The day had come. Where we’d say goodbye to the place my friends and I had affectionately referred to as ‘our home’. It’s insane how much of a connection we all felt to Osaka. Especially seeing as many of us felt very little towards the place before we got there. Not that we’d heard anything bad about the place. But we all had this idealistic image in our minds that Tokyo would be the best thing in the world ever, and immediately paled every other place in comparison to it. So we were more than a little surprised that Osaka turned out to be such an amazing place which we did not want to leave.

We were sure to see ‘our home’ out with a bang though. Albeit it an unplanned one. Said bang consisting of: heading to an Irish pub, then to a tiny little bar which was packed to the walls, and then onto to a nightclub to drink and dance our sorrow’s of leaving away. It seemed to do both the trick and make us feel worse. Because the night was so good and we’d met and made so many random friends on this one night, that we were ever more reluctant to leave.

A couple of my football (soccer to those in the States) loving friends wanted to watch a football game. We Googled places in the area that might air matches on TV and we came across a place called Murphy’s, which was an Irish pub (supposedly Japan’s first). We all figured that if any place was going to show British football matches, it would be this place. So a bunch of us hopped into a Taxi and headed there. We all thought it would be a quiet night: a few drinks and some talks about the wonderful memories we’d made in Osaka, and this was how the night started. But it soon spiraled into a drinking frenzy, a sing-a-long to some Beatles and Oasis classics (knocked out by a really good guitar player and singer), conversations with near enough every local in the bar who seemed fascinated by the friendly ruckus we were causing, the awesome bar maid (and owner of the joint) Maki teaching us dirty Japanese words (Shakuhachi = head / blow job) and one of our friends getting so drunk out of his face that he had to be fireman carried into a taxi and upstairs to our apartment where he threw up in one of the bed’s, one of the dustbins and everywhere but in the toilet. We didn’t let that end our night though, as we decided to just go with where the flow of the night took us (by the lead of a fellow Gaijin who was all to happy to drag us to different places) – as not to let out final night in Osaka go out without some form of a memorable bang or two…or three.

The following day, a good few of us were hung over. The feeling of being hung over was very much suppressed by the fact that we were leaving Osaka. We’d done so much, made so many great memories and met so many amazing people, that it felt harder than any of us could have imagined to leave. There were no tears, but I’ll be 100% honest with you: there was a part of me that really did wanna just cry. Osaka was an amazing place and my friends and I all vowed we’d be back there again one day. It was already seeming like we’d be heading to Tokyo on a complete downer. The Shinkansen journey there was certainly no happy affair. Everybody was dead silent and lost in thought. Conflicted between wanting to feel excited about spending a week in Tokyo, but being so consumed with sadness to leaving what had become and will always be ‘our home’.