Parcly Taxel: The shape and size of single-ride train tickets are pretty much the same across operators. They fit nicely into your hoof or a dragon’s claw. How they track your journey is also very clever: upon entering trackside, a hole is punched into front-centre of the ticket, while upon exit this hole is detected and the ticket is “eaten up” by the gates.

Spindle: Cereal for breakfast again, as well as a cheesecake slice from an earlier shopping spree in Osaka. Supermarket food is cheaper in general than convenience store food because less processing is done, and indeed convenience stores position themselves as last-ditch options for hungry workers who return home late in the night after many restaurants/izakaya have closed.

Fluttershy: Their first full day in the Hanshin (阪神) region, which includes Osaka and Kyoto as well as Kobe, was comprised of much haphazard bouncing around shops with little overal direction. Now she got a little more organised, looking at the Osaka Metro map for a while before heading out to her initial destination… “America Town” (アメリカ村).

Coco Pommel: Wait, America Town?

Fluttershy: Just a lot of graffiti and burgers and, well, you get the idea. The closest station is Shinsaibashi (心斎橋).

Coco: At its centre the Osaka Metro is a regular grid defined by straight lines, similar to the streets in my home Manehattan. One key difference is that where Parcly was travelling (and in many other Asian cities, and Canterlot) there’s a one-to-one matching between services and lines, whereas in my city’s subway there’s the A C E on one physical track, the 1 2 3 on another, etc.

Parcly: Just outside America Town proper I stopped by an airy shopping centre with live music on its steps. The band played pretty well, but took a long time to set up between songs.

The district is a gathering place for the teenagers and young adults of Japanese society, encompassing both the normal, well-to-do students and delinquent “Yankees” (ヤンキー). Because of foreign interest in this sort of “inverted Chinatown”, police are more active here and you should be safe even at night provided you keep to yourself unless necessary.

Spindle: Contrast the run-down, casual feel of what we just walked through with the exquisite fashion shops on main street and the orderly pedestrian shopping walkways. Most tourists will only go for the latter two places. What does this say about Japanese society and its interactions with the outside world? It says that Japanese culture is deep and layered, and that the façade shown to the world is a deliberate misrepresentation of what lies beneath.

For lunch we headed again to Red Rock, that steakhouse in a crevice between buildings. It had transitioned to the order-first-seat-later coupon system used by ramen chains like Ichiran, but the queue’s length looked much the same. We were seated in a dark nook, illuminated by one spotlight.

Coco: Sounds scary, huh? Like a Wild West saloon?

Marble Pie: I suppose so. The outward appearance, more so than for me and Parcly, is the overriding factor for Japanese when choosing a product or location. Substance is a secondary consideration. This is America Town after all and locals would be expecting something quintessentially “American”.

One mountain of beef with rice later and Parcly and Spindle encountered rain. Not a problem. Spindle opened her take on a magic umbrella – a thin sheet of ice that absorbs raindrops – and the two kept on strolling through Osaka.

Parcly: Looking for our tea session, we found a Muji Café in nearby Namba (難波). Though Muji is better known for its home living and travel products, in recent years it has expanded into other unusual ventures, up to and including an autonomous shuttle. Since I had eaten a lot for lunch, I simply ordered a cheesecake and tea.

Spindle: We were in Namba Nannan, one of the major shopping centres (not streets) of Namba. After the Muji break, we hung around Loft and several other shops, and we would have lost all track of time if Parcly hadn’t surreptitiously shook her head, which summoned a voice telling her the current time. It was 6:15, nighttime already, and her favourite programme The Quest would show at 7pm.

Parcly: Once that spell’s voice faded, I knew what to do. Get to Umeda Station and buy a take-out bento box from the underground food hall for dinner; strut all the way to Higashi-Umeda (東梅田); take the Tanimachi Line three stops and run up to my accommodation. I got the wrong direction at first, going to Nishi-Umeda (西梅田), and I only arrived at 7:05.

Spindle: The juicy bits hadn’t passed, though. Parcly laughed on the floor as she ate her dinner at the wacky antics of The Quest crew, a two-hour special compiling the best moments of the past year. To see it in pure, native Japanese was all the more enlightening.

Parcly: Thus my day was complete, and I could shower and prepare for bedtime on a mattress I had now gotten used to. My four hooves graced its surface, topped by a warm blanket…