Hello, everyone, and welcome to bonus episode number 154 of the Q-Lips English Podcast.
How's it going? My name's Andrew. I'll be your host and your English study buddy for today.
As always here, what I do in our bonus episodes is I tell you some stories from my everyday life.
I'm a Canadian guy, but I live abroad in Seoul, South Korea, and I help you build your English fluency by sharing some adventures, from my life with you.
To accompany this episode, there's a free interactive transcript and vocabulary glossary that you can get just by clicking the link in the description for this episode.
Plus, if you are a Q-Lips member, and thank you to all of our members out there who support us, guys, we really, really, really appreciate you.
If you are a Q-Lips member, then you will also get a comprehension quiz for this episode so you can test and see how much you are able to understand the after you finish listening to the episode.
If you'd like to learn more about Q-Lips membership, maybe sign up yourself and get access to all of the great tools and benefits and bonuses that we give to our members, then just visit our website, qlips.com, and you can sign up and become a member today for an affordable price.
Okay, let's get into this week's story, guys.
I'm going to tell you about my trip to Japan.
I just got back from Japan. I spent one day in Osaka and four nights in Sapporo.
And I traveled there with my buddy, Luke.
We had a great time. It was an awesome adventure and it was just really, really fun.
10 out of 10 experience. So I'm going to tell you about the first leg of the trip.
It's interesting we use that word leg to talk about a part of the trip.
So really, I had two legs to my journey.
The first leg was in Osaka. The second leg was in Sapporo.
So this week, I'll tell you about that first leg in Osaka.
And then next week, I'll tell you about my adventure in Sapporo.
So without any further ado, let's get to the story.
I hope you enjoy it. And I hope you're able to build your English fluency by listening to it.
Here we go. Enjoy. Okay, let me tell you about my one day, very quick pit stop in Osaka.
Do you guys know this expression, a pit stop?
It actually comes from car racing. You know, think of like a Formula One car or a NASCAR.
They do those races. races around a circuit, right?
Well, they're going so fast and working so hard that sometimes they need to stop and get their tires changed or refuel the car.
And that kind of quick stop, we call a pit stop.
The area where they go to get their car serviced is called the pit.
So a pit stop is like just a quick stop over.
And that's what we can call this kind of thing in English.
So I did a quick pit stop in Osaka on my way to Sapporo.
And I did this really for two reasons. The two reasons that I stopped in Osaka were, number one, it's an awesome city.
I love Osaka. And it's got a great record store scene.
In my opinion, maybe one of the best record store cities in the world.
There are tons of great independent record stores.
And it's just like a really good community. of record stores.
I think they're all friendly with each other.
When you go to one record store, they actually have like a map and they recommend other record stores to you.
So, you know, if you're looking for something and they don't have it, they're really willing to say, oh, try this other record store and they'll point you to another business to go there.
And I love that. It's cool to see a small business community like that working together.
They're not just trying to keep their competitors from getting business from customers.
They're actively recommending that you go here, check that out.
And there are just, yeah, great record stores in Osaka.
And of course, as a music lover and an LP collector, I wanted to go there to do some record shopping.
So that was one of the reasons. And then the second reason is price.
It's a lot cheaper to fly from Seoul to Osaka and then Osaka to to Sapporo, which was my final destination, than it is to go direct.
It's not like a lot cheaper, maybe $100 or $150 cheaper, but hey, I'll save that money when I can.
So I decided to save some money and maybe put that money that I saved on my plane ticket towards some records in Osaka.
And so that was my plan. Now, in order to maximize the time that I could spend in Osaka, I decided to fly there as early as I could in the morning.
So I booked the first plane, which I think was around 7.30 in the morning that we left.
And it's a quick flight from Seoul to Osaka, just an hour and a half or something.
So I figured in my head, this was my rough calculation.
Okay, I'll go to the airport, 7.30, I'll fly and arrive in Osaka, let's say 9am, 9.30am, somewhere in there.
And then by the time I get through immigration and I get onto the airport train and I actually arrive in the central district of Osaka, well, then it will probably be like...
11am, 1130. And then my second flight to go from Osaka to Sapporo was at 6pm.
So I thought, okay, I'll have like a good four hours maybe before I have to hightail it back to the airport to get that flight to go to Sapporo.
Hightail it means to go very quickly. So Now that I'm thinking about this, for whatever reason, it seems like I had more time than I really do.
When I'm thinking about this and saying it out loud, this plan kind of seems not so great.
And in reality, it was cool. It was cool to spend some time in Osaka, but I was really rushed and I didn't get to do all of the things that I want to do.
And maybe you can see why now that I'm talking about the time.
But anyways, let me tell you about my day in Osaka.
