21 June 2005

Osaka Retrospective

Filed under: Japan — Amy @ 4:26

We got to Osaka around noon and found the hotel after taking several hops on public transportation. The Hyatt Regency Osaka is out in a less-than-exciting part of town with mostly wharves and docks (what’s the difference?) surrounding the hotel and World Trade Centre.

So naturally, for dinner, we headed out to Dontonbori where we’d hoped to find incredible Osaka-style sushi.

The main \"gate\" in neon

We failed on the Osaka-style sushi. We found some but it was decidedly less than incredible. Less than thrilled, we did the photo thing.

(Please pardon my cruddy scanner, these are actually prints from the first roll of photos I had developed today.)

Dontonbori at night

And I couldn’t resist a shot of this cafe’s window display. Loads and loads of plastic replicas to show off the restaurant’s specialities. You see this in Japan everywhere, just not typically so photogenically lit.

Lots of plastic food

Eventually, we did find some really incredible sushi. I think I would rate it the top sushi, or at least a tie for first, in my life. Fresher than fresh, with atmosphere to boot. And, not terribly expensive. All good things. You know a good restaurant when you have to wait in line outside to squeeze into a tiny tiny space at the sushi bar.

21 June 2005

Darn.

Filed under: General — Amy @ 4:03

It’s 4:00am and I’m awake. Since 12:35. I was afraid of this.

It’s getting light in the east, and birds are chirping away. I just chatted on the phone with my dear friend Mandy who typically is awake until 6:30 or so every night, which is 7:30 my time. Handy! And nice and distracting. There’s not much else to do at 4:00am. I’ve already written, already caught up with some work stuff. My eyes hurt too much to read for any length of time. I could start editing the video… oh wait, that’s a brilliant idea!

But maybe I’ll save it for the next night. If this is anything like my trip to Thailand… it might take me awhile to readjust.

20 June 2005

the definition of culture shock

Filed under: General — Amy @ 10:37

Looking out your office window and seeing this.

my neighborhood

Weird. Perfect kelly-green lawns, near-identical houses, SUVs.

Had some of this feeling in San Francisco yesterday. So much English everywhere it sort of made my head hurt, being able to understand every single conversation going on around me.

20 June 2005

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig

Filed under: General — Geoff @ 17:47

Um… someone stop the world, please? I wanna get off.

Wow.

The world is a lot bigger than one would expect. Sure, Disney says it’s a “Small, Small World”, but trying going around it sometime. And I don’t mean by plane — go around it by surface. It takes a lot longer, and you’ll see a lot more.

Biggest surprise in the whole trip? Reverse culture shock. Didn’t see that coming, I tell ya. After seven weeks of blocking out all other languages to concentrate on the rare blips of English (signage and speech), arriving in San Francisco about overloaded me. Ouch.

The Bow River is flooding. The main highway was renamed. And those are the only two things we knew about on the road. Adjusting back is going to take some time…