In the ghetto…. January 31, 2007

Hi all, sorry it’s been so long since my last post. I moved and just got the internet again, yay! Anyway, I’m living in a studio in Daikokucho, which is kind of the ghetto of Osaka. There are lots of foreigners here because the Japanese don’t like to live here. By ghetto I mean there are like 10 homeless people. I can walk to work now and really don’t mind the few homeless people. I saw more homeless people when I was living in Beverly Hills! Anyway, moral of the story, the ghetto of Japan is pretty nice. I finally got away from my crazy bulimic roommate….. boy is that a long story. The short of it is: she was a crazy, bulimic girl. After she messed up our toilet, she started to dump her puke in our shower, something I discovered during a shower when some of it came up. Eeeewwwww. Now I have my very own clean shower

The romance has ended, sort of …. It’s another long story, but the gist of it is that timing is a bitch. I always meet the right guys at the wrong time. My love life is a series of bad timings. I often meet the wrong guy and at the right time and then procede to have a very bad relationship. It’s no fair when it’s the other way around.

Happy Bag New Year January 9, 2007

Hi folks, hope you guys had a happy new year. New Years in Japan is like Christmas in Western countries. You spend the day with your family, eat, drink, and a lot of people go to shrines. Everything shuts down, even the atms for 3 days! But on January 2nd the stores open and the have happy bags. A happy bag is a sealed bag of clothes sold at a cheap price. They put the size on the outside, so you find your size and pay $30, 50, 100 or 200. The $30 bag I got had a purse, 2 cardigans, a skirt, 4 shirts and a jacket. I also got a $50 and a $100 bags from different stores with a lot of clothes in them. It’s a really great deal and the surprise is fun! I really think they should have happy bags everywhere!!!!

A very Osakan Christmas January 1, 2007

Christmas was very exciting because my family flew in. I had to work so bleah . After work we met up and went out for Okonomiyaki. It’s like a savory cabbage pancake. It has cabbage and meat, held together by an egg, topped with brown sauce, mayonaise and fish flakes. It was very interesting. I’m not sure if I like it yet, I think I need to try other flavors before I can give my final verdict. I have to say I was not a fan of the fish flakes, but the brown sauce was really yummy. Okonomiyaki is a traditional Osakan dish. They take their food very seriously here in Osaka. Anyway, the people running the little restaurant were so cool. Our waiter was 29 and had 2 little boys – 2 and 4. He brought the boys out to see and talk to foreigners, it was so cute. Then the chef came out to talk to us. They had all been to California and really wanted to talk about it. It really felt like we had been taken into their family. So it was definitely a Christmas dinner I will not forget.