Last month, in bonus episode 112, I talked to you about the three things that I wanted to do during a trip to Osaka, Japan. And, guys, I'm back in Seoul. I went to Osaka, and then I went to Canada, and now, finally, I am back here in Seoul, my home base. And in this episode, I'm going to talk to you about that little slice of my trip. I spent three days in Osaka. I had an awesome time.

And I'm going to tell you all about it in this episode. And then probably in the next three, four, five episodes into the future, I'll tell you about the rest of my trip in Canada, because I had an absolutely amazing time. It was a wonderful summer vacation. I do have to apologize.

Last week, I wasn't able to upload a bonus episode, and that's just because I was traveling back here to Korea, and I thought that I might be able to get an episode out, but I wasn't really able to. There was more travel than I was expecting, and I was tired from the jet lag and all of those things. So, I apologize for that, but I'm back, and I feel refreshed and renewed and recharged.

I was able to do so many things, and I have so many great stories that I'm going to tell you guys over the next few weeks here. So please look forward to that. But in this episode, which is bonus episode 114, I'm going to tell you, yeah, about some of the things that I got up to during my time in Osaka.

All right, and with that being said, I think we'll jump in and get started with this episode now, my recap of the time that I spent in Osaka. I hope you enjoy this one. Let's do it. Here we go.

So, I had three things that I really wanted to do while I was in Osaka, and I was just there for, like, a really short time. In fact, it wasn't really a trip. It was more like a layover.

The only reason that I decided to go to Osaka in the first place is because it's much cheaper when visiting Canada, my home country, of flying. And I don't understand this. Do you guys understand why this is? I don't get the way that airline pricing and ticketing works often. It doesn't seem to make sense to me.

I guess there probably is a system, and there probably is an explanation, but I don't really understand it. But for whatever reason, going directly from Seoul to Vancouver, which is the closest international airport to my hometown, where you can fly in from Asia, at least.

For whatever reason, going from Seoul to Vancouver was almost double the price of going from Seoul to Osaka and then Osaka to Vancouver. So, because I could save some money and also have a nice little layover in Osaka for a couple of days, I decided to go that route home when I visited Canada.

So, I spent just two nights and I guess, like, technically two full days, sort of half day the first time because I arrived in Osaka in the afternoon, and then also a half day on the third day because I had to leave in the afternoon. So total of, like, two days, two nights, 48 hours. Let's put it that way, 48 hours in Osaka. And I had three things that I wanted to do while I was there.

The first thing was the Culips meetup. And once I planned my trip and I realized that I was going to be spending some time in Osaka, I thought, "Hey, why don't we do a Culips meetup?" I know we have a lot of listeners in Japan and a lot of members on our Discord community from Japan. So, I thought, "You know what? Let me just throw it out there and see if anyone's interested.

And if there are a few people interested, then we'll do that." Because I thought that could be really fun, and I've never done that with Culips before. So that's what I did. I just threw it out there. And the response was amazing. There were many, many people who were interested in doing the meetup.

So, I thought, "Hey, yeah, let's do it." And I had many people who offered to help me also organize the meetup. But one person in particular, I have to give a shout-out to, Kinue, who was super, super helpful in helping me organize the meetup in Osaka. She helped me find the venue. She helped me find the location for where we should do it.

And just many other things, really helpful in organizing the meetup with me. So, a special thanks to Kinue for helping me with that. And, yeah, we had the meetup on a Tuesday night. I was really shocked because I thought, you know, "How many people are going to go to a meetup for a podcast on a Tuesday night?"

I know people are busy and working, and I thought about myself in that situation too. It would have to be a really, really special event for me to go out of my way on a Tuesday night. But many people participated. So, we had an awesome time. The cafe that we had the meetup at, I'm going to give them a shout-out because they were amazing too. It's called Cafe La.

