Osaka = Rave Time

Wiley has been pretty good about posting on this here blog so I thought I would give a little update on how things have been going on our trip so far. Japan has been like the movie the Invention of Lying where we are the only people who know how to lie. Here is an example of an exchange we had with a ticket vender:

Me: “Can we have for student tickets, please?”
Vender: “Can I see your student IDs?”
Me: “No. We don’t have any IDs”
Vender: “Ok great, four student tickets.”

It wasn’t until our last day in Japan that we realized that this Japanese trust is rooted in the fact that any breaking of the rules is met with swift and unyielding punishment, but that is another story for another time. The highlight of our time in Japan was definitely our one and only night in Osaka. On our last night in Tokyo we met two girls at our hostel just as we were about to go to sleep. As we were brushing our teeth, Wiley started chatting them up and we discovered that one of them, Miki, was from Osaka and was going to a rave there on the next Saturday night. A few things about Miki: she is a 19 year old Japanese fashion student who wears the craziest outfits I have ever seen and giggles about anything we say, whether she understands it or not and especially if it involves dirty words. This was a blessing for us considering that our humor, and to be honest our conversation in general, consists almost exclusively of potty words that a 9 year-old would find funny. Not only does she laugh easily, but she covers her face and mouth when she does and often goes into borderline convulsions.

Any way, we agreed to meet Miki and her friends at 11pm on Saturday in Osaka outside a specific department store, where she would give us tickets to the rave and take us to the abandoned warehouse where it was all going down. Our plan was to get to Osaka on Saturday night after watching Cynthia’s volleyball game in Toyota City (they are not close to each other), meet Miki, party at the rave until morning, then catch the first train to Kyoto. If your thinking that this was not a very carefully thought out plan then you are discovering exactly what we did as our train got the Osaka station. First of all, we were so tired we could barely keep our eyes open after a 5 hour trip to Toyota City, watching a Volleyball game, and then spending a few more hours on a train to Osaka. Secondly, we had all of our bags with us and no place to store them. Lastly and mostly importantly, we were counting on meeting up with a Japanese girl we had met once, 3 days earlier in Tokyo, in front of a department store that we had no idea how to get to.

Don’t worry though, we kept our wits about us, as we are known to do. We stored all our bags in lockers at the Osaka train station, got directions to the department store from a Starbucks barista (yea, Starbucks is everywhere), got some noodles at a crazy-cool noodle house, and tried to nap in McDonalds until 11:00. A side note about McDonalds in Japan: they are super fancy and have leather seated booths and a sort of chic lounge feel. The toilets look like little white spaceships and have heated seats. The weirdest thing about them though is that the Japanese youth go to McDonalds to get ready before they go out. There were girls doing their makeup and even straightening their hair at most of the tables and booths. Also they have shrimp burgers, which I found very intriguing. At 11:00 we made our way out into the freezing cold and waited for Miki, praying that she would show up and save us from the potential disaster of sleeping the in Osaka train station. We waited in front of the department store, where Japanese skater bros were laying down some sweet tricks, and watched as 11:00 rolled by and panic started to slowly take hold. By 11:07 conversation ceased between the 3 of us as we silently grappled with the reality that we were, pardon my language, fucked. But then, as all hope was fading, Miki appeared sporting a rainbow outfit, neon colored socks, and crazy makeup that she probably put on in a McDonalds right before coming to get us.

We followed her and her friends as they hopped on a few different subway lines, ran through some streets and ally ways, and finally arrived at an abandoned warehouse. Actually, I’m not sure if it was an abandoned warehouse or an abandoned parking garage, but either way it was a big cement structure that was literally falling apart. There were piles of rubble in the corner of each room, we were never really sure if we were indoors or outdoors, and the floors were covered with dirt and debris. O and the rave was the craziest travel experience any of us have ever had in our lives. There were 5 different Japanese DJs playing at any one time, each with there own confusing aesthetic style. More than that, we were the only Americans in the entire rave and Wiley and I constituted 50% of the white population. This gave rise to what I have to assume will be the best cross cultural interactions of our lives. Casey shed his shirt and started Crumping as hard as his joints would allow. Wiley’s shirt was the next to come off and he broke out his patented Gumby moves.

The Japanese party goers didn’t quite know what to make of the spectacle, so they kept their distance and started snapping pictures. I’m not exaggerating when I say that there are anywhere between 300 and a 1000 pictures of us at circulating through the Japanese underground rave community. The girls at the rave continued to be skeptical of us, and except for a brave few that would jump into our circle and dance with us until they broke down into convulsions of giggles, they kept their distance for most of the night. The guys, however, were an entirely different story. I have never been forced to give so many high fives, back pats, half hugs, and silly smiles. The best part was that any dance move we did, no matter how ridiculous, was immediately copied by anywhere between 3 and 20 Japanese guys. At one point, I took the tie of a Japanese business man and handed it to Wiley, who started to floss his crotch area with it like the genie from Aladdin. Sure enough, 2 guys who were watching the whole thing go down grabbed some ties and started copying the move. Below is me and my business man friend. Notice his lack of a tie and his open top button. Also notice me repping Jayhawks basketball:


I think that we may have gotten a little drunk off the power and broke out some moves that I’m not proud of, but it was the most fun I have ever had in a foreign country. After taking a little nap on the ground from 3-3:30am, we continued to party until 5:30, stumbled out of there, and caught the train to Kyoto. That concludes my story and the longest thing I have written since my freshman year of college. I'm tired. I will leave you with a short video: