Osu Kannon and Sakae

It was a pretty relaxed weekend. I spent Saturday afternoon in the Osu Kannon (大須観音) area. Osu Kannon is a reconstruction of a 16th century temple. But what the area is better known for among the other exchange students (留学生) is the thrift shopping and bi-monthly flea market. It's a little bit like Akihabara. There’s several blocks of alleys with stores on each side. Aside from clothing, they sell touristy things and electronics. It’s over a mile long from one end to the other. A lot of the clothing in Osu Kannon is sold by weight, so poor students can go a little crazy getting Japanese clothing. There’s one store in particular that sells kimonos and all the associated gear for pretty reasonable prices.

All I bought was a couple souvenirs to take back to the U.S., but walking through the alley system was an adventure. I also found this music venue called Electric Lady Land. It looks like they’re going to have some pretty interesting, non-J-pop bands coming through, so I’m going to coerce some people into going to a concert with me.

Diana texted me while I was out shopping to say that a bunch of people were going to Sakae （栄）　that night, so I took the train over. I hadn’t been to Sakae at night yet, and that’s definitely the best time of day to see it (photos to come). We went to a club that my host mother later told me all of the exchange students somehow end up at, ID CafÈ. It has five floors of music, and an intimidating number of people. The hip hop floor was Westerner central. More specifically, it had a noticeable number of Western guys with their Japanese girlfriends. I don’t know where all these other foreigners have been hiding for two weeks, but I know where all them are on Saturday nights.

The cell phones are kind of space age as compared with American ones. You can watch television for free, you can send each other pictograms and animated text messages, and you can exchange phone numbers and email addresses via infrared. I bought my phone last week, and it was surprisingly easy. I didn’t want to take my chances on negotiating a phone contract with someone in Japanese, so I wandered into the SoftBank store intent on finding an English-speaking clerk.

I waltzed up to the first person I found, this clerk who had been moving closer slowly when he saw that I was a foreigner. I blurted out, “Eigo ga hanaseru hito ha imasuka?” (“Is there a person here who speaks English?”)

He gave me the thumbs up and said, “Me!”

Immediately after he said that, I noticed that he had a large, obvious button on his shirt that said, “I speak English.” Such is life.