Road Trip Osaka

It's been a fun couple of weeks. Last weekend I had sushi so fresh, the chef was scooping it out of a tank and carving it up in front of me. Then last Tuesday a graduating student (graduation day was March 1st) came to school with his new motor bike and practically forced me to drive it round the car park. My first motor bike driving experience, and it was easier than I thought. On Wednesday and Thursday I took yoga, and set up a Fantasy Share trading account. On my first day trading, I made 20,000 GBP with a lucky spread bet. It would be nice to make that every day. I have been less lucky with my share choices and my fantasy total is down 2524 GBP.

On Friday, I bought the world's thinnest, and coolest 3G Mobile phone. It's about as thick as an eyelid. Pretty nice. Finally Japan is giving me some kick ass technology. I could fit my camera, mp3 player and phone inside a tea bag. Also the phone has the new headphoneless bluebrain handsfree technology, allowing direct signal transfer to the bones of your inner ear. Works really well, much clearer than using it the old way.

Saturday was the start of a fun road trip to Osaka. 5 hours in the car, a couple of wrong turns, but over all pretty easy. Since it was St Patrick's day, we donned our greensleeves and headed to Murphy's, the Pig and Whistle and finally Club Pure. Club Pure is 3500Yen (about 15quid) for men to get in and 2500 Yen (10quid) for women. Sound expensive? It's not. It's all you can drink. Open bar. For 6 hours. Amazing.

Sunday was spent wondering round the really cool Shinsaibashi and Amerikamura areas. Well the day time was. Osakas gay district was recommended for sunday night life and we headed over to see what we could see. We had a great dinner in a not gay at all American style restaurant, then headed off to find a bar. Apparently, Osaka's gay community is pretty quiet on a sunday, and out of the 9 patrons in the bar, 7 were in our group, with only one in our group actually being what in polite circles is called "a gay".

On Monday an interesting Salivador Dali exhibition was visited (with great picture narration and commentation by Jake Groves), followed by a viewing of "Deep Sea" at the world's largest Imax screen, narrated in the world's most patronising way by Jonny Depp and Kate Winselt. "Nearly 5 feet long!" "the word we use is Sym-bi-osis"

After that it was time to head home to the not so bright lights of Toyama Prefecture. I can't wait to see what the next couple of weeks have in store!