Night out with the Labbies in Osaka!

Sorry I haven`t been updating the blog but here goes...

Today, I spent an amazing day sightseeing Osaka with Bandou, Watanabe, and Imoto, three of the B4 (4th year Bachelors) Osaka University students. Thanks to Bandou for setting everything up, it was an amazing day.

The first stop was the Tsutenkaku Tower near ShinSekai. Apparently the most famous thing in this area is Billiken, these odd statues where if you touch it's feet, good fortune will come upon you and you will become happy. This guy was everywhere. Billiken is a sitting white monkey-like person and whose feet are placed side by side and face the viewer. Kind of creepy if you ask me. Inside the Tower, the sight of Osaka while amazing wasn't as good as the night view of Osaka from the Umeda Sky Building. Cities just don't seem to be as beautiful in the day time. Also in this Tower is apparently the original Billiken Statue that originated from America. It seems that so many people have rubbed its feet that there was a deep depression in its foot.

Our next stop was a maid cafe as per my request in NipponBashi. NipponBashi is kind of like the Akihabara of Osaka filled with electronics related shops, otakus, anime merchandise, and let us not forget maid cafes. The four of us went to CoCha, a maid cafe in a slightly shady area. Business was booming however. We had to wait 10 minutes until we got in, but it sure was worth it. At the front door one of the maids greeted us "Okaerinasaimase, Goshujinsama" which means " Welcome home, master!" I ordered a Chocolate Latte, which was pretty expensive 600yen (about 7dollars USD). However, it wasn't really just for coffee, it was more so for the experience, which was worth it. You call the maids over with a bell as if you would call a maid over. If you ask for sugar, they kneel down next to you and put sugar into your drink and say something along the lines of "Mix Mix... Mix Mix... so that my Master's drink will become much more delicious." The maid who served us and took our order was Mimi-chan. She is apparently only 19 years old and doing this as a part-time job. My labmates also chipped in and got me a polariad picture with Mimi-chan. It didn't come cheap, it is 600yen per photo. We all got into the picture and apparently we had a cat theme going on. She later decorated the polaroid picture and wrote a message on the back. It's really cute.

The establishment wasn't as impressive or what I thought it would be. It looks like a regular old restaurant, but perhaps if we tried hard enough we could find top quality maid cafe which would probably cost us a lot more. The cafe also had framed photographs of the maids working a the cafe as well as notebooks that allow customers to write messages to the maids of their choice to which would be responded to by the maid sometime in the future. From reading the notebook and looking around, it does seem that Maid cafes tend to attract a strange crowd. Take for instance a creepy old guy that I saw in there. He nearly had over 20 Polaroids with the maids.

After the maid cafe, we went to have dinner in Namba at a make your own Okonomiyaki restaurant. I had some delicious Shrimp and Pork Okonomiyaki with Yakisoba. They randomly gave us an egg too, so the guys tried to make OmuSoba for me. Quite fun.

Ending the day, we walked to Osaka's Shinsaibashi and went to one of Osaka's most iconic spots: the bridge that goes across the Dotonburi Canal. There I saw the famous Glicoman neon sign. Everything in this area was just so bright and captivating.

Today was quite memorable.