14th September 2013
Today we left our beautiful hotel in Suidobashi (I highly
recommend both the suburb as a place to stay and Niwa as a hotel), Tokyo to
continue on down to Osaka. We have done this trip with no planning whatsoever
besides booking accommodation and had not really thought through pre-reserving
our seats on the Shinkansen. The lovely gentleman at Suidobashi station happily
booked us some seats on the 13:03 Shinkansen to Osaka from Tokyo station, which
was entirely covered by our JR Rail Passes, including the seat reservation (a
saving of about 14000Y).
We battled our way through Tokyo station and found our Shinkansen.
I loved the Shinkansen travel: we need these in Aus! The train was sleek and
fast, reaching speeds of up to 300km/hour. The seats were comfortable and had
huge amounts of leg room - about twice, if not 3 times the amount of leg room
on standard plane seats. We were able to store most of our baggage in the racks
above and kept 1 large bag in front of us, which easily fitted due to the room.
The chairs also reclined back ridiculous amounts allowing for easy sleep.
Once we arrived in Osaka we swapped to the local Midosuji line
(tickets about 230Y, not covered by the JR Rail Pass) and walked from the stop
to our hotel, where we got ridiculously lost. The informations clerk had told
us to walk down the Subway to Kitahama Subway station and walk from there (You
can walk quite a bit of Osaka underground in the Subway), but we couldn't get
our bearings underground and went up the surface to ask some poor hapless
Japanese lady for directions. She was amazing. I don't know if I have mentioned
how much I love the Japanese people, but gee I wish Australians were more like
them. They will do EVERYTHING in their power to help you. This beautiful lady,
who didn't speak a bar of English, basically walked 15 minutes out of her way
to lead us directly to our hotel, which she didn't even know where was and
would stop and ask directions along the way, in appalling heat. When we arrived
at the hotel we had her and another man whom we'd asked directions from
basically lead us right in.
I pretty much decided I will become 'Japanese' in my principles
when I return home, although in Australia it is not as safe to help people out
unfortunately. Japan feels much much safer than home.
15th September, 2013
Today almost didn't go as planned. Initially when we were looking
at booking Japan, we had decided to be in Osaka for this date specifically, as
we knew the Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri was on, and wanted to experiance a
Japanese festival.
I know I said I wouldn't talk Diabetes in this blog, and would
save it for my other blog, but in this case it affected our day. Last night I
went to bed with 2 failed set changes (and massive bruises from 1 to boot), and
a change in insulin, after having sat at about 17 for 12 or so hours. Couldn't
get my BGs down no matter how many corrections I did. Anyway, after the change
of insulin they came down...and kept going down. I basically spent the night
battling hypos. At one point my pump suspended itself and flashed a message on
the screen to get help - it presumed I was unconscious.
So basically zero sleep for either of us, so we slept in until
10am (I had planned for us to be at the festival at 10am). After dragging
ourselves still tired from bed, we discovered it was raining, so we went down
to ask the hotel staff if they knew the festival was still on. The reply was:
"Yes, in rain. But maybe typhoon or hurricane later, not so good". As
you can imagine, we didn't feel too safe with that comment.
We decided to risk it anyway and continued on to the festival,
arriving at just after 1pm.
Oh my gosh! It was amazing. We have nothing like it in Australia.
Scratch that, health and safety wouldn't allow it into Australia.
It was raining, there were crowds, umbrellas everywhere. The
streets were lined with Japanese festival food (mmm Kara-Age chicken!!!),
lanterns were hung (and thoughtfully sealed in rain-proof casings). The streets
were closed off and throngs of people lined the sidewalks.
Every 5 minutes or so you could hear a loud banging of drums and
slowly small figures dressed in Black shirts and white pants would start to
trickle into the blocked off streets. Their numbers would grow as the drums
came nearer, and you could see them pulling a large, thick rope behind them.
The pullers looked exhausted, their white pants see through in the cold rain
and sheer tiredness etched onto their faces. I think even their braided hair
looked beat. Add to that fact that they were all children - both boys and girls
- and I was amazed at their determination (The festival goes over 2 days and
starts at 10am and finished late afternoon to night, so who know how long they
had been at it for).
Hugh & I were positioned at a corner, and this is where all
the action happened. After 20 or 30 meters of the pullers ran past you would
see a float approach the corner, coming from an inside mall (Yep they pulled
the float through an undercover arcade-style mall). The pullers stopped and
readied themselves to heave on the rope. They would take off in a sprint, faces
pained and round the corner. The float would hurtle along with them, rounding
the corners and almost bowling into the street sides (I did hear somewhere
shops keepers take out an insurance during the festival in case a float smashes
into their shop.) Atop each float was some guys who must have had amazing
balance, as they danced and jumped like crazy as the float sped around the
corner.
Insane. I loved it & didn't want to leave.
Some pullers. As they ran around, other children with paddles beat their bums in attempts to make them pull harder and faster.
One of the floats
The Lanterns
Pullers getting a run up around the corner
The undercover arcade/mall filled with people. When the floats approached the area had to be cleared for the floats to pass through under here.
A float that just
came around the corner
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