Nanba

Today's Japanese Word of the Day:
いたい
Itai
(Noun: Pain)

Cheerful way to begin the post, huh?

Now, they didn't tell us what, exactly, this place was called, besides its being in a city called Nanba. And so that's what I'm going to call it. I'm sure that this mall has an actual name, since it's supposed to be all famous and all. I just don't know what that name might be.

We came to Nanba in the evening after a rather long walking trip around Shitennoji (the big gorgeous temple). We didn't get to Nanba until after visiting the Super Potato and had to walk a fair distance to get there, so the upshot was that it was starting to get dark when we got our free time there. That, and most of my memories of Nanba are veiled by the memory of INTENSE PAIN in my feet. So, I don't have a whole lot of pictures, but honestly, how many detailed posts about malls do you really want to see?

This was a smaller mall that we passed through on our way to Nanba. According to Ayaka (our guide), the architecture is really cool, but the shopping is only "blah." We didn't spend much time here, but it was cool enough looking to take a picture of.

Here's another one of those city scape pictures. We crossed this street and ate dinner at one of those shops there. I think it's the tall shop with the yellow writing next to the tall, white and red shop. I didn't actually eat anything there because I wasn't hungry, but I did drink some water, and it was good. So was listening to my classmates. They're all very witty, and love competing in wit with each other.

This is the food display at the restaurant where we [everyone else] ate. I love these things.

Alright, so we finally made it to Nanba! These halls... well, they're kind of like City Creek. They're roofed, but they open out onto fully-fledged streets, with cars driving on them and everything. It's like an open-air mall... except not. Apparently it's also a rather famous, well-attended mall, because it was CROWDED.

And that head there right in the front? That belongs to Miles. All of the Japanese girls think he's the cutest thing ever.

Proof that Americans aren't the only ones who can pull out disturbingly strange advertisement schemes.

Ahaha, I hadn't noticed that guy looking bored in the foreground! This is one of the more truly open-air bits to the mall. Lots and lots of people.

This giant crab, hanging above the restaurant's door, was not only big and cool, but also animatronic. Its claws and eyes moved.

The city, as seen off a bridge thing over a canal (which I don't have a terribly good picture of)...

...and on the same bridge thing, the Glico Man!

According to Ayaka, the Glico Man is really famous. I saw lots of people taking pictures of him, and at least one person mimicking his stance for a picture.

Here's another picture, this one sideways and all lit up for night, after we'd had our free time and were meeting back on the bridge.

In my last picture for Nanba (I TOLD you it was a short post) you can see some of the canal, again off the same bridge that the Glico Man eternally looks at. If you look closer...

...you can see a cameraman.

When we got back from our half hour of free time in this giant mall, there were a bunch of people crowded around this side of the bridge. Turns out, they were filming a movie down here, and everyone was trying to watch and take pictures.

After that, we went home. Ayaka lived super close to Nanba, so she explained to us how to navigate the trains to get back to the dorms and we got to do it on our own. We still almost got on a train going the opposite direction. Good thing we asked someone, huh?

On the last train on our way back, the other people in the car slowly emptied until we were the only ones there. We immediately started celebrating and shouting and enjoying our private car, since there was no one we could meiwaku. It was a lot of fun.

Allow me to briefly explain meiwaku. It means "bother" or "annoyance," and it is essentially the slogan by which people in live in Japan, paired with sonkei, "respect." Since everyone is so packed together and overpopulated, it is very important that everyone sonkei each other and not be a meiwaku. That means there's very little graffiti, pretty much no litter on the ground, you can't talk loudly outside at night, it's rude to blow your nose in public... pretty much don't do anything that would annoy anyone else. We were very carefully told all about this on two separate occasions by the program leaders, since the students last year set off fireworks in the boys' dorm's yard and all of the neighbors complained.

We've essentially taken meiwaku and turned it into a joke verb. Person A meiwakked Person B. We couldn't meiwaku in the private car because it was a private car. Very funny every time we say it.

Okay, that about wraps it up. Thanks to you guys for reading and leaving comments! Love you all, and I'll talk to you later!

~Amanda