for the Japanese, these little jingles in constant duplication are like Pavlov’s bell to those doggies. Nobody but me seemed to care. I think the tune was used as the stores theme song and all the lyrics were replaced but what do I know? This could have been a direct translation played out over a huge electronics complex for no rhyme or reason. Japan is strange that way.

The place was called Yodobashi Camera and it had talking escalators that told me, in English no less, to watch out for my safety when I was riding it. “When riding the escalator please stay to the center and watch your step.” KnightRyder technology at its very best, folks! I wonder if all of the talking things have long conversations at night. Does the escalator complain about a sore back? Do they vending machines compare how much cash they took in? Do the elevators opine openly about how they wish they were built into stores with a better view? Inquiring minds what to know! Anyway, up the chatty escalator I went after a thorough search of the first floor yielded no phones. So many sparkling electronic wonders in this place. If I were a techy nut this place would have me cream my jeans (blue denim and I was not wearing pink, thank you!). Everything is so neatly displayed and there are miles of it in such much verity. Every floor was designated to different technologically advanced appliances, cameras and televisions, to name a few. No ToasterPhone 2000, though. I have the corner on the market of that beauty!

I didn’t need any of this stuff. I needed a phone. True, that talking refrigerator with the wide screen monitor on it that told you what you had inside and what you could make with it was tempting but it just wouldn’t fit in the suitcase for the return trip. I broke out my handy Japanese phrase book and found the lingo for “I’m looking for a phone” and found the closest store clerk in his bright red overalls. His nametag told me his name was Shota. “Hello Shota,” I said in Japanese, “I’m looking for a phone.” “4th floor,” said Shota and up I was on the 4th floor with the elevator thanking me for riding it. Elevators are so damn polite in Japan. I found the phones at the back of the store on a small rack near the fax machines. Regular phones get no respect these days, no respect. For under twenty bucks (or 2000 yen…everything seems so much more expensive then it actually is, huh?) I picked up basic black phone that I will probably only use sporadically, at best, but it is nice to have for you folks to reach me. So what are you waiting for? You have my number now. Get off your ass and pull yourselves away from the bloody computers and call me to say you just called to say I love you!

Back on the lower floors again I walked by a large area advertising the internet service I have been waiting for. Maybe I could talk to these people to find out when I will be getting my connection. If it is anything like Rogers back home these folks can look up my account from anyway, right? Well, maybe, if you know how to ask them to do it. My phrasebook was a paperweight in this place as the poor girl clerk had no idea what I was saying. Pointing was worthless. My newfound miming expertise had failed me. And just when all seemed lost an English voice came from behind us. “I can help,” it said. I spun around to face a beautiful Japanese girl with a beaming smile. Jackpot! This girl could not only speak English but she was really fluent and I would find from short conversations with her that she had been to Canada for a long period of time and knew of all the Canadian cities I shot out to here that I had visited. Did you want to go back, baby? The fridge won’t fit but I’m sure you will. This girl became my translator and soon I was able to get onto a computer and log online to see if I had been contacted by the English rep. I wanted to know if I needed any special connectors so that I could pick them up while I was here in the city. He had written to tell me that they were not needed and, also, I wouldn’t have to be present when my modem arrived by mail. I just had to plug and play. If what he said was correct I will be back up and online by mid next week. Thank the maker! I am tired of running around trying to find wireless hotspots. You’d think this place would be a hotbed of connectivity but it has not been so. I waved goodbye to the beauty and walked back out to catch my third train of the day. Damn me, why didn’t I try to get her number? I had a phone now! Fatal hesitation…

Within 45 minutes I was very early for a class and another hour after that I had everything prepared for the lessons that day and fast forward another hour and a half and in came the Japanese teacher who had just been married in Australia and another 30 minutes after that the kids came in with the lions and three hours later I had completed my final day of parent observations and 30 minutes of cleanup and it was back out now into the cold night air with the sickness striving to take me down but I had a long trip ahead of me where I could sit and nap in the comfort of a warm train car but oh no because this was the city after all and it was packed tighter then a nun’s honey pot so I stood all of the way aching and cramped and next to me was the guy they make those white face masks for because he was hacking and wheezing opening all over himself without even covering his mouth and so I move down a bit to hopefully impede more viruses and 95 minutes later back where I started at Yagi and five minutes after that I am home with a coffee, the heater, Nostradamus and these words.