Sunday, November 30, 2008

Back from Japan. It was pretty cool. I landed at Kansai Airport, which is a man made island. I believe it is the largest man made island in the world, but don't quote me on that. I just remember reading that somewhere.

My first day I got in about 1PM and hopped the 'express' train to downtown Osaka. By the way, Osaka's train system is beyond confusing. The subway is easy, but the trains... yea, rough. I went to the hostel I planned at staying at (I got there about 3PM-ish), only to find that they didn't have any beds. Alright, that is one of the bits to not reserving a hostel bed ahead of time. I go to another hostel I knew about. Oops, booked up to. By now it is 5PM. Ugh... I manage to convince the hostel owner at the second hostel to give me the names of other hostels around. He really didn't want to, saying he didn't have time to do that. I kept nagging him until he agreed. He reached under the counter and pulled out a sheet with 10 of them on it... cool, a lot of hard work that was.

Anyway, I go to a public phone and start calling around. The last one on the list, SUMO backpackers had one bed left. Friggin' sweet, last hostel bed in the city and it is all mine. When I got there I tried to book Saturday night as well, but they didn't have any spot open. Crap, I called around all the hostels again, no beds. Oh well, I got tonight figured out, I'll deal with tomorrow tomorrow. Anyway SUMO was pretty nice.

Long and drawn out story short, I met some people who were hosting backpackers at their house on Saturday night and they invited me to crash there. It was pretty sweet. I'll get pics up soon.

2 comments:

The Mighty Yam said...

Besides gawking at their cool gadgetry, what else did you do in Japan?

Heady Mead! said...

Actually, I saw more gadgetry in Thailand. Of course, it was probably all stolen, but hey, when a coup d’état is going on, it isn't smart to complain!

I mostly just wandered. Met random people and hung out with them. Got lost... a lot.