Please keep writing, it’s interesting to have a different perspective of Japan other than the bog standard Japanese food and wacky Japanese culture (read: gadgets) type stuff in all the other blogs.

I like Osaka. There’s so much to do and see, but you are right, there’s not that much touristy stuff around for sightseeing purposes. I don’t mind that though because just walking around observing the people and looking at products for their daily usage and eating their food is good enough for me. That’s my idea of sightseeing; looking at all the different things they have and use. What I’d love is to go to a local supermarket, not the kind in the posh department store basements but the kind the housewives go to for their daily bargains. Unfortunately those are probably all based out in the residential areas and I have no idea how to locate one.

I’ve never actually been to Nara. My next goal is Hokkaido or Okinawa!

Thanks for the comment! It’s single comments like that that make me want to continue writing about things here in Japan. I really wish I was writing about brighter topics, but Japan seems to be in a bit of a dark patch at the moment regarding crime and suicides, so I felt that I should write about it.

How did you find Osaka anyway? I like it as a city, but feel it is a city made for the people who live there, rather than tourists. It’s a nice hub for travelling to places like Kyoto, Nara and others in the Kansai region though.

I could’ve been there. My partner and I have just arrived home from Osaka where we spent a disproportionate amount of time in DenDen Town. It was a toss-up between Tokyo and Osaka this time for us and Osaka won through only because airtickets there were cheaper. So we could well have been in Tokyo shopping in Akihabara when that incident happened! I’m glad we weren’t cos if I’d been chased with a knife I’d probably have tripped over my laces.

When I was in Osaka the biggest stories on the news were 1) some old lady owner of a high-end restaurant announced its liquidation, 2) the remains of a young lady who was murdered by a psycho was found in water pipes near her home, and 3) a man who randomly stabbed two youths and a lady in kyoto fled to and was sighted in Shinjuku. I could be wrong though as I know very little Japanese!