Day Seventeen: Namba, Tennoji, Shinsaibashi

from then its just Osaka city.

Osaka is known for a lot of its fine restaurants and has been given the nickname “The town of overeating” in Japan. Im currently working on finding the city in japan known as “the city of oversleeping” and from there I can plan my next vacation.

Osaka was lined with the homeless it seemed. maybe it was just a sunday night or something, but it also seemed like it was a lot dirtier than anywhere else in japan I had been. the rules that were usually very strict on recycling your garbage seemed completely non-existent.

the sections of the city we were in seemed just as bright as Tokyo. as Osaka is japans second largest city, and something like the 7th largest in the world or something like that, I reckon I had expected that kind of thing.

Osaka is also the home of my favorite Japanese food, takoyaki, fried octopus dumplings.

I didn’t find a joint that sold them that night, but rest assured tomorrow is a brighter day.


so tim shows me the namba, shinsaibashi, tennoji, and amerika-mura areas of the city.


on the way back, just for kicks, tim lin takes me through the red-light district of the city, which basically looks like everywhere else, except for one minor difference.

down this road, each special shop has a white, lit-up sign above it. im not sure what each sign says, maybe a name of a person or a business.

below each sign there was a lobby that you could see the inside of. it was brightly lit, has lots of little flowers and other rubbish, and an adorable pink pillow where a lovely woman of the night was sitting, smiling.

an old woman was sitting beside each young woman, shouting for us to come in. I politely declined each time this happened, which was very very very frequent. there was an entire neighborhood made up of these small openings where old women sat trying to get guys to hook up with their women.

it was wild, and crazy, and pretty sick

at the last door, I was just curious how much it would cost to go out for a coke or some ice cream with one of these women, so I asked the old woman at sitting in the house

10000yen, equal to about $100 gets you 15 minutes, 20000yen, $200 gets you 30.

and you guessed it, for 40000yen, about $400, you can spend an hour with one of these classy young women! thats just enough time to watch “piglets big movie” with them from start to finish

I researched this after we got back to tims house cause I didn’t see any cops, and firefighters, or many guys walking around aside from me and tim.

apparently this is the only legalized red light district in the country. the police ignore it like it doesn’t exist, and you apparently aren’t supposed to take pictures anywhere on the road

but of course I did


I figure if these Japanese ladies are gonna be tricks for a living, they can at least let me take pictures of their neighborhood, and if they don’t like it, that’s fine, I don’t like what they do either.

me and tim walked further towards his house, as it turns out, he lived literally about 45 seconds away from the end of the red light district.

I slept a little more soundly that night knowing this.