Last days of Osaka and Back to Tokyo

May 26

We start a normal day, hunting for coffee shops in American village, seeing some stores for my own sake, and just wasting time until lunch.

For lunch we planned to fish for some food, so we head to the Fishing restaurant experience, and well that does take a big while.

Fishing is all about patience, and these fish have much more than us, probably wasting an hour on trying to put the fishing rod here or there, with zero remorse.

We order some drinks, and M decides to just go for a lobster, even that was a chalange to grab, but after a while I finally manage to. I had some normal fish and other bits.

We stick to the area, we find a massage parlour and enjoy some thai massage, we realize it's almost 4pm, no big plans for dinner except finding a really nice bar, as M said.

So we look over some lists and come up with at least 5 or 6 bars to hit in one night. They are all on very touristy sites so we expect a lot of foreigners...

We head to one called Space Station, which is a tiny crowded place, with all the retro consoles, with as many controllers as possible, playing Mortal Kombat, Marvel vs Capcom, Mario Kart, etc... we play a few rounds, have a beer and decide to head to the next one, as the next one is nearby.

We stop by a takoyaki place, and grab a few, M says why not another beer, we do, he grabs a whisky...

The next one was highly praised on the list... we arrive at a very subtle building with zero indicators, I know we need to take the lift, not sure the floor but I confidently march on.

There are 2 more foreigners with us in the lift, I assume they were heading for the same place... M asked them, they said yes, and they decided to follow us because of how confidently I walked in. M explained I do that even without having any knowledge, he was right.

We arrive at the place, called Natuya, and it's crowded for 4 people, so we retutn to the lift, and I ask our lift friends what was next on their list, they said actually nothing, I said, then join us...

I showed them the plan, of a few bars remaining, there was an american style bar, guitars hanging all around, we sit in a corner, grab another drink, play some Jenga between the four of us, one french girl, one Swiss guy, working in the watches industry, which makes sense.

The conversation flows, drinks help and as the bar was pretty average we say time to hit another one, we go down to a mall, which has two things happening, one extremely quiet and private whisky bar, very carefully detailed, a good selection, a good bartender, and the outside are of the rest of the mall is having some alcoholic drink party, we first sit down inside the whisky place and get served.

Very detail oriented bartender prepares our drinks, Kazuhiro Matsumoto. we only have one, as the rule of bar-hopping continues, we all say thank you, I decide to pay with my ring, to get some more points in our new group, unfrotunately the bar does not accept touch payment, so I pay with card and we head off, I tell to our newfound friends to just pay for the next drinks. The bartender leaves his card with a message in english, wishing us to be back in Japan soon.

We go outside and join the alcoholic beverage party, it goes well, we even chat with some locals who are around, share instagrams and such.

At this point, M says we still didn't have much of a dinner, and he wants something filling, a pizza or something, I think for a moment and realize we are near the memory alley of osaka, where a lot of foods can be ordered in one table, where we were before, so I lead the group into it and tell about a few more bars that await us. We have a good time getting something that is considered pizza in this place. We wrap it up and head to the building next to us, the hotel converted into singular bars. After a round on the first floor, we find a simple place with interesting music, sit down and order a few more drinks.

Unfortunately M is feeling quite spaced out, plus the smoking atmosphere of the bar does not help, he says he needs to go, and therefore I exchange my contact with our newfound friends and head out to grab a taxi with M , because even though its 1PM, he was trying to get a metro.

We arrive home, and go to sleep, he feels pretty wrecked, I feel fine at least until the next day, no hangover or anything.

May 27

I wake up at an unusual early hour and decide to head for a walk, just anywhere, call London and chat away, while walking in some temple direction, pass by a few early risers as me, some shop owners.

At one point I understand that I've walked too far, take a few pictures of temples and dogs, faster to grab a train back as M is waking up. We have the simplest Doutor Coffee breakfast, a panini or what they call a cannelloni.

We grab our bags and head towards the station that will return us back to Tokyo.

A quick hour or so on the train and we're back to the capital. For lunch we grab a steak restaurant in the station, it's quite rare to my taste, and a bit too oily, I become a bit sick after it, not sure if the combination of oil and all the alcohol was part of it.

Grabbing a cab to our hotel, leaving bags again and saying maybe we should go to an observatory, I check and a lot of them are sold out, but we still make way for Shibuya Sky. We check the line and it's indeed all sold out. I still say there's a view, we head towards the 12th floor and I take my time taking pictures, not probably the most exciting place for M, but he checks options for dinner.

After a few nearby restaurants, that are all busy on Saturday night, we decide to hop a few stations towards Roppongi Hills, we find an Indian Restaurant inside the main mall, which has a lovely view, and some big claims. We order some food, that starts to be quite spicy for me, or because I'm a bit sick of previous food, it just does not fall well. I become more and more full, and sick of it. M is also not impressed by food quality, he decides for the first time in his life leave a review.

We pay the bill and get out. One thing we agreed was to find a massage place for tommorow, we do, and there's an office nearby that we can use to book it. As we go along the streets, my food decides to come out the other way...

Not alcohol, as I did not have any this day, but just dizzyness, sweat, I feel like whatever M has had during the previous days, now passed to me. I get some water, still feeling fully conscious and aware, we head up towards the massage parlour. The thai woman, was very kind to us, and even helped me practice my japanese, by explaining some sentences better, as I was using all the words in my vocubalry to say when and what kind of massage we wanted.

She booked us for tomorrow 10.30 in Asakusa location. she allowed me to use the toilet to recompose myself. I told to M, lets grab a taxi and I can rest a bit. I do, now its my time to feel sick I guess, which is bad as I have a long journey ahead.

We rest as tomorrow there's a great sumo tournament happening, the finals of this year.

May 28

Wake up, massage around Asakusa, feeling a bit sick-ish but not too bad. After the massage, we grab a cab and head towards the Ryougoku area, the sumo museum and the stadium.

As it's hard to buy normal tickets, we bought a tour that explained a lot of things to us, a woman who was so passionate about Sumo, she gave us all the details and her personalized lists, and her nicknames for every player, their weight and age and other details... it was easy to fall in love with that way of explaining.

After a brief explanation we headed to our seats , in a big arena, the matches were already happening, but not the main event yet.

Match after match, we looked at the nicknames like "riceball", "flying monkey", "salt shaker", looked at weights and ages, and ranks, previous victories and tried to side with one or another... it was more intense than I thought it would be.

All matches last 10 seconds, but before the match there's always a few minutes of cold war, they look up and down their opponents and size them up. Most matches would end as someone would be pushed just a tiny bit over the line, but the most amazing ones ended when some people were completely thrown into the audience, the speed of camera men running away from a crashing 200kg guy was also a sight to see.

We end around 7pm with the main Yokozuna defending his title, all of the cerimonies complete and we decide to head off for M's last dinner, we chose a few sushi places nearby and walked to them.

A nice place, inexpensive and just what we needed, we don't order any weird fish, just the standards... I believe I feel better, but not fully recovered yet.

Instead of ending the night, I say, lets walk, as we go through Akihabara, I say why not another game, we jump into an arcade, start a darts game, and M is lucky this time, even though I'm in the lead he managed to score a lucky shot at the end that finished the game.

We feel happy to go down, I take a few more photos, catch the train and rest, he needs to go to the airport tomorrow, and I need to start going to Sapporo.