Eyal's Travels

I spent the past week in the Kansai region of Japan. This includes Osaka, Hyogo, Kyoto, and Wakayama among other prefectures in the Western part of the country. Many people compare East and West in Japan to North and South in the United States. The dialects of Japanese are different and people in the West are said to be more outgoing and friendly.



These are some of my friends from study abroad two years ago. We got together on Wednesday to play a 3 hour long game of Ultimate Frisbee!

I also had the pleasure of meeting up with Russ, a good friend from Florida who now lives and works in Osaka.



That's him with his girlfriend Yoko (who is also a friend of mine). Russ has been kind enough to let me use his apartment while I'm in the area. In fact he even invited me to come along with him and his students (he teaches English) to Universal Studios Japan...



USJ is pretty similar to the Orlando version except everything is in Japanese. Also, there is a roller coaster called Hollywood Dream in which you can select music to play while you are on the ride. They also have interesting parades...



This is a good time to point out an interesting facet of Japanese Culture. Many people see a contrast between Old and New or East and West in Japan. In reality, things aren't that simple. Japan has historically been very good at taking new or foreign things and making them Japanese. This is very much the case with USJ.

Another good example would be the sphagetti restaurant I went to on Saturday with my friends Eriko and Natalie.



Sphagetti is a typical Italian dish but this Japanese restaurant served it in a Japanese style.



The dark green is seaweed and the pink is tarako (fish eggs). These two very Japanese ingredients were combined with sphagetti to make something new (and tasty)!

Earlier that day, I had met up with Natalie in Kobe. My friends Yuki and Nanae were with us too, but I know they prefer not to have any pictures of them posted on the internet. Kobe is about a 30 minute train ride outside of Osaka. It used to be one of the few ports were foreigners were allowed to trade and thus its atmosphere is very similar to Yokohama.



It just so happens that Kobe was having an international culture festival that day!









Kobe is famous for it's Samba and Jazz clubs and has one of the most diverse populations in Japan. Of course, that made for a very interesting festival.



This video is sideways, but it shows a Turkish ice cream stand we ate at in the festival. If you notice, the ice cream is much more sticky than normal American ice cream. However it tastes very good. I highly recommend it if you ever have the chance.

Another pleasant surprise was a dance competition. Here is a short video...



This dance team is made up of adults, teenagers, and children. It is common for neighborhoods and families to get together in order to participate in festivals. This has the very positive effect of strengthening community ties.

Of course, as in almost any large Japanese festival, the streets were crowded.



I finished off the weekend meeting up with Russ and Yoko again. This time, we were joined by Simon, Taisei, Mio, Go, and Mai. I was good friends with Go and Simon at UF and had the pleasure of meeting the others for the first time. We started off with Karaoke and then went to a nearby Ushinabe restaurant.



Ushinabe is a sort of stir-fry in which meat and vegetables are cooked in their own juices. This means that you don't really use any extra oils or fats, which makes for a very healthy, tasty meal. Of course, it was all-you-can-eat so we had to be sure we didn't get too excited and make a mess...







We ended the night with a nice walk to Osaka castle. This is the old castle of Hideyoshi Toyotomi, the military dictator that united Japan after centuries of civil war.



Simon and I decided to see if the castle walls were really good enough to keep out invaders...



Of course, we didn't climb up all the way.

That's all I've got to say for now. Be sure to e-mail me any news from the States!