So... as i said i took the airplane early in the morning 7 30 a.m departure time which means really i had to wake up i think i woke up before 4 a.m maybe like 3 45 or something in the morning ridiculous a time that nobody should have to wake up and quickly got ready and took the airport bus to the airport because at that time in the morning even the subways aren't operating so it's a little bit uncomfortable to get to the airport that early in the morning you have to take the bus and luckily we have great airport shuttles here in seoul but they're a little bit expensive much more expensive than taking the subway So subway is ideal to get to the airport, but obviously couldn't do that because it was too early in the morning.
So I woke up at that ungodly hour, took the shuttle bus to the airport, checked into my flight.
Everything was cool. The flight over to Osaka was cool.
And I should say, this is kind of a key point that I traveled very light because I booked a budget airline ticket and And as part of that budget airline ticket, I wasn't able to bring any luggage with me.
There was no luggage included in the ticket fee, just my one carry-on bag.
Actually, I was allowed one carry-on bag and one personal item.
And they both totaling together had to be under seven kilograms.
And that was also the case for my flight to Sapporo as well.
It was on the same airline. It was kind of part of the same ticket.
I just had that long layover, right? So, because I wanted to do record shopping in Osaka, I figured that if I bought some records, maybe let's say I have a really good day of digging and I find a lot of stuff that I want to buy.
Maybe I would buy eight or 10 records if I really did a shopping spree.
I had to calculate how much that would weigh.
And one record, I weighed it actually, usually weighs between 250 to 300 grams.
So I had to keep that in the back of my mind.
Okay, let's say one record on average weighs 300 grams and I want to buy 10.
Well, that's three kilograms. So I have to have a bag that's like four kilograms maximum. or else I'd have to pay a really insane luggage fee.
The cost of going over and having to purchase extra luggage on these budget airlines can sometimes actually not be budget at all.
It's quite expensive. So I really packed light for this trip.
I just had one small bag and I was only going to Sapporo for like four days, right?
So I didn't have to pack too much stuff.
I just kept it really, really light, just the bare essentials.
And yeah, I think my bag was exactly at around just over four kilograms, maybe 4.1 or 4.2 kilograms.
So I did a good job there. And I was really mindful about my bag weight.
So I get to Osaka. The flight was great.
I think I slept the whole way. I was pretty sleepy from waking up at 3.45 in the morning for the flight.
Arrived in Osaka. Everything was cool. Went through immigration.
Everything was cool. And yeah, by this time it was around maybe 9.45 in the morning.
So everything was on schedule. And when you arrive in Osaka, you have to take a shuttle bus, or at least I did from where my plane landed in that terminal to the main terminal where you can catch the train to get into the city itself.
So I was waiting for that shuttle bus to come and take me to the main terminal.
And at that moment, everybody's phone beeped at the same time.
It was kind of like beep. that kind of warning alert sound.
And so I took out my phone, I took a look at it, and there was a pop-up that was entirely in Japanese saying something.
And I figured, in my mind at that time, I figured it was probably a heat alert warning.
Because here in Korea, when it's a heat wave and we have really high temperatures, the government will sometimes push out alerts warning people to, you know, not spend too much time outside or to go into an air conditioned place or to look out for elderly people who might be suffering in the heat, these kinds of warnings.
And I thought, Hey, probably we're getting a heat wave warning because it was so hot in Osaka.
It was boiling hot already by nine 45 in the morning.
It was really hot and humid. And so that was in my mind.
I figured, okay, Of course, I can't read it.
It's in Japanese, right? Entirely in Japanese.
So I figured it's a heat wave warning. And all of the other people in the line, they were also foreigners.
I think mostly Koreans that we just got off the same plane together, right?
So I don't know if they were able to understand it, but I think most people just sort of closed the alert and we got on the shuttle bus and went to the terminal.
And I didn't really think too much of it other than that.
So get to the terminal and I found a locker.
I stored my bag in the locker because I didn't want to carry that 4.2 kilograms around with me all day.
And then I bought my ticket to get the shuttle train to the shopping area that I wanted to visit.
I had my path and my route all mapped out.
So I knew where I was going to go first, which record stores I was going to hit and And here hit, when I say I want to hit a record store, doesn't mean that I want to punch it.
It just means I want to visit it. So sometimes we use that word hit to mean visit.
So I had all of the locations marked that I wanted to hit.
And my priorities were to go to record shopping first.
And then I also wanted to try some coffee because I know from my previous visit to Osaka that there's really good coffee in the city.
And I wanted to hit up a cafe that I know does a really good cup of brew.
So I wanted to have a cup of coffee. And then my third and final priority was lunch.
And I had some restaurants pinned that I thought could be good for lunch if I had time.
