FAQ #2: Osaka

Let's get the basics out of the way...Osaka is an ancient port city located on Osaka Bay in the Sea of Japan. Rivers criss cross the city, begetting the name "The City of Bridges." Osaka City covers just 222 sq km but has over 2.6 million residents. During the work week the population swells by 1 million. It is big bustling busy city. A sea of concrete. An ocean of people. And yet...

Osaka is a friendly small town, where you would love to raise your children and make a home. It has a very low crime rate (except for bike theft), low taxes (8%), a lovely climate (average temp ranges between 6-28 degrees C, average precipitation peaks at 266 mm/month during rainy season in June and July, and then there's typhoon season...OK, maybe not a lovely climate exactly...), and green space everywhere. One thing I love about Osaka is that Osakans value their greenery with a passion that's hard to describe. They voluntarily groom public parks and playgrounds. Almost every apartment and business has a small garden tended with love and devotion. Often it is in front of the building on what passes for a sidewalk. Sidewalks are sometimes just lines painted on the edge of the narrow road. They are used for pedestrian and bicycle traffic, and growing gardens, and driving and parking cars. People don't walk much here.

(Quick note on drivers in Osaka. An excellent but aggressive group. Considering the multi-level maze of roads that grew up around the old city and the nonchalant pedestrians you have to be damn good to drive here. The conditions for getting a license are stiff. However taxi drivers still have to be blind, suicidal, and willing to STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FRIGGING FOUR LANE ROAD! to get a fare.)

Osaka is best described as a cross between Vancouver (the climate, the ocean, the grey winter), Vegas (the lights! the pachinko parlours! the giant neon billboards!) and Salt Lake City (not in the Mormon way, but in the endless sea of black suits, and after you look past the concrete, the horizon is encircled by a ring of shadowy mountains). But the combination of friendly small town people and big big city is a combination hard to match on Canada. It's a city of dichotomies. The people in black suits sitting next to someone wearing every fasion trend of the eighties rolled up into one horrendously blinding outfit. The people who crouch in corners to do anything so rude as smoke or use their cellphone in public, compared with the comedians who will do anything for a laugh, including thrusting their leather hotpant clad crotches in the faces of small children to get them to stop crying (just as strange and much funnier than it sounds! (and it worked!)). There are complete opposites everywhere you look, walking side by side down the street, not just coexisting but thriving together.

I was going to write this huge long essay trying to describe Osaka (hard to believe but this was much longer before the computer ate it) but I haven't been here long enough to give anything more than a superficial portrait. I will try and break down the whys and whats I love (and ummm... dislike) about this city. Coming soon, the Bunny that Ate My Brain! (aka work).