And if you live in Osaka or are visiting Osaka, Cafe La, a really cool place, super nice staff. And I think they have some language exchange nights there and English game nights and stuff. So, if you do live in Japan and you want to practice your English speaking, Cafe La is there to help you out. And, yeah, really nice people there. So, shout-out to them.

And, yeah, it was just like this really cute, cozy cafe in Osaka, the downtown area of Osaka. And I think we had about 17 people who came out. So it was like this small little cafe, but it was nice and cozy there. And I have to say it was just so nice for me and really cool for me to actually meet some Culips listeners in person.

Because often, you know, when I'm doing Culips here, I'm just behind the microphone either by myself or with one of my co-hosts. And, of course, I interact with a lot of listeners out there through e-mail and messages. But it's not too often that I get to meet you guys in real life. So that was a real honor for me. And I have to say I'm so happy that the Culips community is really awesome.

Like all of the people who came to the meetup were so cool and kind and nice and interesting. So, I just had an amazing time. Thank you to everyone who did come out to the meetup. And if you weren't able to join us because you don't live in Osaka or you were busy that night or something, I think in the future, too, I want to do more of these events.

So, I do tend to travel quite a bit, I think. And hopefully when I visit other countries and cities in the future, we can do some meetups and maybe even some in Korea here as well, since I do happen to live in Korea. Yeah, so what did we do at the meetup? Well, we just mingled and chatted with each other, and we played some games.

And yeah, it went on like I think we started around 7 p.m. And I didn't leave the cafe until like after 10:00 or 10:30 p.m. So, it went like pretty late into the night and we were just hanging out and having a great time. Like I said, really nice to get to know about our listeners in Osaka.

And everybody's got like a different story and a different background and a different reason why they're learning English. But for all of us to gather here, listening to Culips each and every week, and with the same goal in mind of improving our communication skills, I just think that's so cool.

It was nice, yeah, to kind of put some faces to the Culips community, instead of just me imagining who the listeners are out there, but to actually meet you guys in real life was super nice. And I have to say thanks to everyone who brought me a little gift or wrote me a letter. This was totally a surprise to me.

I wasn't expecting that at all. But yeah, so many people brought me a little snack or a gift or a letter. I even got a couple of LP, like seven-inch records from a guy named Jimmy. So, shout out to Jimmy for those records. Thank you so much. Just really cool guys. So yeah, I don't know if I have too much to say more about the meetup.

Other than that, when it finished and I was heading back to my hotel, I thought like this is the reason why I do Culips. This is so cool to be able to help people like this with their English learning journeys. But also, for me to be able to connect with you guys and to just feel like what I do here at Culips is really worthwhile. I just felt like doing the meetup was a 10 out of 10 experience.

And to be honest, if I had to leave the meetup and instead of going back to my hotel, I just had to go back home to Seoul, I still would have been like, "Oh my God, this time in Osaka was a 10 out of 10 experience!" So yeah, really, really pleased with how that meetup went down.

And in the future, I'm going to try and do more of those as well because I want to meet more members of the Culips community. So, look forward to announcements about more meetups and events and activities like that sometime in the future, because definitely I'll be doing them again. So yeah, after the meetup, pretty much that was my first night.

And I was super tired because I had to wake up early today. I guess I didn't tell you guys about this, but my flight to Osaka was really early in the morning. Not super early. I think we were scheduled to leave at 9:00 a.m. But of course, if you want to leave at 9:00 a.m. on an airplane, you should arrive at the airport by about 7 a.m.

And what I didn't calculate is from my house to the airport, the big international airport here. It's actually outside of Seoul. It's not inside Seoul. It's in a place called Incheon. So, to get from my house to the Incheon airport, I can't do it to arrive there by 7:00 just by taking the subway.

There is a really convenient subway system in Seoul that will take you, you know, from downtown in the city all the way to the airport. But the trains don't start running early enough that I could have arrived at the airport by 7:00 a.m. So instead, I had to take an airport bus.

