The Eye of Patrick

This past weekend was a long weekend in Japan and as a result I took an extra holiday to make it a 4 day holiday for me. The reason was that I was going to go to Osaka to see Kansai Gaidai, it was the school that I studied at while I was on exchange before in Japan. They were also having a festival, which was another reason for my visit.

The journey to Osaka started with me catching a bus ride from one of the high school teachers to Sapporo. He was heading in the direction of Sapporo and said he could give me a drive. This was helpful in saving me some money in transportation costs.

I was going to stay in Sapporo for the night and catch the early flight to Osaka to maximize my time, as it was impossible to get from Shimokawa to Chitose airport to catch a 10 o’clock flight if I left the morning of the flight.

While in Sapporo I met up with my predecessor and we swapped stories about our lives in Shimokawa. I asked him for advice about some of the issues I faced in my life here.

After that I headed back to my hotel and went to sleep, as when I am excited for something I have difficulty sleeping and I didn’t want to feel exhausted when I got to Osaka.

The next day would come and I would head to the airport and try to check in. But not before I realized I had forgotten my ticket. I kept my cool and thought it would not be a problem and that they could issue a new ticket. So I went to the ticket section and explained my problem. She listened and started typing away at her computer, at times I thought it was good and then it went bad. She said “sorry we do not have enough information to locate your reservation” and I was starting to get really worried I might not make it. But then another person asked me, what time was your flight at. Before I had said 11:50, but then I thought maybe it was the 10:50 flight and she did her search and found my ticket. So I escaped the dread of losing something for one more moment, but this trend of losing things would continue through my trip as you will see.

I would get on my flight and arrive in Osaka at around 1:15 pm. I was in a hurry to get to the city and start having fun. So when I saw a local train I hopped on and kept going. But down the line I saw an express train and decided to switch. But it seems in my desire to make the faster train I had forgotten my new digital SLR. I was in panic mode that I thought I could switch back to the previous local train and find it. I did that, and still I could not find the camera, so I went to the station masters office at Namba station and explained my situation. All he could do was bring out a sheet of paper that told me that they would know if they had it by tomorrow at lunch and give me another paper with the number to call.

After losing my camera, my level of happiness dropped greatly and my happy experience in Osaka was not looking so happy. I made my way to the hotel and checked in and hopped on a trip to get to Kyoto to meet up with some friends I had agreed to meet. They were doing the temple thing, and as I had seen Kyoto before I was not as inclined to join them. But one thing about Kyoto that makes me happy each time is the Wendy’s they have, I think every time I go there I make sure to have a meal there, The spicy chicken combo is heaven.

With my fast food fix out of the way I met up with my friends and we went to a restaurant and had dinner. I think we had Japanese style steak. The steaks here are razor thin compared to the steaks I had back home in Alberta or Brazil. But it was a satisfying meal and we headed to a sports bar and played some pool before calling it a night. But that was not before my trip would continue to throw surprises in my way. It was in Kyoto that I had gotten on a express train for Osaka or I thought, but half way it stopped and I had to switch to a local train and then switch back to a high speed train. This made my 48 minute journey a 1h 30 minutes and made me get home at 12:30 am.

The next day was fairly uneventful, except for the fact that I went to Nara and went to Tōdai-ji (東大寺). I had been there before, but I wanted to go there and get my fortune told before I called to see if they had my camera. I am not a superstitious person, but I was nervous and thought that if I got a good fortune, that somehow provide certainty in them having my camera. So when I got my fortune and it mentioned that I would find something I lost in the most unlikely place. I knew they had it, and when I called them they had it. It was from that moment on that my trip improved. (Continue next post)