Osaka is in Kansai, which is the most historically rich part of Japan. It is next to the old capital Kyoto or only a half hour or so out into the country side and it is known as one of the best places to eat in Japan. Many times Osaka is considered Japan's culinary capital. While Tokyo may be bigger it is also more expensive. Also Tokyo seems to be covered mainly with black ties and suit coats where although Osaka has it's fair share of salary men, at night the colors come alive and Osaka becomes a whole new animal. People say that the people of Osaka know how to work hard, but they also know how to play harder. From my experience, this is probably not far from the truth.
Saturday morning I headed out to Osaka to tour a beer factory. It was pretty interesting to see, and the tour was in English so I could actually understand it. Plus we got 3 free glasses of beer. SCORE! After this I was trying to find a group that I would have the most fun with. It takes me about $20 to get to Osaka, so if I spend that much to get there, I want to make the most of my time.
I decided I would go with a group to eat Mexican food, which is a rarity in Japan. So after a pretty pricey and small portion of enchiladas (nothing like the price/produce ratio in the U.S. when it comes to Mexican) it was off to a bar to relax for a while a couple hours since the night was young and we were deciding what we were gonna do.
After a bit more wandering me and two fellas decided to find a club. Which I was pretty stoked about since I really don't like clubbing in the U.S. (at all) but have never been to a Japanese club. Lucky for us, what we had in store was something to write in the record books.
We actually didn't enter the club which I think was called "Soundroom" until about 1AM. We found it at about midnight but there was a $25 cover charge. So since we all burned a lot of cash, we decided to think about it. The place looked awesome though, on the outside it was somewhat Reggae and the inside sounded like they were pumping some good House music. Plus, it wasn't a foreigner club, which I heard pretty much suck and are left for the tourists and the ex-pats that are afraid of cultural integration, or are just looking for a chick that likes English speakers.
Anyway, so we entered. The first room had a semi-decent live DJ mixing tracks on LP. It was a bit more laid back resembling a lounge instead of a dance floor with the bar to order drinks and a place for people to cool out.
Through another door was the dance room. Which had some amazing awesome music that definitely had a taste of the 70s disco inspiration. These DJs knew how to play it, and were skilled because they also mixed everything live. Now I am no dancer, but the base was pumping and I just decided to let it go. Since most Japanese guys don't dance anyway, Japan is the best place to go clubbing because even if you do a little, you will get complements on how well you dance. The club was a good place (would definitely go back) with pretty awesome people, from those we could hear, but around 5AM it started to get a little sleazy and that night we decided we weren't for it. So after 5 hours of 'dancing' we left the club and headed to our capsule hotel to get 3 hours of sleep.
The capsules
Inside the capsule
Surprisingly I could fit in these capsules, they were relatively comfortable. Normally I heard if you were over 190cm you couldn't fit, but these definitely were 2m long. So awesome. Not bad for $35 a night.
The next morning was spent finding an English book store and then off to Otsu to watch a festival. Overall 2 packed full days, the first where I starting drinking at noon at the beer factory and didn't end until 5AM at the club, running on 3 hours of sleep, to the next day watching a pretty sweet festival and finally crashing at about 11PM in the comfort of my own bed.
Traditional in the city.
Large carts to be pulled throughout the streets.
2 comments:
I like It!!!
your blog is very nice.
Thanks for reading! :)
Post a Comment