Yeah, I didn't explain say much about the Osaka trip. I was there for the weekend to work with the company I am doing weddings with. It was an interesting place to visit, and just as interesting was the ride there on the Shinkansen. For someone coming from a country that rarely uses trains to transport people, the bullet train is a wonder. When you hit about 200kmh or so, there is something almost scary about seeing another train coming at you at the same speed. And for the two seconds it takes for the trains to pass at 400kmh, a few feet from each other, you are thankful for the precision of Japanese technology.

Osaka was populous and never-ending, which I tend to like. The downtown section is called Umeda and it takes shopping to a whole new level. On top of one of the shopping centres is a massive red ferris wheel that will let you and your date take a romantic look over the city, for only about ten bucks. That is pretty cheap for Japan.

And apparently Osaka is one of the few cities in Japan that has a "bad area", like an inner city in North America. Generally, real estate estate prices here are so high that "white flight" is not really an option (though I guess it wouldn't be "white" flight here, would it...) so poverty stricken inner city areas generally don't happen. I am interested to see this area, how bad it really is, because I know that for a lot of Japanese, the desire for complete security causes their definition of a "bad area" and mine to be very far apart.