Today was our last full day in Japan. Upon waking early, my group got together with Dr. Ross to discuss some last minute traveling details and summarize all of the material that we’ve covered on our plant tours. In all honesty, we’ve covered a lot of ground in the academic side on this trip. I don’t go into rigorously explicit detail when I describe our plant tours, but that is because the details are beyond the scope of my blogs. In summation, I have gotten my first taste of the entire plant touring process that I am going to have to utilize in the accounting profession. In the future, the presence of non-manufacturing assets in a plant will make the plant touring process much more complicated, which makes it essential to understand how to judge a plant based on its physical asset base first.
After our meeting, we were free to explore Osaka! Dr. Londo had left several days earlier for a trip to Korea, but he was thoughtful enough to send us all an email with a list of his favorite sites and attractions in the city. One of these, the Museum of Oriental Ceramics in Osaka, was close to the
hotel in his description.
After waiting several hours for everyone to get some last minute leaving preparations done, Taylor and I went out to the Oriental Ceramics Museum to check out the ancient oriental artwork imbedded in the bowls and dishes. I was actually quite impressed upon entering the “snuff jar” gallery. Snuff jars are these miniature jars used for holding personal sized amounts of tobacco for small periods of time. I’m not sure what the “potency” of the tobacco that went into these ancient Chinese jars was, but the outside beauty of the jars was psychedelic enough for me.
After getting a thorough dose of ancient Chinese ceramic artwork, Taylor and I headed back to the hotel to round up people for lunch. Everyone else’s lunch destinations- McDonald’s. My lunch destination – the local Japanese deli. I picked up some Japanese onigiri and Americanized fried chicken, and sat down at McDonald’s with my fellow students and the locals and basked in the glory of Japanese deli. I was looking for some okonomiyaki during this entire trip, but failed to find some.
Upon leaving McDonald’s and getting back to our hotel, Shavondalyn and myself both realized all too late that we needed to get presents for our families. I had bought only my mother’s yukata at his point in the trip, and urgently needed to get to a shopping district.
I knew that I had to get this done tonight, and given that we were leaving dangerously close to our dinner with Dr. Ross and the rest of the group, we made the decision to stick to our gift-giving and venture into the urban wilderness of Osaka and buy gifts in massive Japanese dept. stores and back alleys where one will not see English. We hopped on the subway and headed for two massive shopping districts, only to realize that the stores we were looking to buy from were closed. Hopelessness…
…well, not for Shavondalyn and me. We both decided it was in our interests to get our shopping done tonight, so we got out our map, set our course, and hopped on the subway once again. This time, we hit up some bigger, more Japanese dept. stores. All of them had Japanese names, thereby forcing us to accept the reality that we would have to get by without English.
After succeeding in buying some fans and a tea set for my family, we both headed out of the dept. stores. It was after this that we decided to walk around downtown Osaka for a while and look for a few more items for Shavondalyn’s family. We passed this awesome looking crepe shop and decided to indulge in the delectable delights of strawberry and custard crepes. As we walked out of the crepe shop, we saw a girl playing music on the street. She was really good. Given that I don’t understand the lyrics that well, I could only judge the singing by the quality of the sound coming out. Given this criterion, this girl was really good in person, and what little I could gather from the lyrics sounded really good too.
After strolling through the back alleys of Osaka, we made our way to the subway station.
After our meeting, we were free to explore Osaka! Dr. Londo had left several days earlier for a trip to Korea, but he was thoughtful enough to send us all an email with a list of his favorite sites and attractions in the city. One of these, the Museum of Oriental Ceramics in Osaka, was close to the
hotel in his description.After waiting several hours for everyone to get some last minute leaving preparations done, Taylor and I went out to the Oriental Ceramics Museum to check out the ancient oriental artwork imbedded in the bowls and dishes. I was actually quite impressed upon entering the “snuff jar” gallery. Snuff jars are these miniature jars used for holding personal sized amounts of tobacco for small periods of time. I’m not sure what the “potency” of the tobacco that went into these ancient Chinese jars was, but the outside beauty of the jars was psychedelic enough for me.
After getting a thorough dose of ancient Chinese ceramic artwork, Taylor and I headed back to the hotel to round up people for lunch. Everyone else’s lunch destinations- McDonald’s. My lunch destination – the local Japanese deli. I picked up some Japanese onigiri and Americanized fried chicken, and sat down at McDonald’s with my fellow students and the locals and basked in the glory of Japanese deli. I was looking for some okonomiyaki during this entire trip, but failed to find some.
