The Wall of Heat

Got into Osaka last night on a good flight on Hawaiian Airlines (HA449 HNL-KIX).  The 767-300ER they are currently using on this route is older, but it is clean and in good repair.  The comparable JAL aircraft have so many hours on them, they look a lot more beat-up inside, and the “personal contact surfaces” like the seat material and armrest pads are a lot more worn and dreary (and possibly suffused with funk).  This one didn’t have the personal video screens, so that meant cooler seats and more seat width for me, since I was only one of two native English speakers on board, so I got “volunteered” into the exit row.  Passenger demographic was mostly young couples, instead of the older crowd on JAL.  They actually ran the A/C nice and cold, such that I actually had to use the blanket, as opposed to JAL, where my back is usually soaked with sweat.  After a turbulent approach over Awaji-shima and Kobe, we were brought straight into KIX without any waiting or holding pattern.

Immigration was crazy fast, again because I was one of two non-Japanese on board the flight.  Luckily, this flight didn’t arrive just after a flight from Korea or China, so the “foreign passports” line was empty.  After grabbing my bag, I was on total autopilot getting myself to Yotsuba-shi before it got too late.  The walkway between the terminal and the train stations was intensely hot and humid, but this was only to get progressively worse as I worked my way to Namba on the Nankai-sen, then hoofed the underground maze over to the Osaka transit chikatetsu Yotsubashi-sen, Namba-eki.  I missed paying attention to the directions on a sign at the exit from the underground, so I got a little lost on the surface walk over to the station entrance, but it all worked out in the end.  Had some inexpensive udon for dinner (the place had kake-udon for 200-yen!).  A little note – Osaka subway stations and connecting passages have a definite lack of escalators, but they date back to the turn of last century, so I guess they can be forgiven… a little.

This morning I braved the oppressive heat that hit me like a wall outside the hotel entrance door and went to walk around the Osaka castle until the Osaka history museum opened.  The main part of the castle is reconstructed, so I had no real interest in going inside.  The place was crowded with runners who use the precincts as a training ground, and hordes of Chinese tourists.  It’s a little funny to think that the bubble-economy descendants of those who were oppressed by the Japanese during the war are bouying the Japanese economy with little thought of what their parents’ or grandparents’ generation would think about visiting the “enemy”.  I guess it’s not much different from Japanese honeymooners visxiting Hawaii.

In the afternoon, it was down to Kishiwada to check out the Danjiri-matsuri.  It was crazy hot, crazy sunny, and crazy crowded.  A good percentage of the population of Osaka was there, along with several foreign tourists and local expats.  Teams of runners dragged massive wooden shrine-topped carts along the streets of town, forcing the steering-less carts to drift through right-angle turns at intersections.  This time, there didn’t appear to have been any overturns and injuries of deaths, but when the ambulances had to show up for the occasional heat-stroke victim, they had to yield to the cart processions!  The crowds down by the waterfront were like 11:55 PM Tokyo Yamanote-sen crowds.  I got all kinds of transfer-sweat, and got attacked by boobs on various occasions.  The return trains were just as bad, but at least the A/C was cranking inside.  Standing all the way back to Namba sucked nuggets though.  By the time i got back to the hotel, the bottoms of my feet and my knees were exploding with pain.

Tonight it’s down to the third floor to find the coin laundry to salvage the clothes that were prematurely funkified today.  I really hate this 33C weather.  This morning was supposedly 25C, but with the humidity, it felt like 30C.  As the sun heated the air, the humidity dropped, but of course the temperature rose.  It actually didi feel more comfortable in the afternoon than the morning though, even with the starting signs of heat stroke and sunburn.  Did I say I hate summer in Japan… OK, according to the calendar, it’s technically Autumn already, but tell that to the weather!