Since I had pretty much decided I wouldn’t be sleeping that night, I woke up as late as I could, around 9:30. It couldn’t be any later than that because the hostel kicks people out of their rooms at 10.

Not sleeping would be better than completely missing the Osaka nightlife. I had been entirely too excited by the lights of Dotombori and Ebisu and thought it too much of a shame to shut my eyes on the electric city. My friend from Portland had seen an organic store in Osaka, called Crayon House, on the internet and gave me the details for it. I’d drop off my book bag in a locker at Shin Osaka, get brunch at the Crayon House, then head over to the Human Rights Museum. I had to be at the Bunraku Theater by 4, which meant I should leave the museum by 3, since it seemed to take an hour to get anywhere in Osaka (factoring in getting lost time).

There was a flea market in action outside of Shin Osaka station. I was traveling and had no room for old second hand knickknacks but I still couldn’t resist the compulsion to search. There were piles of old broken watches. Antique cameras of dubious condition. Water stained silk kimonos. Boxes of crumbling sepia photos. I bought four peaches at a fruit stand and ate one while standing at the subway platform, allowing the juice to drip all over the place, defiantly breaking the taboo of eating while standing in a public place and making a sick mess of it at the same time.

Crayon House was on the very northernmost stretches of the subway system. I crossed a desert-barren park under dread Osaka heat and sun. It really wasn’t a very big park but it felt like a parking lot in high summer. I seemed to be in an area with isolated but powerful office buildings and upscale businesses, but I couldn’t quite tell you what gave me that idea.

Crayon House was a fairly small natural foods store. The upper level was a bookstore on progressive topics. It had some of the products I had grown to love and miss in from the US hippie stores, but they were much more expensive imports. An organic mango cost around $35.

The organic and natural mindset traditionally goes along with a vegetarian/vegan attitude, or at least that’s the most encouraged attitude in that culture. Or so I thought. But yet again, I’ve been thinking with my American mind. In Japan, vegetarians are just people who like vegetables. I have seen people proudly label themselves vegetarians while comfortably munching on beef. I had difficulty scraping together a good lunch out of the buffet at Crayon House, most of it was meat based. What I was left with was cold and a little bland, but refreshing.

I switched to the JR line to get to the Human Rights Museum. It’s a new building with excellent modern architecture, allowing wonderful natural light into the waiting areas. Unlike most of Japan, it was outfitted to accommodate the handicapped as well as possible and paid attention to mothers with young children. There was a detailed video introduction to the museum in English and a few other languages. A recorded guided tour for the museum offered a brief summary of each exhibit subject, but it was impossible to get much information from the graphs and narratives without Japanese literacy. The museum was mostly just useful for giving me subjects to look up later. I only got about halfway through, past the women’s issues section and into the gay issues section when I realized it was 3pm and I needed to hurry back to the station.

I came off the station just after the Namba station, Nipponbashi, and rushed the wrong way down the street, doubled back, and found the Bunraku theater again. I had been trying to follow what looked familiar and hadn’t realized that it was familiar because it was so close to Dotembori until I came to the intersection where the cats had been.

I didn’t have time to pick up an English explanation or recorded narrative of the kabuki show. I just had to plunge into it. I really don’t know what happened. There were four acts. The first two were completely unrelated. The final two had some of the same characters but had separate plots.

In the first act there was a couple who came to visit a finely dressed woman who was playing with a bow and arrow. The man became angry and beat her with the bow. Then he felt sorry about it. Then a red-faced warrior came on with a woman, maybe his wife. He and the first man started to duel. Then a young, powerful warrior came on and stopped the fight. The wife of the red-faced warrior stabbed herself for some reason. No one seemed to notice that much.

There was a 15 minute intermission. I learned that there were no English materials for me. I was just going to have to get creative with my story lines.

In the second act a spacey musician came on following butterflies. A woman came on trying to get his attention and failed miserably. She asked an old man passing by (a clown? A priest?) for help. He wasn’t much more successful.

