From Osaka to Nagoya... and beyond! (some NSFW)

This is totally outside of the time-line I planned to post today, but I had a need to share this picture with the internet immediately;

It's kind of blurry, because I had to sneak-attack taking this, but I will describe it to you as best I can. So this guy is wearing an adult sized furry costume of Lilo, from Lilo and Stitch, a beloved Disney character from a series of kids' movies. That on it's own, would be a picture-worthy spectacle. But this guy took it a whole step further. If you ever want to increase the creepiness of your clothing, follow this guy's example, and WEAR A SANDWICH BOARD THAT ADVERTISES A PORNO PALACE. If that's not precious enough for you, he was handing out these;

These are those little pocket sized tissue packets. But advertising rub-and-tugs and hookers. Of course, I insisted on getting a couple. If you make the not-so-distant mental leap of the connection between pocket tissues and a porno palace, the promotion item makes really gross sense. Hilariously gross sense. You can put that guy's job on a list of 'will never do for money,' although he seemed to be having a blast handing out rags on a street corner. To each his own, I suppose. Side note: That says 30 minutes of 'fun' for about $30 bucks. Don't sell yourself so short, girls!

ANYWAYS... So the day I left Osaka, my old roommate and I decided to grab a quick look at a castle that was supposed to be in the area. It was not a nice day, and I made the poor decision to wear sandals. Big, dopey snowflakes skewed our vision for most of it, but true to Osaka, the weather did let up a little bit for some pictures.
Pictures;

This was all leading up to the big castle itself. Most of the important buildings in Japan have little mazes around them, so you're always forced to see other things before the main event.
Main event;

Looking a little creepy in that photo on the left... I was cold and tired. I don't normally get up this early to view landmarks, even if they are this shiny. On the right is this random old guy who stopped us and insisted on giving us an unsolicited tour of the area. He kept saying 'You America? America Number One! Number One!' When we told him we were Canadian, he said 'Canada Number Two! America Number One!' I just smiled and waited for him to leave. He was far more interested in my black roommate. He acted like he had never seen a black chick before.
Here's me being rediculous;

 And here are pictures of some pretty nature;

That's snow falling, not dandruff, btw.

I got a glimpse of some formal wedding portraits being taken, but due to my lack of zooming abilities, the picture didn't turn out so well;

Here's a statue;

And here's what I had for breakfast;

Before you ask, I didn't eat the map.

The trainride from Osaka was really uneventful, aside from the fact that we drove through a blizzard for about 30 seconds. Oh yeah, and there were like 5 different people carrying economy-sized packages of toilet paper on the train. I have a couple theories about why, one of which includes a scenario where the Yakuza has an illegal toilet paper black market in Osaka, and everyone then smuggles it home like drugs. Nevermind.

 The picture on the left was a little shop selling cheap meat filled buns in the train station. I bought a pork one because I was hungry. Honestly, I only bought it because she was hollering at the top of her lungs about how awesome her buns were. I couldn't understand the rest of what she was saying, but I filled in the gaps in my head. I pretended that she was saying 'come eat my buns! You'll love munching on my delicious pork filled buns!' The advertising effort was so good I couldn't NOT get one. Also, they came with spicy mustard. She was practically calling me by name.

Once I found my ECC rep and got set up at the hotel, I had to go and find some clothes to wear to work for my first day. I'm still kicking myself for leaving all my nice work clothes in Tokyo, but I will remedy that situation later. So I found this giant SEARS-like clothing store with too many vowels to pronounce, and decided just to get a simple black dress and some black shoes to tide me over. The clothing section went on for miles, so I just decided to browse until I would potentially find something that fit over my boobs. Needless to say, I have never felt so insecurely fat and depressed about my body ever in my life. I kept thinking to myself 'when does the kids section end?' and 'Baby Gap sure is getting sluttier these days...' But no, that was for regular Japanese women, who have waists the size of my neck. I eventually found a depressing 'plus size' collection, which had sizes 8 through 12. I wonder what people from Texas wear here. Probably garbage bags and tarps. Or maybe, as my significant other suggested, they buy a lot of little pants and just tie them together. The logistics of that still kind of hurt my brain. So once I found a dress that might fit me, the retail ladies took it off a hanger for me, asked me to take off my shoes when I entered the change room, and handed me a mesh bag. All with a big smile that seemed to say 'please don't get your western cooties on our clothes, fatty.' This is how you're supposed to look when you try on clothes in Japan;

My self-esteem went up about 15 points at the moment I put this on. Nothing says 'welcome to our store' like asking your customers to put bags on their heads.

Oh yeah, and I took some creepy pictures of school girls for all my homies back home;

I'm really sorry, but I was contractually obligated to take these. Can someone tell me how to turn pictures into postcards? I need to learn how to do that.

After I hated myself for a couple hours at the SEARS store, I gathered up my training buddies and went for a drink so that we could get to know each other better. After the first bar, we realized that it was St. Patrick's Day, so we found the only Irish pub in Nagoya and drank Jameson and Guinness. We also attempted to converse with some twenty-something locals, but it didn't go too well. I really need to take some Japanese lessons. My ineptitude is starting to seriously bother me.
Night life pictures!

The last one was a flyer for the Irish pub, and aparently the katakana on it is explaining what St. Patty's day is. Because over here, they really don't have a clue. Us white folk look all the same to them :)
Goodnight!