And the airport bus that would get me there, I think, left at like 5:30. So I was up at around 4:30 or 4:00 in the morning getting ready. And then, yeah, so it was a really early start for me that day. Up at 4:30 on the airport bus to the airport, fly to Osaka, arrive in Osaka. And it's a little bit confusing how to get downtown.

I figured it out, but the train station in the airport is pretty chaotic and hustle and bustle is like a good way to describe it. A lot of hustle, a lot of bustle. But I made it and checked into my hotel. Actually, I arrived at like 1 p.m. So, I couldn't check into my hotel right away. It wasn't available until 3 p.m.

So, I killed some time. I ate some food, and I walked around the little area where I was staying. And then finally, I was able to check into my hotel and it was like time to get ready for the meetup. Did the meetup and then, yeah, I finished, you know, got back to my hotel. I think it was after 11 p.m. when everything was said and done.

So, as you can imagine, I was pretty tired. That was a long day for me. And so, I got some sleep. And if you listened to Bonus episode 112 from a few weeks ago, what I was talking about in that episode is that there were three things I wanted to do in Osaka. The Culips meetup, shopping, and running.

And so, I thought the best time for me to go running will be in the morning of the day after the meetup. But I was so tired after that long travel day and doing the meetup and all of that, that I wasn't able to wake up early enough in the morning to go running. Because, yeah, Japan in the summer is no joke, guys. It is an extremely hot and humid place.

And if you want to do any exercise outside, I think you have to do it either, like, first thing in the morning, probably sometime before 6:00 a.m. or else, like, even by maybe 6:30, 7:00 a.m. It's already so hot that it's going to be pretty hard to exercise outside. And then even into the evening, I think you'd have to wait until after the sun's down, maybe 9 p.m. or so.

Then maybe again it gets to that level where it's like, OK, to do some exercise. So originally, I was like, I'm going to wake up early. I'm going to go to Osaka Castle and do some running. That's an area in the city that's a popular run spot. And actually, many of the people who attended the meetup, they said, "Yeah, that's a great place to go running. It's a really popular place to go running."

So that was my plan. But I wasn't able to wake up in the morning the next day, like at 6 a.m. and go running. So unfortunately, I think I slept in a little bit too late. And by the time I woke up, it was already crazy hot and sunny. So, I thought, I'm not going to do that. And I'll save it for the evening. So instead, I put running on the shelf. I put it away for the time being.

And I went out and explored Osaka and did the second thing that I wanted to do in the city, and that was shopping. There were two things that I wanted to shop for. The first was running shoes. And I talked about how in a previous bonus episode, I talked about how it's difficult to find some running shoes, the style that I like, here in Korea these days.

Because of the explosion and the popularity of running, when these shoes go on sale, they just sell out completely. As soon as they're put online and available to buy, they sell out really quickly. So, I was excited, maybe, to be able to buy some in Japan. And yeah, I was able to do that. I actually bought three pairs of running shoes in Japan.

I think I don't have to buy any shoes here for like the next year and a half, hopefully. I'm all good for running shoes. But if you follow the news at all, probably you know that the economy in Japan is not doing as hot as it probably would like, and as Japanese people would like. The yen is weaker than it has been historically. And so maybe if you're Japanese, that's not such a good thing.

But for me, as a tourist, it was a great thing because it means that I could buy the shoes at a cheaper price. And also, if you're a tourist, there's a tax-free plan that is available in Japan for tourists. So, you can get a tax refund on your shopping purchases as well.

So that means I was able to buy the shoes at a more affordable price than I would have been able to buy them here in Korea or even in Canada, to be honest. So, I was happy about that. And yeah, I'm all set for running shoes for like probably the next year and a half, to be honest. I'm really pleased about that. So yeah, I went shopping. I bought my running shoes.

And then the next thing that I wanted to do was LP shopping, record shopping. Osaka's got amazing record stores. And I'm kind of a music nerd. I like digging. I like looking for old LPs and used records and just trying to find hidden gems. So, I had a list of things that I wanted to buy. Of course, I'm a huge fan of Japanese music as well.