Upon leaving McDonald’s and getting back to our hotel, Shavondalyn and myself both realized all too late that we needed to get presents for our families. I had bought only my mother’s yukata at his point in the trip, and urgently needed to get to a shopping district.
I knew that I had to get this done tonight, and given that we were leaving dangerously close to our dinner with Dr. Ross and the rest of the group, we made the decision to stick to our gift-giving and venture into the urban wilderness of Osaka and buy gifts in massive Japanese dept. stores and back alleys where one will not see English. We hopped on the subway and headed for two massive shopping districts, only to realize that the stores we were looking to buy from were closed. Hopelessness…
…well, not for Shavondalyn and me. We both decided it was in our interests to get our shopping done tonight, so we got out our map, set our course, and hopped on the subway once again. This time, we hit up some bigger, more Japanese dept. stores. All of them had Japanese names, thereby forcing us to accept the reality that we would have to get by without English.
After succeeding in buying some fans and a tea set for my family, we both headed out of the dept. stores. It was after this that we decided to walk around downtown Osaka for a while and look for a few more items for Shavondalyn’s family. We passed this awesome looking crepe shop and decided to indulge in the delectable delights of strawberry and custard crepes. As we walked out of the crepe shop, we saw a girl playing music on the street. She was really good. Given that I don’t understand the lyrics that well, I could only judge the singing by the quality of the sound coming out. Given this criterion, this girl was really good in person, and what little I could gather from the lyrics sounded really good too.
After strolling through the back alleys of Osaka, we made our way to the subway station.
Disclaimer-I tried to translate for Shavondalyn during the song, so ignore my comments during the video. I probably got the translation wrong anyway, hehe.
As we stood at a map, an older gentleman walked up to us and offered to give us directions. We knew the way, but he insisted on showing us where to go on the map. He then stopped a young woman in her twenties and had her help us too. She looked a little concerned that he would be so abrupt, but proceeded to help us anyway. Upon getting directions, the gentleman took us to our train and we proceeded to get on, leaving him behind at the station, or so we thought…
… At the next station he pops out of nowhere and offers to help us again. This time, we are a little confused. He then says, “Let’s go find your hotel.” At this point, both of our suspicions are fulfilled- this guy is a little tipsy. We smelled it on him, but this tipped the iceberg. He proceeded to offer us a taxi ride, which we refused…
…given this guy was relentlessly beyond leaving us alone, we proceeded to get away from him while he wasn’t looking. This was bad for our purposes though, because we ran away from him in a random direction; luckily, we got onto the train station that took us back to the station we came from. Upon figuring out where to go, we headed to our train, only to find the same woman the man had stopped at the station. Though she couldn’t speak English and I can’t speak Japanese that good, we understood each other. I proceeded to tell her that we needed to get to Umeda station, and she led Shavondalyn and me onto the train. She was nice enough to take us off and take us upstairs to the top after we got to our station (getting out of the subway station is impossible).
Upon getting to the top, a Korean man overhead us talking about our hotel and said he knew where it was (even though we did too, we let him help us anyway). He walked us to our hotel, telling us all the cool attractions of Osaka that he recommends… by the time we got back, I was exhausted and needed to pack. Quite a hiatus in Osaka…
tomorrow… Destination Kansai…
… At the next station he pops out of nowhere and offers to help us again. This time, we are a little confused. He then says, “Let’s go find your hotel.” At this point, both of our suspicions are fulfilled- this guy is a little tipsy. We smelled it on him, but this tipped the iceberg. He proceeded to offer us a taxi ride, which we refused…
…given this guy was relentlessly beyond leaving us alone, we proceeded to get away from him while he wasn’t looking. This was bad for our purposes though, because we ran away from him in a random direction; luckily, we got onto the train station that took us back to the station we came from. Upon figuring out where to go, we headed to our train, only to find the same woman the man had stopped at the station. Though she couldn’t speak English and I can’t speak Japanese that good, we understood each other. I proceeded to tell her that we needed to get to Umeda station, and she led Shavondalyn and me onto the train. She was nice enough to take us off and take us upstairs to the top after we got to our station (getting out of the subway station is impossible).
Upon getting to the top, a Korean man overhead us talking about our hotel and said he knew where it was (even though we did too, we let him help us anyway). He walked us to our hotel, telling us all the cool attractions of Osaka that he recommends… by the time we got back, I was exhausted and needed to pack. Quite a hiatus in Osaka…
tomorrow… Destination Kansai…
No comments:
Post a Comment