O, OSAKA! — Beyond Ballard

You tested us, Osaka, you really did. You are a stolid city. You reminded us of Chicago, flat and business-like and industrial, a bit of a chip on your shoulder about Big Brother Tokyo and pretty Kyoto. You’re not so handsome, since you got the shit bombed out of you by the U.S. in WWII as a military-industrial complex.

We arrived after dark on the train and biked 16km through the city, through business districts and more upscale neighborhoods, and crossed the rivers to more modest areas. And more modest. And honestly, kind of gritty. Until finally we got to our apartment building near Shin Sekai (a down-at-heel entertainment district that kind of reminded me of Barry Manilow’s leading lady, Lola, at the Copa Cabana).

We couldn’t find a place to eat, and the kid was pipped, so we went out to the 24-hour Super Tamade [link] (ultra, ULTRA cheap food outlet that we’d never seen before—so cheap that we were actually a little nervous about buying the food and vigorously checked expiration dates). Here is an article that Brian found on Super Tamade http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2016/03/18/food/osakas-crazed-cheap-and-cheerful-supermarket-chain/

We liked living near a school, its big urban play field right below--it kind of reminded us of Salmon Bay (except that the school was probably 10 times bigger). We got to see how kids sports work here: with discipline! Warmups and drills are all in sync, all done with chants in unison. It still cracks me up to think of how our Howler Monkeys would respond if we tried that on.

The school near our flat, elevated train cruising past (another Chicago link)

The view of a radio/cell tower from the stairwell to the apartment.

We biked a LOT here, in part because the train system is more fragmented than in Tokyo, so you have to actually leave a station and go down the street to another sometimes. But more than Tokyo, EVERYONE in our 'hood and beyond does (see flat city note, above), and this was lovely.

This trike features a very handy umbrella holder for the rainy day.

Mamachari-bike for toting kids and stuff, both. In congested pedestrian/bike traffic, these riders are like cow-catchers on trains. Stay on their tail!

We had some delicious food—chiefly the Osaka regional versions of ramen and okonomiyaki (a large pancake with egg, cabbage, ginger, and other fillings: udon or soba, meats such as pork and squid and shrimp. In Hiroshima, the pancake was a distinct item, a crisp thin crepe. In Osaka, it is a fluffier affair, with the filling melded into it. We had silky, sumptuous beef tendon curry at a neighborhood shop that seated 4 at a time, 5 max.

Sure, there were a few places where pee was the predominant smell, sure we were hesitant for the first time about the kid going out on her own, sure there were a lot more homeless guys than anywhere else. But we also met some lovely people. One couple who owned a cafe boasting Northwest IPAs that was a great place for the kid to do her school work. Or the curry shop owner who grew up right in that neighborhood, but had lived in Britain for years working in the oil industry, and finally ditched it to open his curry shop because he couldn’t stand that people kept getting killed in accidents that were then pretty much shrugged off by the management (Oh, only 4 people died? Well that’s a relief…). He was like a one-man tourist office for Osaka, enthusing about the neighborhood in a way that was utterly charming, and he was really right—for the most part.

"This place is like a ghetto.” He said, waving his rice paddle, "but it is, like, the safest ghetto in the world." We all had a merry chuckle about that [foreshadowing].

We also did do some fun touristy things, following the young one's wish list of activities in Japan. First, the Instant Ramen Museum, where we got to learn the history of Cup Noodle, which was invented here by Momofuko Ando… AND MADE OUR OWN CUSTOM CUP NOODLES!!!!

After going through the museum, you can make your own formulation of Cup Noodles and decorate the package as you see fit prior to shrinkwrapping. Weirdly fun.

Then, of course, Universal Studios, where Brian and N visited Harry Potter world and enjoyed butter beer and roller coasters (not in that order).

Brian and I got a daytime visit to Dotonbori, a pedestrian riverside walk that is stuffed with crazy signage, delicious street food, and apparently every other tourist in the fucking city. The area around it is supposed to be the inspiration for the city in Bladerunner, and really, it is very close to that futuristic dystopian vision: giant TV screens; speakers blaring announcements and offers (competing with the TV audio, mind you); crazy giant plastic food; leering Billiken (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billiken); neon signs; flashing light displays; hawkers for restaurants; a fair few drunks staggering about….bearable during the day, but at night it is all a bit more overwhelming.

Regional specialty is octopus balls (fritters, not testes).

I find these things particularly distasteful. God of How Things Ought to Be, my ass.

