Arriving in Japan

We left the United States from Honolulu with a sea of Japanese people. We were the only Americans on the entire flight. It was a long flight (nine hours), but we were fortunate to get exit row seats so we could stretch our legs during the flight.
We arrived in Osaka around 6 pm on October 4. The airport was easy to navigate around and customs was a breeze. Once we left the airport, we found ourselves unable to understand anything around us, written or verbal. Our cab driver did not speak English, but eventually we were able to communicate where we wanted to go. Many of the signs are strictly in Japanese characters, but some are also in alphabet characters or translated into English. Most of the people at our hotel speak passable English and try very hard to accommodate us. We are picking up on a few Japanese words - thank you, excuse me, hello, yes, no - but we are also not leaving our hotel room without our Japanese dictionary.
I definitely stand out around the petite, dark haired, dark eyed, Asian women around me. The attire is much more formal here than in the United States. The men are all in business suits and the woman are all in skirts and heels. Dave’s laid-back shorts and t-shirt look definitely stand out in a crowd.
Yesterday was our first full day in Osaka. We decided to spend the day just wandering around the city. We thought this would make for a fairly relaxing day, but as culture shock set in we found ourselves exhausted by the end of the day.
Our first task was to figure out the subway system without speaking or reading any Japanese. This took a lot of lucky guesswork and fortunately each of the subway lines was subtitled in alphabet characters. We found our way to downtown Osaka which is huge! The entire city of Osaka is very large and home to 8 million people. There isn’t much natural beauty here, just a ton of tall, close buildings. It reminds us of New York City except there are no parks.
Finding our way around Osaka forced us to use a whole new set of skills for figuring things out. Dave always asks people questions to find our way around and I am always reading signs. Here, we can’t do either of those things. No one really speaks English outside our hotel, although our two encounters with English speakers happened at opportune times yesterday.
One of the first things we noticed downtown were the arcades. We knew the Japanese liked video games, but we had no idea how much. Downtown Osaka has arcades like Las Vegas has casinos. And the arcades are not the dinky ones we find in the US, but long, multi-level arcades where Japanese gather into narrow rows to play these games for what must be hours upon hours. Some of the games are familiar, but many have a Japanese twist. For instance, they have many machines where you can use the claw to dive for prizes. In the U.S., we are usually diving for stuffed animals, but here we saw prizes as odd as cans of Pringles, oversized bags of potato chips, and colorful packing tape. Most of the players are not kids or teens, but middle-aged adults donning their business clothes. It is quite a sight. We also discovered that photo booths are very popular for teenage girls. Wandering around downtown, we saw several stores containing only photo booths (around twenty to each store) where teenage girls would come in and pose for photos with their friends. Some of the booths were very elaborate with jungle gyms and other props in them.
After wandering around the city for a few hours, we started to get hungry. We couldn’t find any restaurants with alphabet words, although many of the menus had photos. We ended up seeing a man with red hair on the street and assumed he may know English. He turned out to be from America living in Osaka and he instructed us on the word for chicken and directed us toward a Japanese restaurant where they served chicken. We entered the restaurant and were directed to a table by our waiter who spoke no English. We ordered a few chicken dishes by pointing to the photos on the menu. We were the only customers at the time and we were in a small booth that was surrounded completely by bamboo curtains. Everything here is much lower than in America- beds, chairs, tables, etc. It was a neat atmosphere, but we had trouble with the food. The chicken cuts were not as good as the ones we are used to eating. There was lots of fat and bones and the chicken is very soft, almost a fishy texture. We wandered around downtown for a while longer before we decided we should try and find our way back to the subway. We stopped for a fruity looking dessert and the girl who sold them to us had spent nine months in Australia and spoke good English. She was just getting off work and walked us to the subway. Here, we ate some spaghetti at a restaurant before finding our way back to our subway line and making our way back to the hotel’s shuttle pick-up. While standing on the subway, Dave commented on how many women were taking the subway. Looking around, we realized Dave was the only man on our entire subway car. We couldn’t quite figure this out and kept suggesting theories...there are way more women than men in Japan, more women work downtown, what could it be? Then, I finally noticed tiny English print under the large Japanese characters on the door that said Women Only. The women must have been getting harassed on the subway and they created cars specifically for the women. Once we realized, we started to laugh. None of the women seemed to mind Dave’s presence though.
We made it safely back to our hotel completely exhausted from the day. Today, we are both catching up on some work and then we may go over to Universal Studios Osaka for the evening. Tomorrow, we plan to go to Kyoto for the day.