just another weekend

After badminton on Friday (had a great time partnering Monika from Hungary - who is very very good and got some pretty powerful smashes!), I rushed off to Umeda and met up with John, Marc, Jesse and Richard Harrison.

By the time we sat down at The Hub (a British pub in Umeda), it was already 2200, so it was pretty obvious that we wouldn't go home that night on the last train. We sat and drank and talked (including conversations with 3 Japanese pharmaceutical office workers) until 0200 when the pub closed.

It was kinda natural for us to go to the karaoke to spend the rest of the night/early morning until breakfast time. We ended up at Big Echo in Umeda (thanks to the bargaining skills of Harrison-sensei we only had to pay 2500yen for 3 hours of singing and drinking), sang a whole load of cheesy pop, Mancunian tunes and Japanese enka.

Then at around 0530 we went to search for breakfast around Umeda station. I really wanted something hot and filling like okayu (but clearly Osaka isn't Hong Kong). We ended up waiting for a McDonald's to open (everywhere else I've been in Japan the Mac is open 24hrs - except for this one!) at 0600. We rushed in (with the remaining energy we had) with about 30 other Japanese people who were waiting for breakfast, and quickly sat down with our coffee, hash browns, burgers and hotcakes.

I got onto the train at around half six, arrived at Kita-Senri at 7 but had to wait for another half-hour for the first bus back to the university. By the time I had a shower and gone to bed it was already 0900. Had about 4 hours of sleep (not a good 4-hour though) before I got up and did laundry, and got myself ready to go to Kyoto in the evening.

I met up with John (again - in less than 12 hours) and Dr. Peter Cave at the Kiyamachi/Shijo junction. We had dinner at a izakaya on Kawaramachi-dori. After dinner we went for a stroll around the Gion district, and managed to spot a number of geisha (or maiko - I couldn't tell the difference) in kimono and full make-up, sending their guests off onto taxis. That was rather exciting (in a subtle way, I didn't take any photos 'cause I thought it could be deemed as rude in a foreign-gaijin-tourist way) because the last time I was in Gion with Rachel and Cayley and John, we did see some "geisha" who were just tourists dressing up as geisha.

After grabbing some pumpkin-flavoured ice-cream at Baskin Robbins (John got a blue-and-black-looking mint chocolate flavour), I managed to get onto the second last train back to Saito-nishi monorail station.

Today I just stayed in my room, catching up on sleep, Grey's Anatomy and Ugly Betty :)