This morning when we left the hotel, it was still pouring rain but luckily it stopped before lunchtime. First we visited a fishing village where we went on a short boat tour around the lake and had the opportunity to feed seagulls and some large hawks (or eagles?). We were able to buy shrimp crackers to feed them while on the boat, but I didn't as back in Canada we're not allowed to feed wild animals as it's not good for them. But a lot of other people on the boat did so I watched and took a lot of pics. There were so many of them and they all swooped down so close to us..I was afraid they'd fly into us lol.
Then we went to a place called Amanohashidate for a beautiful view. Afterwards we had a kaiseki style lunch at a restaurant. Having lots of seafood these days here! We ordered these two shrimps..the largest I've ever seen in my life!! For a sense of scale, you can see the size of a regular shrimp in the cup near the top of the pic. Also the man at the table beside us was holding one and pretending it was a telephone handset as it was that large lol.
In the afternoon we went to Shinsaibashi for a few hours and stayed for dinner. This is the main shopping area of Osaka. I loved it here!! There was a lot of Halloween stuff going on and some people dressed in costumes. Most people weren't dressed up though which was nice because I love observing Japanese fashion. It's not as crazy in Osaka as it is in Tokyo though. I really love Japanese style (male and female)..now I really want to visit Tokyo again sometime in the near future.
We had a few hours free to shop around in the area and was supposed to have dinner at 7pm in the restaurant. My mom and I were in a department store during the last 20 minutes or so. I wanted to get a pair of shoes (very cool sandals with fur)..so I was trying them on while my mom went to the floor right above me to look at clothes. She told me to just wait for her at the shoe department and she would come back down to meet me after. Unfortunately the shoes I wanted were out of my size (the very nice sales person was extremely apologetic) so I then stood around waiting for my mom.
She took a long time and then it was 7pm..so I started panicking as we would be late for dinner. I hate being late especially when we're on these tours. Several years ago when we went on a tour to Europe we were always the late ones due to shopping..again lol. So I didn't want it to happen again. We would still have to walk about 10min to the restaurant and I wanted to go at a slow pace so I could take photos along the way. I thought of going up to look for her but then I was afraid she'd be coming down at the same time (on the opposite escalator)..then not see me there and start walking around again..etc. I also didn't know if I would even find her upstairs as it was a huge store so maybe I should've just stood there to wait. By the way, my mom isn't able to use her cell phone here so I couldn't call or text her either.
So I thought..I'd quickly run up, have a quick look around then go right back down. Well I started running up the escalator and tripped and fell almost immediately lol. I thought to myself "I'm sure these extremely nice and polite Japanese people will help me up and ask if I'm ok!" Turns out they are only extremely nice when they have to be..like at the store or restaurant lol. I had suspected maybe it was all a show, as some are really exaggerated with their gestures. Maybe I encountered the exception because some of them are probably actually nice all the time..but the girl I fell right beside just looked down at me then back to her phone. Same with the people a few steps above who saw. It was soo embarrassing hahah. Very painful too. I don't really care about how they reacted but I just noticed it is a huge difference from how they are in other situations. Reminds me of when bartenders or servers are extremely nice to you in the restaurant then pretend they don't know you on the street.
I got a few painful scratches (see my Snapchat/"leftbanked" for a pic). I seem to always injure my legs when I'm on vacation (last year I got 80+ mosquito bites on my legs while in Hong Kong). Anyway I ended up picking myself back up, finding my mom upstairs then we rushed to the restaurant and was maybe 15min late.
Sorry to hear about your injury, hope you're well!
ReplyDeleteThanks! At least this time I didn't almost pass out from the fall (like what happened when you visited hahha)
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