Well, the last three-day weekend took me to Osaka for the dance festival. I danced for two nights, but didn’t have the energy to go to the final all night dance. The live bands (one all expats from various places, and one all Japanese) were really good and loved playing for dancers. The Japanese band played dancable songs (ie ones that didn’t make you want to pass out).
The attitude of Osaka is really friendly, but the scene leaders reminded me of Alex’s (from Melbourne) concise summary - he’s the one who coined the phrase “Feckin’ Lindy Hoppers!” Sure, attitudes were high cos it was the yearly party, but maybe I was just a bit too grounded or critical.
The rest of the city has a smaller feel (only 5x more populous than Shizuoka city). You can get from edge to edge rather quickly (twice as fast as in Tokyo). The food is very good - excellent Korean avaible, and Asian fusion, too.
During the days, I toured the area. I went to Nara on Sunday and saw the world’s largest wooden structure (yes, there are pictures), and a massive 16m solid bronze buddha statue. And about 1564 deer. Nara is filled with deer, tremendously tame, completely dependent on tourist-handouts deer. Some of the wise old ones even figured out a way to get tourists to come to them, while they were sitting, to feed them (while the young ones were chasing every stale-bread-holding hand in sight).
On Monday, I went to Kobe and managed to grab an interview for my documentary. I got some uni students (the old-folk were surprisingly gruff), but still need a few more to round it out. Kobe was nice - there was a ropeway to the top of a small mountain that had a great view of the city. At the top was an herb garden, quite large, that made for a tourist attraction. Never before had I seen rosemary and sage as key-note attendees to a garden, but the Japanese were all about it and of course the inherent ‘health’ benefits. The immediate benefit was the food. I ate at a restaurant with amazingly flavored pizza. The best pizza I’ve had here!
Just finished a 3-day work week, and now I’m headed into another 3-day weekend! Very nice, and this one should keep me local. Gotta rest.