Lunch, I was willing to sacrifice. But I really wanted to try and make an effort to go to the record stores and to get some coffee.
And if I had to skip lunch, well, hey, it's probably okay for my waistline to do that every once in a while.
So I got onto the express train. I splurged and bought the express ticket, which would get me to the area I wanted to go to just a little bit faster.
And the train was actually really beautiful.
I took a picture of the train and I'll put that on social media so you guys can see it.
Or if you're watching the YouTube version of this video, you'll be able to see it now as I'm talking about the train.
But I took the express train to get to the city a little bit faster, and then it was time to go record shopping.
And unfortunately, where I got off on the train stop to the record store that I wanted to visit first was a bit of a hike.
And it was a little confusing to get there because when I was looking on Google Maps, it looked like a pretty direct route.
But then in reality... The route wasn't so direct because there were some train lines in the way.
So I thought I could just walk in like a straight line.
But then in reality, the road that I needed to cross was blocked by a train.
So I had to take a little shortcut. And that took a little bit longer than I wanted to to actually find this record store.
But eventually I got there. And now by this time, it was already around noon or so.
So it had taken me a lot longer than I was expecting.
I was expecting to be ready to get coffee and maybe even lunch by this time.
But I was just arriving at the first record store.
And record stores in Japan are really great because they have a huge selection of Japanese music.
And Japanese music is really good and super high quality music.
Lots of interesting and great stuff that comes out of Japan, of course.
But also they have a really extensive... collection of Western music and music from all genres and everything is in good condition.
I think Japanese people At least from my experience here, shopping in their used record stores really take good care of their products so that when you do buy a used record in Japan, the quality is really good.
And so, yeah, once I got to the first store, it was digging time, time to search.
And there's so much good stuff to look at.
Even in the first store, I was just... You know, browsing everywhere and looking everywhere and it was great.
But this takes a lot of time and suddenly I looked at my watch and already an hour had gone by.
I was like, oh my gosh, I don't have too much time before I have to get back to the airport.
So I was in the record store. And suddenly I got a message from my mom and my mom said, Andrew, did you hear the news?
There was an earthquake in Russia, a huge earthquake.
And now there's a big tsunami alert for all of Japan.
She was quite worried. She was like, where are you?
Are you OK? get to high ground. Now, luckily, the building that I was actually in at the time, I think it was on the ninth floor.
So I wasn't really too worried about a tsunami coming up to the ninth floor.
And so you know, moms tend to worry a lot, right?
So when your mom sends you a message and she's like, there's a tsunami, get to high ground.
And she's back in Canada watching the news.
I'm like, I didn't really take it very seriously, right?
I'm like, yeah, mom, everything's okay. Like, I think if there were a real tsunami alert in Osaka, probably people would be acting differently.
Maybe there would be a siren going off or something.
I think there would be more more signals even though i can't speak japanese i think probably i would be able to notice that something's going on and so i wasn't too worried about that but she kept sending me messages and her tone was pretty serious saying at least google it and see what's going on you know i was just in the record store and there was lots of other customers there and staff were just going about their daily business nobody seemed concerned about a tsunami or anything like that so I wasn't too worried at all, but I finished my shopping.
I bought four records at the first store and then I thought, okay, let's see what my mom was talking about.
So I found a little rest area and I had a seat and I Googled and searched on Reddit, which is maybe a better source of information for real time updates.
And yeah, I noticed that there was a massive, massive earthquake on one of these islands in northern Russia.
And there was a big tsunami alert for many parts of Japan, but also for parts of Hawaii and I think even maybe into Alaska and North America, the West Coast as well.
So everybody was on alert about the tsunami there.
And reading on Reddit, people were just expecting the tsunami to come in.
And there were predictions that it could be between just 10 centimeters to up to a meter and maybe even higher.
And for Osaka, there was some concern, like it showed on the map the areas that were affected and Osaka was under an alert and was affected.
But I was more concerned about Sapporo because I had to take a flight to Sapporo in just a few short hours from that moment.
So I was trying frantically to find some information about this because there were three colors that they used.
I think there was a yellow, red, and purple.
And yellow was the mild alert. That's where Osaka was.
It was under a yellow alert. The red was a more serious alert.
And then a purple was a strong warning, you know.
The area that I was going to in Sapporo that had the red alert.
So I was trying to see like, how close is our hotel to the ocean?
How, how far is Sapporo the city center to the ocean?
Uh, I didn't know any of this information.
I'd never been there before. I know it's not like a coastal city, but I wasn't sure like how far is it really exactly from the ocean to the city center?
What's the elevation like? Uh, and information like this.
So I was Googling and trying to figure out, like, is it safe to fly in right now?
Because it turned out that this earthquake was an 8.6 on the Richter scale, which was the sixth strongest earthquake in history, apparently recorded history.
