Momodani–The Bicycle Phenomena!

I don’t even know where to start.. today feels like it has taken forever. The two of us are beyond exhausted and that’s mostly due to being on a train for the better part of the day. A few exciting things on the train ride – firstly – the two of us managed to get on the wrong bullet train out of Shinagawa (right near Tokyo) – OOPS.. I was too busy trying to squeeze a smoke in in the ‘smoking area’ of the platform, and we got on the bullet train that departed 7 minutes before ours. Hah. Anyway, thankfully the train guy onboard knew English and we showed him our tickets and told us we were on the wrong train.. we got off at the next stop, which thankfully our train was also stopping at, and moved onto the right train. We found our seats all fine and dandy.. we were sitting behind what looked like a junkie woman from povvo town (a whitey). Jesse pointed to her flask. She looked trashy.

We bought two Coca-Cola’s on the train – they came in funny bottles.

This is how fast the bullet train goes… much faster than QR.. no offense Dad

The most exciting thing I think was, I was able to.. get this.. smoke on the train! Yes! I did have to walk down to the last car and I must admit it stank a little haha but there were ashtrays in the arm rests and I lit up and smoked away.

Smoking on the train… :)

When we FINALLY made it to Momodani .. omg .. we were both utterly exhausted.. Jesse moreso because he was sick of hearing me whinge about how exhausted I was. Who would’ve thought sitting on a train was so hard. Shin-Osaka (one of the changeover stations) was incredibly busy.. we kept getting bumped into and stuff. Anyway so in Momodani, we have only met one person who speaks English – the Guest House receptionist.. and thank christ for that. The amount of bicycles parked at the train station was .. just out of this world.

When we got off the train, we couldn’t get directions in English to the Guest House.. just a few points and away we went..

After we checked in at the Guest House into our shoebox and made ourselves at home.. as much as we could.. we decided to go for a stroll before it got too late. We went back to the station and there’s like a kilometre long shopping mall.. we trudged through it um.. what was there. Lots of little food places.. a few clothing places.. too many hairdressers.. and hundreds of Japanese locals on bicycles.

Then, you better believe it.. we found our first McDonalds.. I start jumping around like a little puppy ‘can we Jesse, can we can we!!’ Jesse agreed, I think he was keen too.. hm. How was the McDonalds? Well, firstly, noone spoke English. We walked up.. smiled.. received the Japanese greeting, responded … “hello”… LOL.. she flipped a little menu upside down and there was English stuff on the back. For the first time, we were the idiots pointing and nodding at things. She was very friendly and polite, unlike the way we Australians are to asians.. anyway, we both got our fattening meal and moved our way to the Non-Smoking floor of the restaurant – how disgusting, not even I can bring myself to smoke in a restaurant. Note: contrary to my suspicion, they do not serve rice with their meals.

We then, feeling tired, decided we did not want to return to the Guest House, but preferred to continue walking.. on that note, we went across the road to Mr. Donuts, labelled ‘The World’s Best Coffee and Donuts’ .. well. I walked in, I asked the girl, “English?” and she just looked at me like I was stupid. She didn’t even understand that word of English. Jesse comes up behind me and starts asking “Coffee?” – she smiles, nods, and gives us two coffees, the boring brewed crap not the cool frothy Cappucino.. ah well.

We continued walking around the suburb – and found yet another vending machine, they are seriously everywhere. This one had canned Cafe Latte.. Jesse and I wondered if they would be hot or chilled.. we took a gamble, put in the 100 yen.. and sure enough.. canned, hot, Cafe Latte’s! From a vending machine!

I decided to snap a couple examples of the countless bicycles.. these things are seriously EVERYWHERE.

And, before winding up and retiring to the Guest House to plan tomorrows adventure.. we of course had to visit the supermarket.

They have little baby trolleys! .. Jesse is almost tall enough to push them properly.. Now if you see this smile on his face, it is indicative of the absolute joy Jesse possessed while at the supermarket. It was among his favourite activities of the day.. in true Jesse style..

We found a girl who would hate to find out what those words really mean above her head.

The supermarket was very busy, and I thought I would flex my humour here by audibly saying to Jesse things like, “I really need to get that rash on my ass looked at” (yes, I stole it from Ghost..) and other things that shouldn’t be repeated. I think we are the only white people here in Momodani..

Here is the final product, our little collection of goodies.

We are both very tired. We are struggling to finish our sentences. No doubt this is written incredibly poorly.

Tomorrow we are, in true Momodani style, going to rent a bicycle each.. .. we will be seeing a lot of the sights Osaka has to offer; I’m particularly looking forward to a mall which runs next to a canal and the electronics and entertainment district.. Jesse is particularly looking forward to.. the bicycle ride.. and pretty much all of it.