So perhaps not altogether surprising that on our return night-time visit to wander and eat street food and "soak it all up," I pretty much "spit it all out" in a small-scale panic attack.

B & N were awesome, and after getting my act together in a quiet corner of a subay station, we ended up eating in a bizarre basement restaurant where each table was walled in--presumably for business people to get their party on--then fled home.

And of course, Osaka was the location of my daughter experiencing her first real incident of sexual harassment on our final night there. We were all already a bit on edge, ready to leave, and boom! Right after dinner brian was biking about 1/2 block ahead and I was about 20 feet back, and this nasty little man (also on a bike) came over to here and professed his love for her (grateful it wasn't more profane). ARGH! We were pumped up on adrenaline and cortisol biking home—-well, I certainly was.

I’ve posted about the depth of my sadness at having to have a long conversation about it, having to share how many times it’s happened to me—even in our little Seattle bubble. I hate how threatened and scared it made her feel, even though she handled it well and spoke about it openly to her friends on Instagram. I hate how not one but several friends wrote me to say that their own mothers hadn’t stood up for them at her age. I hate all the SHIT that women have just had to ignore or step around or stuff down.

And in a rueful way, I am also grateful that she got a relatively harmless whiff of what women are subjected to every day. Particularly before we go to Nepal, where in much of the country women are still treated like chattel and Western women are seen as promiscuous due to western media and, well, some not good choices on the part of some Western tourists.

So now she is forewarned and forearmed. We have felt in a delicate position. We don’t want our cautions about appropriate clothing to come across as blaming the (potential) victim in any way, and we don’t want to contribute to any sense of shame about her body. We share her sense of injustice at the larger cultural oppression of women, and that nothing justifies men treating women as objects. We generally respect her clothing choices. But, we said, we want to be respectful of culture, religion, and convention. We had a lot of conversations about sultural sensitivity, and indeed argued about it because she feels very attached to her sense of style. But the last one we had, the morning we were leaving for Nepal and after the sleaze attack, was almost hilariously simple. It felt like the cat was out of the bag, like she already found out that Santa doesn't exist. So I told her that men (and women) would make horrible assumptions because of their existing perceptions of women and that she would be subject to unwholesome and inappropriate advances. Her response was to ask my why I hadn’t told her that before.

And I realized that I had never wanted to even give voice to this, not only because of all my hangups about blame-the-victim and body image, but because I was still trying to shelter her from the reality of the world, from the harsh truths of the places we are traveling, the cultures we are moving through, and the way that women are perceived and treated. I don't want it to be true for her the way it was for me.

And of course the other issue that this all touches on is the fact that, she is, and we three are, The Other. We are obviously and radically different, especially her with flaming red hair, blue eyes and fairly consistent sunburn, zooming around on her clown-bike (that's what we call the Bromptons). She is taller than some of the men in Japan and many people confuse her for a college student. Little schoolchildren stare open-mouthed, or dart up on dares to say “hey-ro”. Older girls and boys in their matching uniforms, all looking sleek and groomed and the same to her, point or make semi-surreptitious comments in Japanese. We’ve had kids literally jump out of our way, which we laugh about. But she is a teen, so it really added up and bothered her one day very badly in the Hiroshima museum. The resulting talk about how it made her feel was a really good thing. At a deep level, she understands the privilege of just putting up with that for a while and then going back to our home where we are “normal” and and look like "everyone else" and don’t get pointed at.

Once it was out in the open with us, things became lighter and we could all laugh together and talk about it, like when we were sitting in a little glassed-in waiting area at a train station and a veritable school of 1st-graders were pressing against the glass to look at us.

It’s amusing most of the time, sometimes irritating, but even when it’s momentarily challenging, it is overall incredibly easy for us: we don’t live here, we get to move on, we aren’t trying to build a life here, not trying to reach out to anyone in particular for long-term community (or jobs, or grades). But the looks happened a lot in a not-so-great residential neighborhood in Osaka and the annoyance of being stared at flipped over to a feeling of looming menace that left us all ready to move on.

Now our young one has experience to draw on and, we hope, a better understanding of how hard it is for her one black friend who went to school in Ballard, but finally switched because of all the pointing and staring and subtly racist comments, however unintentional most of them were. Her friend doesn’t get to walk away, even by switching schools. That is what being of color is in our country, even in “nice” places.

So this, this nugget, is one of the biggest drives for us to travel, one of the biggest lessons we hope to share with our kid. We, or at least I, had to be pushed. Because my love, my desire to shield her, meant that I was also standing in the way of that learning.

O, Osaka, you were rough on us. But you helped us learn.