And so, I really enjoyed spending the rest of that second day just going from record store to record store to record store and doing some digging and checking out what was available there. And I bought a lot of records. I bought maybe 12, I think 12 records that day. So yeah, wasn't great for my pocketbook, but it's great for my stereo.

And now that I have been back here in Seoul for, I think it's my second day back now, I have been slowly going through those records and listening to them. And it's awesome. It's a really fulfilling hobby. I love searching for weird and interesting and unique music and then enjoying it here at home. So yeah, shopping on day two was a success.

And what else did I do? I guess I ate some lunch. I had ramen there. Classic Japanese dish, right? It was really good. I enjoyed that. And then after eating lunch, I went out for a coffee, and I had maybe one of the best cups of coffee in my whole life. It was an incredible cup of coffee at this cafe with the name of the cafe is escaping me right now.

But if you live in Osaka or are visiting sometime and you would like to have an absolutely amazing cup of coffee, hit me up. Send me a message and I'll let you know about what the cafe was called. It was like this really interesting space. It was in a basement, and I had to go down this big set of stairs to get into the basement. And it was like this room with no windows.

And actually, I was the only one there. So, I was like, is this cafe open or closed? It was like this concrete room with no windows, just this guy and a roasting machine. And I guess he's probably the owner of the cafe or something. But I found about this cafe on Google Maps and some of the reviews were saying like, you know, "I'm a coffee nerd. I'm a big coffee geek.

And I went to many of the different cafes and roasters in Osaka. And this is the best one." So, when I read those kind of reviews, I thought, "I gotta try this place." So yeah, I went in there. I was the only one there. And I talked to the owner or the barista. I'm not sure exactly what his role was.

But he explained about the different roasts that he had and some of the different beans that he roasts, I guess. I'm not a huge like, I love drinking coffee, but I'm not a huge coffee enthusiast that I can talk about different like beans and roasts with any knowledge. So please excuse me if I sound a little ignorant when I'm talking about this.

But he broke it all down for me and explained and recommended a coffee that I might like. And so, I had him make up a shot of espresso for me. And it was amazing. Like it tasted totally different than any coffee I've ever had and honestly didn't even seem like coffee the way that I knew it. And the first couple of sips, I was a little suspicious, like, do I actually like this?

But then by the end of the glass, I was like, this is incredible, incredible coffee and just a really unique flavor profile. And I've been thinking about it ever since I had it. And so next time I go back to Osaka, I'm definitely visiting that roaster again and going to drink some of his coffee again.

But yeah, that's pretty much what I got up to that day was shopping for shoes, shopping for records, visiting different record stores. Drinking coffee, eating ramen. And then at the end of the day, I went back to my hotel. I got changed, I got on my running gear. And I was like, now is the time I have to go running and hit up Osaka Castle. And to get that run in that I wanted to do.

That was the third thing that I wanted to do in Japan. So, I put on my new running shoes that I had bought earlier in the day, and I got out there and it was about two or three kilometers to get from where I was staying to Osaka Castle. And when I arrived, I was already drenched in sweat because it was like absolutely so hot and humid, even at 9 p.m. at night.

And yeah, that's never fun, but it is what it is. Can't really help the heat, I guess it's probably good for our body in some way to sweat out the toxins or something. It feels like almost going to a sauna without going to a sauna. But even though I wasn't even running fast, right? Because I was like on some of the side streets, I'm not like on a main running path or anything.

So, there's other people, you know, walking home from work and stuff. So, you can't just run full blast going by people who are just using the sidewalk for everyday usages. So, yeah, I just was like lightly jogging towards the castle. And when I arrived to the castle, already completely soaked and drenched in sweat just from that light jog in the heat.

But yeah, when I arrived at the castle, I saw so many runners. Like, obviously, I think Japan has a great legacy of running and a lot of fast runners these days. And yeah, really great running tradition in that country. But it was cool to see just how many people that were out there running, running hard, running fast, running slow. And there were running crews out there as well.

