Parcly Taxel: I took my spontaneous lamia transformation to bed, triggered by the vivid impressions of snakes Tenjinbashi’s length and the ramen bowl at Ichiran gave me. Being a wish-granting genie has certainly thinned the boundaries between my dreamspace and working memory.
 
Luna taught me how to keep such wish-fulfilment fantasies in check. I pictured my dreamscape as a snowy forest of gnarled trees. With all my strength I coiled around the trunk of one such tree, feeling the burn in my snake muscles. After a while the bark worked its magic, draining energy where I applied it and causing my tail to shorten, until I woke up as a well-proportioned alicorn. (My mod has Asperger syndrome, and this is a variant of a technique he uses, muscle tensing and relaxation, for letting off stress.)
 
Spindle: We had lots of things to explore in greater Osaka by train. After finishing bread and pastry left over from Parcly’s lamia spree, as well as a cup of coffee, we peeked at the concrete walls supporting rails above us and sheltering quiet ponies beside us on our way to Sakuranojima.
 
Parcly: The Osaka Loop Line, which I’ve been shortening to just Loop, consists of 19 stations. Sakuranojima serves no other lines, so we figured that all our rail travel outwards would pass through Osaka Central two stops away.
 
I bought a ticket for Yamazaki (山崎), which lies on the main line between Kobe, Osaka and Kyoto. There, after crossing a railway, was Suntory’s eponymous whisky distillery and museum. “Spirit Still No. 4” read an alembic-like copper container guarding the facility.
 
Spindle: The history gallery was quite short, leaving ample room for physical descriptions of the maturation and blending processes that distinguish whisky from other kinds of liquor. For the connaisseurs, a tasting area capped off the whole experience.
 
Parcly: But I am not a connaisseur. What caught my eye instead was a well-known orthographical oddity with the labels on the earliest bottles, when Suntory was called Kotobukiya (壽屋): “whisky” was transcribed as ウヰスキー, using the obsolete kana ヰ (wi), rather than the current ウイスキー.
 
Applejack: I know you, Parcly. Anything with alcohol in it and you abstain. All thinking and no doing!
 
Rarity: It’s definitely not like that. She can handle a little alcohol, like a cocktail or flambéed desserts, just not strong drinks.
 
Applejack: Fine, though Parcly was back to Osaka Central in double-quick time.
 
Parcly: Indeed, and I bought a one-day subway pass to alleviate the hassle of buying single tickets. Out of Yotsubashi (四ツ橋) and into the self-explanatory Amerikamura (アメリカ村), we had a roasted beef bowl for lunch at Red Rock. It used the same press-to-order system as Ichiran but had a more conventional interior.
 
Spindle: Graffiti and flashy stickers cover the walls between buildings; hip-hop and dance music permeates everywhere. Even a Statue of Liberty replica overlooks the district, part of the larger Shinsaibashi (心斎橋). Turning a few corners revealed its own shopping street, not lamia-level long like Tenjinbashi but stuffed with high fashion and spiced with international tourists.
 
We found one of its ends with ease, which at first glance looked like a scramble crossing. Moving closer revealed its true form as the Nipponbashi (日本橋) over the Dōtonbori (道頓堀) canal, its opposite bank harbouring…
 
Parcly: The Glico mare! Stars shot through my eyes, struggling to process the situational serendipity of the white runner triumphant in my face. Hundreds flowed past me every minute under a greying sky, blocking out the blue water below. Dazzled by adjacent neon lights and LEDs (the runner herself was not yet lit), a queasiness rose from my belly, settling into my head.
 
That was enough for one outing. I returned to the apartment and took a power nap inside my bottle before setting out again.
 
Spindle: What I came up with was a long subway ride, eight stations from Miyakojima to Tanimachi-kyūchōme (谷町9丁目). We chose two diagonally oposite seats and were soon severed by dovetailing commuters, which frustrated Parcly enough to call me into her ice shard. Then we made an interchange to the Sennichimae (千日前), alighting at Namba (難波), derived from an old name for Osaka.
 
I chose a bar beside a temple whose main specialty was kushikatsu (串カツ), assorted deep-fried objects on skewers. The staff and store were in Hearth’s Warming gear, but posters slapped on its unpolished walls reeked Japanese beyond doubt.
 
Parcly: When the skewers were delivered deep inside their payloads, I amused myself at their small size. But they turned out delectable, especially after dipped into soy sauce. Quail eggs and pumpkin and octopus, I ate twenty sticks of the savoury crispiness. A wobble rippled in my lower torso, signifying that I hadn’t eaten enough.
 
Spindle: In fact, I starved her on purpose so she would return to Dōtonbori – and I had a feast solely for myself. Pictures of this street in food guides will never do it justice.
 
The combined noise from conversations, sizzling food, whirring machines and more is deafening. Above ground hang huge illuminated signs, a few animated but almost all bright as the sun. Some signs go even further, bringing food and animals into three dimensions: crab, gyoza, talon holding sushi, angry face, dragon, etc. The celebratory, hedonistic mood of the participating creatures was so strong and driving that I could feed on their positive emotions without recourse to Parcly at all.
 
Parcly: I returned to the Glico mare, now studded with LEDs and playing out animations. Made to advertise Glico’s first product, a candy bar providing enough energy to run 300 metres, it was kept as a landmark of Osaka. I bumped into other aspiring photographers in rushing to my spot, below the bridge by the canal’s edge, and took lots of my own photos.
 
Afterwards, I had gyoza (at the same place with the gyoza model on top) but my stomach still purred for more; heading back to sleep, I cooked instant noodles that had been left in the apartment, and my inner windigo was pleased.