So a massive, massive earthquake. And of course, with earthquakes, it's not just the initial earthquake, but also the aftershocks, right?
Some strong aftershocks could happen. And so I think when you have a tsunami warning like this, it's not just the initial quake that can cause concern, but also aftershocks.
And maybe it will take a few days to know if the tsunami hits or doesn't hit.
And so I had a decision to make in that moment.
I was like, ah, I don't know really what to do.
Is it going to be safe to go to Sapporo?
What happens if I go there and then there's a tsunami?
How stupid would that be? If I'm sitting in a safe place in Osaka on the ninth floor of a building and then I take a flight to Sapporo and then I get affected by a tsunami, that would just be so stupid.
So I was trying to find information and I couldn't really find anything.
But I noticed that the phrasing that was used in the weather app was alert, not warning.
And I couldn't find anything about a travel advisory app.
And when I looked at the website for my airline, I noticed that they had canceled quite a few flights going to northern areas of Hokkaido.
And Hokkaido is the island where Sapporo is on the northernmost island in Japan.
So I noticed that some of those flights going to northern Hokkaido, which is closer to the epicenter of the earthquake, and I think more open to a tsunami from that direction.
All of those flights had been canceled, but my flight to Sapporo was still scheduled.
And so I thought, okay, what I'll do is I'll just leave it into the hands of fate.
And if the airline cancels the flight and there's a travel warning at the airport, or maybe I can talk to somebody at the airport, then I won't go.
But if the flight is on, then I'm going.
Another thing that I had to think about also was my buddy Luke was flying at that time from Canada en route to Sapporo.
So he was in the middle of that flight and it's not like I could text him to communicate with him.
He would be arriving in Sapporo and he would be expecting to meet me there.
And so I had that to consider as well. So I thought, I'm going to leave it into the hands of fate and go to the airport, just like everything is normal.
If the flight's canceled, that's a big sign not to go.
Or if the airline staff say it's dangerous, you shouldn't be going, maybe only people who live in the city or something are allowed to take the flight, then I wouldn't take the flight.
But yeah, I decided, okay, that's my game plan.
And then I looked at my watch and I was getting close to 2 o'clock, 2 p.m. by the time I had finished with the Googling and the research and the thinking about what I should do.
And then I was like, I don't think I have time to do anything else.
I visited one record store. And when I thought about the path that I would have to take to get back to the subway station and then take the subway to get back to the airport train and then airport train to the airport and then check in for my flight.
And all of this, I was like, I'm not going to have time to do anything else.
So yeah, my time in Osaka was great. I enjoyed the one record store that I visited, but also it was a little bit disappointing because I had several record stores that I wanted to visit.
I had a cafe that I wanted to try the coffee at.
I had some restaurants pinned on my map that I wanted to check out.
And I realized at that moment that I wasn't going to be able to do any of those things.
And I just had to make my way back to the subway station, back to the airport express train, and then back to the airport.
And so that's what I did. I got to the airport.
I collected my bag from the locker. And when I added the four LPs that I bought at that record store, to the bag and then I weighed it again, it came in at exactly 6.8 kilograms.
So I was just under, and I don't know where that extra weight came from.
Maybe I hadn't really weighed it very accurately before.
I'm not sure, but my bag was just under under the limit and a really good thing too, because when I flew from Seoul to Osaka, they were pretty loosey goosey with the weight regulations and they didn't really check my bags at all.
They just sort of said, go ahead. But when I checked in for my flight from Osaka to Sapporo, they were very, very diligent about checking the weight and making sure I was under.
I got stopped twice and was asked to check the weight in front of the agent to make sure that I was underweight.
So yeah, just by the skin of my teeth, just barely got through with the weight restriction and yeah, flew from Osaka to Sapporo.
In the end, guys, nothing materialized with the tsunami.
Thank God everything was okay and fine. Japan wasn't really affected too much this time.
I think there were some areas where there were some tsunami waves of up to a meter, but nothing that I heard about, no big damage, nothing like what we've seen in Japan in previous years.
That was really good. That was really fortunate.
And I was able to meet my friend in Sapporo with no problems.
But I'll save the details about our Sapporo trip and the fun and adventures we got up to in Sapporo for next time.
I think I've been rambling on here long enough, everyone.
So if you made it all the way to the end, thank you so much for listening.
Thank you so much for spending some time with me studying English today.
Remember, this is what you need to do to build your fluency.
You need to get the language into your head.
You need to spend some time listening to it.
And you did that here today. So great job.
Keep up the good work. And I think that's going to bring us to the end.
So please take care. Have a great week of English studying up ahead.
And I'll catch you in the next episode. Bye-bye.