And yeah, it was cool just to check out the running culture there a little bit. To be honest, I almost want to like join some of the running crews. I saw people there like stretching together and getting ready to run together. And I thought it would be cool to join them. But I was a little bit too shy to go up and be like, try and join them. So, I just watched from afar, I guess.

But yeah, I did several laps around the castle. And I have a picture or two from that run that I'll put in the YouTube video if you're watching on YouTube or on maybe Instagram or our Discord. They're not the greatest pictures because I did take them at night. But Osaka Castle is beautiful. It's like really an impressive sight to see. And you could run around the perimeter of the castle.

And you could see the moat of the castle as well, which is really cool. And I think the loop around the castle is maybe three or four kilometers. There's actually two different loops. There's a shorter loop and a longer loop. And I don't know which one I was on. I think I was on the longer loop, but it doesn't really matter. I was just running around the castle. I did that for a while.

I think I was close to maybe 17 or 18 kilometers. And after that, I was just completely zonked from another long day out and about in the hot city and then exercising and running at night. The awesome thing about Japan is there are vending machines everywhere. And it's really easy to find a cool drink if you do get too hot. So, you don’t have to prepare your own water when you go out.

You can just hit up a vending machine. They're literally everywhere. And so that's what I did when I finished my run. I grabbed a cold drink from one of the vending machines and just sat outside the castle, enjoyed my cool drink, tried to cool down a little bit, and then I had to jog back to my hotel where, yeah, pretty much I just cleaned up and went back to bed. It was like probably, again, close to 10:30, 11:00 at night.

And that was a really full, long day out there. So, I signed off for the night. I got a good sleep. I woke up the next morning and it was time to go to Canada. So, I had to pack my suitcase. I had to load up all my new things, my new shoes, my new LPs, the gifts that I had got from the people who attended the Culips meetup.

My bags were a lot heavier going back to Canada than they were when I came to Japan. I was leaving with a lot of stuff. But, yeah, I packed up my bags, checked out of my hotel. I took the subway to get to the airport. I guess the subway to the airport train and then the airport train to the airport. And it was time to head out and fly to Canada. So, it was a pretty short time.

Like I said, only about 48 hours total in Japan. But my experience was a 10 out of 10. It was probably the best Japanese trip I've ever had. I don't want to say my other trips were bad, but this one was just really, really good. So, it takes top place in my books anyways. So, guys, I think I will leave it at here for today. But thank you for tuning in and listening to this story.

If you have any questions or comments about our bonus episode series or anything that I've talked about in today's episode, then let me know. The best place to contact me is on our Discord server.

That is the place where our Culips community meets to discuss Culips content with each other and to practice English together and really, yeah, to make friends and grow as a community on our English learning journeys. So, you can join our Culips Discord for free. Absolutely for free. Of course, we do have our member-only area for Culips members.

But anyone can join for free. And you can do that just by clicking the link that's in the description for this video. And we'll continue the discussion over on our Discord.

And oh my gosh, guys, I realized here as I was getting this episode ready for upload that I forgot to give you a completion code. So, let's make the completion code for this episode: "48 hours." 48 hours because that's the amount of time that I spent in Osaka.

So, what I would like you to do with the completion code here is to leave a comment either on our Instagram page, our Discord community, the YouTube page if you're watching on YouTube, and include that code: "48 hours."

You can make an example sentence. You could leave just the code itself. But what that will do is it will signal to me and signal to the rest of our community that you completed this episode that you studied all the way to the end. So that's your completion code. 48 hours. Go, go, go. You have your homework assignment. You know what you need to do.

And I look forward to reading your comments. So now I'm officially at the end of this episode. Everybody, please take care this week. Have an awesome week of English learning up ahead. And I'll be back soon to talk to you in another brand-new Culips episode. Until then, goodbye.