Saturday morning Khaleelah and I woke up about 8 'o clock and prepared for the day ahead. I put in the mixed reggae cd that Thomas had sent for me and instead of getting ready as fast as we could have, each movement involved rocking to the music. We did actually end up leaving the house on time, rode to the station and caught the 9:25am train to Osaka Umeda JR station. From there we walked over to Umeda subway station and took the train to Shinsaibashi about 15 minutes away. We met Dale on the subway platform and headed out to walk around Shinsaibashi. We went to the Loft department store. This was my first time being in this store and I can definitely say it won't be my last. I really had to exercise every ounce of self control while in this store. After loft we walked around some more, took pictures of people and their outfits and played Taiki(I think this is the name). Khaleelah and Dale introduced me to this arcade-type game. Let me just say I had SO MUCH FUN playing this game. I laughed until my belly felt like it was gonna bust. Basically, it is a drumming game, kinda like the dancing game you see in arcades in Toronto. You have to hit the right part of this drum depending on the colour and size of the circles that come up on the screen. You pick the song that you want to play to and the circles come across the screen in a pattern specific to the song. Hopefully once you see the pictures you will get a better idea of what I'm trying to describe. We worked up an appetite playing the game and then headed over to a Mexican restaurant. Can you say GOOD food! I am eating some good food here in Japan so you know I am happy about that. The restaurant had an authentic feel to it with all the Mexican-themed knick knacks around the place. All of the walls were concrete so that people could right on them. None of us had writing utensils so we couldn't grace the walls with our presence...ah well next time. I couldn't get over the amount of food in our plates for the price and the fruit drinks that we got were heaven. I got Strawberry/Mango, while Khaleelah and Dale got Strawberry/Banana. We walked off our fullness through the streets of Shinsaibashi in an area called America Mura where there are tons of stores and clubs. We found a record shop called Cisco and let me just say this was the highlight of the day for each of this. It was wrap, I didn't have to do anything else but stay in there for the rest of our day. We spent about an hour or two in that place listening to music...I was listening to a bunch of Studio One albums on wax. I had my own little party singing and dancing in front of the record player and no one seemed to care. I loved it, the atmosphere was so free as everyone in there was in search of good music. By the time we left I added record player on the list of things I need to have in my house. At about 5 or 6 we headed back to the station to go back home. We parted ways with Dale at Osaka Umeda JR station and went to Yodobashi Camera, a big electronics store. K needed to get some blank CD-R's and I wanted to look for the camera that I wanted. I ended up buying my camera!!! They were having a sale for the weekend and I got the Nikkon D40x with 2 lenses (18-55 and 55-200) for a great price. I thought I would be more ecstatic, but I don't think it has hit me yet. We left Osaka and got home about 8:30pm. We looked up some clubs and figured which we would go to, actually Khaleelah did that as I sat on the ground and fiddled with my camera like a child with a new toy. After deciding we where we would go, we got ready and took the 10:51pm train to Himeji. Once we got to Himeji we followed the useless map on the flyer. Khaleelah used her Japanese skills to ask some people on the way where we had to go and we eventually found the club. It was a little hole in the wall spot that has potential. To my surprise there were more than 5 black people in the club, not including us. When we got in they were playing some whack hip hop, so we just sat at the front near the dance floor and were entertained by the dancers on the floor. One of the guys, his name was Green, came and asked us why we weren't dancing. When we told him we weren't feeling the music, he asked the DJ to change it up which he did for one hot set of music. Sadly, the music went downhill after that and the smoke wasn't helping at all. I had my worst reaction to cigarette smoke that night. Burning eyes, burning throat, swollen glands and acid reflux. Man I can't take this about the clubs here. We left early. Now comes the interesting part. The trains in Japan stop running around midnight and start again at 5:30am. The club we were at closed at 3, we left around 2 and we were going to take a cab home. We had to go to the ATM first. I had just under 1000 yen on me, but the ATM was also closed (that will be explained in another blog). So, we found an udon shop ordered some noodles and fell asleep in the people's place until about 4:45am when the owner came and said we couldn't sleep there lol. We walked to the station and waited another hour before catching the 5:31am train back to Aioi. It didn't help that it was cold at all. I don't think either of us could've been more happy to finally be back at the apartment. We showered and went straight to bed. It was a very eventful day.
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