They called a half hour intermission. People sat down and ate bentos. Why was everyone whipping out dinner? How long is this show? I asked around and someone pointed me to a schedule. Four hours?! I’d better get dinner. Osaka is famous for takoyaki, or fried balls of dough with octopus in the middle. I think that octopus is like fishy chewing gum, but I was promised it was not to be missed in Osaka. I had been in Osaka since Thursday but hadn’t tried it yet. Every time takoyaki presented itself I wasn’t hungry and whenever I was, it was impossible to find. Now that I was actually looking for it, there wasn’t any. I even went to a store that advertised it outside on a banner and they said they didn’t have any. On my way back I saw a woman packing up the last takoyaki of the night. They came in packages of 8 but she gave me two extras. They were fatty and soft, delicious, even with the chewy octopus in the center. But they hit the stomach heavier than a donut filled with New Jersey lead cream. I only ate the original 8.

In the third act a man outwitted a younger man out of some sort of package. It was an elaborate ruse involving a fake murder and several unsavory-looking characters. The young man had some sort of secretive love tryst with a young and very ornately dressed woman.

In the fourth act the young man and the one who outwitted him walked to a house in the country where a young, plainly dressed woman, and an old man (her father?) lived. The thieving man became furious about something and left. The old and young man went to sleep. The young woman awoke early the next morning to chop daikon and paused once in a while to admire the sleeping young man. Then the ornately dressed woman from the third act came by seeking entrance. The plain woman freaked out and pushed her away. She would not go away. The plain woman even tried throwing things out the window at her. Eventually, the old man and young man noticed her and the plain woman ran away crying. The ornately dressed woman got upset and tried to stab herself several times, each time the young man stopped her. The old man re-entered and tried to reconcile the two. The ornate woman tried to stab herself again. The old man tried to reconcile the young man and the plain young woman, too (whose side is he on?). Both of the ladies just got even more upset. Finally an old woman came and took the ornate woman away in a boat. The young man left, carried on a litter. He longingly waved goodbye to both the crying women.

And that was the end.

I went back to Shin Osaka and got my clothes out of the locker. I put on the frilly skirt I’d bought the day before and got on the train for the Umeda station. Back to do with cafe for the drag show at 10:30.

I was welcomed back by the cook who was now the bartender. The place was full and all the seats were taken but somehow he urged someone to give up their seat for me. I sat next to a young man and his older boyfriend. The young man spoke excellent English. He teaches gospel singing. He told me that the cook/bartender was the owner of the bar and also a drag queen named Foxy-O at times.

“How did you find this bar?”
“I just accidentally found it.”
“Do you know what kind of bar this is?”
‘”I figured it out.”

But not everybody at the bar was gay. A group of graphic designers huddled around me and asked questions that I could not answer honestly. “Him? Cute?” “Ah, sure.” “He is playboy.” I can’t see why. “And him? He is gentleman.” I can see why.

The men I had met the other day seemed like they wanted to talk, but they were too busy putting on makeup and getting ready for their performance at another club. I was introduced to two new drag queens. My favorite was Maria. She was tall and very thin with a long blonde curly wig. She wore a narrow sequined dress and lip-synched to something Britney Spears sounding. She was a fine lady. Beautiful and graceful. Nothing to give her away except for a lack of hips and the specific angle she touched her chest while dancing. Her English was also quite refined. I sidled up to her and the graphic designer group when everyone else I recognized left for the other, men’s only, drag venue. But after the 3am mark we all became either too tired or too intoxicated or both to speak in anything but our native language. My hesitant Japanese dissolved and their English became neglected. People began to slump on tables. I noticed a man passed out on a couch. I was feeling the difficult pull of gravity and dozed, not quite asleep, on the other couch for an hour. Japanese people are amazing. They can sleep any time in anyway. And people are much more welcome to sleep anywhere. I have seen businessmen and hobos alike sleeping on park benches. And so the late night train waiters curled up in a quiet friendly bar.

Around 4:30 the graphic design team was on the lurching move. We stumbled through the Osaka predawn to the subway. I waited alone on a platform for a train to take me to Shin Osaka where I could be reunited with my backpack and fall asleep in the comfy lap of the Shinkansen.