I'm really beginning to distrust the weather forecasts here. The past two days it was said to be rainy and stormy, but not a drop fell.

So I didn't end up going to Tokyo on my three-day weekend. A long story with a simple moral: on three-day weekends, you must buy bus tickets more than eight hours in advance.

So I went to Osaka on Sunday. The plan was to spend the day at the Osaka Aquarium hiding from the big thunderstorm, but when we met at the station and saw the sun shining, we decided to ditch those plans and went to Amerika-mura (America Village) instead. It was...an experience.

As soon as you cross the border the streets become filled with graffiti. Most of it appeared to be professionally done, to achieve that American effect. As you walk down the streets you're assaulted by American rap music emanating from stores hawking clothes ranging from authentic brand-name gear to authentic random American stuff (want an Al's Trucking shirt from Biloxi, Mississippi?) to quasi-authentic American stuff (like an orange-and-blue "California University" jersey) to your garden-variety Engrish.

Of course, there are varying degrees of legitimacy too--we found one street vendor selling incredibly cheap jeans that still had stuff in the pockets. Sketchy...

We had lunch in Triangle Park, a little enclave of the village intended to look, I guess, like your basic New York park. Trees, concrete, lots of pidgeons, and bird crap. We went to a restaurant calling itself a Coney Island--it didn't even have gyros! But Tim was able to get a sort of coney dog and I managed to get a shrimp dog. Ahh, God bless America...

We managed to go a few hours before we ended up back at Den-Den Town. Somehow that place seems to have its own curious gravity, luring us each time we're in Namba with the promise of cheap electronics. I was proud of myself--I only caved on a pack of 50 good CD-Rs ($13). (Come on, I can already fill up half of them with Simpsons, Naruto, and movies I've downloaded from our apartment--to say nothing of the Kenshin Karen asked for. Telling people I have a broadband collection was dangerous--now I'm getting requests from all the way from Tokyo...)