Tales of Nippon: Diciembre 30, December 30th

Nuestra travesia a pie comienza en Osaka, nuestro hotel estando en lo que la guia llama "la zona mas decadente de la ciudad". Nos hicimos camino a travez de un parque y un zoologico (que estaba cerrado) hasta llegar a un templo importante de la ciudad.

Despues de eso fuimos a lo que realmente nos interesaba de la ciudad, Den Den Town, considerado el hermano menor de Akihabara, aunque en nuestra opinion en cuestion de figuras de manga, anime y video juegos lo supera, en electronicos seguramente no, y en manga estara igual. Estuvimos siete horas recorriendo esa zona de la ciudad, viendo muchas tiendas y comprando. Nos detuvimos a comer en un puesto de ramen (al estilo Naruto, aunque con puertas de cristal en lugar de cortinas, cosa que agradecimos debido al frio). Seguimos nuestro recorrido, centrandonos mas en tiendas de figuras y video juegos, pues se hacia tarde.

Para cenar llegamos a una zona muy animada de la ciudad, llena de luces, restaurantes y mucha gente por la calle. Casi todo estaba saturado, estuvimos dando vueltas un buen rato hasta encontrar un sitio donde preparaban okonomiyaki, que estaba delicioso.

Volvimos al hotel no muy tarde para llegar a tiempo al ofuro, un banyo tipico japones cerrado (como el que se ve en los dibujos como Chin-Chan). Habia bastante gente, aunque yo no tuve problema alguno y me duche y luego meti al agua caliente sin reparo alguno, a mi amigo no le fue tan sencillo, le intimidaba un poco el que hubiese tanto hombre duchandose y en el agua caliente al mismo tiempo.

Our on-foot journy starts in Osaka, our hotel was in what the guide described as the "most decay part of the city". We made our way trough a park and a zoo (wich was closed) until we got to an important temple in the city.

Then we headed for what really interested us in Osaka, Den Den Town, which is considered Akihabara's little brother, but in our opinion it's quite better if you are looking for manga, anime and video game figures, it's probably not better in electronics, and in manga is just about the same. We spent 7 hours going around that area, visiting many stores and buying. We made a stop to eat at a ramen place (Naruto style, but with glass dors instead of cloth courtains, we where grateful due to the cold outside). We continued, centering ourselves on figures and video game stores, since it was getting late.

For dinner time, we arrived at a very lively part of the city, filled with lights, restaurants and a lot of people on the streets. Almost everything was full, we had to circle around for a while until we finally came to a place where they served oknomiyaki, wich was delicious.

We went back to the hotel not to late so we could make it time to the ofuro, a typical indoor Japanse bath (like the ones seen in animes such as Chin-Chan). There where quite some poeple in there, I didn't had any problem, I went in, took a shower and then got into the hot water without a worry, but it wasn't that easy for my friend, he got intimidated by so many men shawering and in the hot watter at the same time.