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Well, I am not much of a planner, but this was an extreme… I had just landed in Osaka, fresh off the more than 10-hour flight from Oahu, with zilch preparation. Okay, I thought to myself, what are the essentials. 1. Book a place to sleep. 2. SOMEHOW find the place I booked. 3. Find vegetarian food because I won’t be functioning much longer without something in my belly. Here’s how these essential steps went: 1. I booked a cheap hostel in one of the central Osaka neighbourhoods, using the airport Wi-Fi. 2. (And this may have been the hardest one.) I Google Maps-ed the address at the airport, magically managed to take the train to the right station, and then was at such a loss of what to do, it was ridiculous. I walked around the busy station, where long black coats were hurrying all over the place, for about an hour. I come from a relatively small city, and the thought of having to walk perpendicular to the huge masses that all seemed to be urgently getting somewhere extremely important, was giving me a legitimate fear of not being able to come out the other side. After about an hour of walking back and forth through these masses and trying to snap someone out of the rushing throngs, I finally found someone who could spare a minute to help me before I was about to totally give up. With the help of this man, his google translate and google maps, I was able to figure out at least the general direction of where I needed to go. With a sense of where to head, I bravely went out onto the street in the hopes that I would find my way. And a couple of turns later, down some little cobbled side streets, there I was, indeed, outside Hostel Bushi! Now onto step 3: finding food. I checked into my room, glad to finally take the big, heavy backpack off my shoulders. My first impression of the hostel was that it would be the perfect place to catch up on my sleep. To be honest, I don’t notice much else when I’m functioning like a zombie after minimal sleep. As soon as my backpack hit the ground, I headed back downstairs to ask the girl working there where I can find some vegetarian food to eat nearby. Clearly, this was a difficult question to answer because she thought about it for a whole 7 minutes and inquired around the room if anyone else had suggestions. Finally, she said that she’s not sure, but she can come with me so at least there’s someone to translate what’s in the food for me. I was super grateful as we hopped from restaurant to restaurant, asking if they have something for me. The nearby choices ended up being pretty slim, but we managed to find an egg sandwich at a convenience store, and I was perfectly happy with that. Now that all my basic needs had been taken care of, I started to relax and take in the atmosphere around me. I had completely forgotten that it was a Friday night, and I noticed that people were all dressed up, ready to paint the town red. Me and the hostel girl got to talking more and she ended up inviting me to her friend’s band’s concert! She led me up a tiny street and we went through a door that led to a room with only a reception desk and a decorative bathtub on one end. She bought 2 tickets from the reception and walked towards the bathtub. As we got closer, the black wall behind the tub slid to one side and exposed an entire hidden nightclub. I was in awe. The walls were all black and the gold accents sophisticated and stylish. The bands were already in the middle of their set; the audience nodding their heads to the heavy metal vibes. This was my introduction to Japan. And a magnificent one it was: a real foreshadow to how special my next 3 weeks were going to be. Sometimes the best things show up behind hidden doors.