Osaka, But Not Really Osaka

Before the jump: footage from the Osaka portion of my travels in Japan! After the jump: fragmentary jim-jams about that portion. You know the drill by now, right? Admit that you do.

This post is mostly a storage bin for that video; I'll have lots more to say about Naoshima in a future post, and probably a few more aimless thoughts on Osaka, but we're starting here, ok?

So, as it says on the tin, this was Osaka But Not Really. I spent three nights in Osaka, which city felt the most comprehensible to me of all my stays in Japan: it lacked Tokyo's sort of alienating verticality (more on that in a future post), and unlike Kyoto, which I otherwise loved, it had extremely effective and navigable public transit citywide. It's a big food city, but not a pretentious one: just tons of delicious eats at every price point, in a lot of diverse hoods. I would love to spend more time here someday!

Osaka: a good place where SOME people hang out I GUESS

...Largely because I did not spend much time there in the three/four days I was ostensibly visiting Osaka. By now my JR pass had kicked in, and so I went on a bit of a spree. The Osaka I knew I wanted to experience was mostly its nightlife (music, bars, restaurants) and so I kept jumping bullet trains. Principally, that meant Hiroshima and Naoshima. In practice, this was less than it should have been: Hiroshima in particular is a city that, if you want to pay a visit to reflect on the atrocities of nuclear devastation, you want more than a 4-6 hour visit. And Naoshima... well, more on that in my next post, but I've spent most of my post-Japan time yelling at my friends to make damn well sure they spend the night on the island.

Notwithstanding these shortcomings, I'm glad I saw what I saw. It still feels important to mark the human cost of the bombing of Hiroshima, as a reminder that every politician who is eager to get into war ought to be hurled out of office (ideally from a high window), and as a reminder that the response to horrific violence can be a turn to peace; the beautiful park around the A-Bomb Dome is a living and growing testament to that. And Naoshima was probably a highlight of the trip - the island itself, but also that wonderful multi-modal voyaging trek of trains/busses/ferries that get you there. (It can be simpler, but only if you plan ahead and don't - as I did - decide in the train station that yeah, let's go to that island today. Je regrette rien!)

One great thing about boats is that I don't think I've ever been on a boat where everybody else was super chill and laid back about being on a boat. If I'm ever bored by boats, please throw me overboard until I properly appreciate how great it is to be on a boat! Boats: the airplanes of the seas, let's all start a club about how much we love B O A T S

So, more on Naoshima soon, and a little the-Osaka-of-Osaka post too. Maybe the only purpose this post serves is as a reminder to myself: hey idiot, remember how exhausted you were when you got to Tokyo? Maybe next time you travel, give yourself actual breaks and don't sprint around all the time! You nerd.

The other thing about this stretch relates to my earlier post on photography: there was a lot of delight in this stretch that was unphotographable. I went to see Bunraku at a special New Year's performance, and was delighted and astonished by the brilliant puppetry. (I was also getting sick and didn't have a translation earpiece/subtitling machine, though, so I called it quits at intermission, only two of the four hours in.) No cameras there, obviously. And while you'll see Naoshima a bit in my footage, the really stunning stuff - the highlight-of-the-entire-trip stuff - was in a handful of sites that didn't allow photography.

This doesn't bother me (again, see that earlier post, this was probably partly why those experiences were so moving), but it generates a funny feeling when I watch the footage. These little films are always cut to music that was in my head at this point of the trip, and they become little memory machines, but on this one I feel the elisions more than in most of my travel videos. I assume some of that will fade with time, but right now this feels a bit gappy.

I might like other photos from this trip more than this one, but as of right now I can't think of what they would be! This event (which I'll describe in a future post) was dopey but also great. Pretty much just like me, eh? [Waggling my eyebrows until I pull a facial muscle, to the endless irritation of every person I've ever met in my life]

Anyhow. That's this post! Enjoy that video (and for real, enjoy Youth in a Roman Field, they are the knees of an entire swarm of bees) and come back soon for more ill-considered scribblings!