2 become 1

Okay, so it's a lame title, but there's really no point doing two seperate posts for the last 2 days.

Saturday morning we awoke from our slumber. We still had packing to do, but fortunately neither me or Dean had a lot of stuff, it was more, pack my snowboard away as well as my snow gear. All the rest of the stuff was either still in the suitcases, or was in a plastic bag needing washing. So by the time the others began to stir, we had already got ourselves ready for a day of transit. After lugging all our main bags downstairs, I organised Takkyubin for our snowboard bags, as well as a suitcase of Mum and Whitney's. This will meet us in Tokyo, but we head to Osaka for a few days first.

Eventually everyone made it down for breakfast, but seeing as how we weren't going snowboarding, I didn't eat a whole heap. We were also stopping in Tokyo for half an hour to change trains, so we could grab a bento from the station platforms or kiosks as well. Other than that there's not much to say. We got to the station with about 30mins to spare, giving us plenty of time to get tickets. We did that, but this being Japan, nothing was open at 8.30 in the morning, so we waited in the waiting room, as it was quite chilly. It would have been an excellent day to go boarding, as there was quite a bit of new powder overnight, and the temp had stayed down. Unfortunately, we wouldn't get to try it out, but Kerry and Tim were staying an extra night, so at least they would.

We got to Tokyo station rather uneventfully. No lost baggage, no meltdowns, just a quick run. It takes about 80mins from Yuzawa to Tokyo, but it didn't feel that long. Possibly, because between Yuzawa and Takasaki, most of it is tunnel (they just bored straight through the mountains), but I was also watching a couple of tv episodes on my phone. We arrived at Tokyo station, and changed platforms. The wind felt like an eskimo's fart, because it was pretty cold. We had about 15 mins once we got to the correct platform, so we huddled inside a bento kiosk on the platform. I got a pork katsu sandwich, a beer and a chocolate pudding for under 1000Y, so that was going to be a cheap lunch. We still had to wait for them to finish cleaning the train, but with more people on the platform, it acted as a wind break. Again, the rest of the trip went by without fuss.

We arrived at Shin-Osaka about 3 hours later, having just covered 758kms, via train in under 5 hours. It works well. No traffic, minimal stress, and you can have a sleep or a beer (or both) while doing about 300km/h. After arriving at Shin-Osaka, it was now time for me to play tour guide again. Fortunately, I had actually done the research beforehand, so I knew which line to get, just not the specifics (ie. price, where it was in relation to the shinkansen line). After getting down to the Midosuji line station, we grabbed the subway to Dobutsuen-mae, where our accommodation for this leg would be.

Upon getting out from the train, it became clear that we weren't in Kanto anymore Toto. Osaka is often described as the hyperactive younger brother of Tokyo, but unfortunately for us, I had got a hotel in the cheap area of town. The streets weren't very clean, and there were more hobos around. It felt a bit more like Ueno, but with the accommodation booked, there wasn't much I could do about it. Fortunately, the hotel is only a short distance from the station. Compared to the buildings around it though, the hotel is much nicer. It's clean and newer than the surrounds. Sort of like a rose among the horse poo, if a ferrocrete structure can be compared to a rose. After a quick check in, along with the ongoing issues with Zoe's GEMoney credit card (It's not working over here, GE Money sucks, go with a bank Visa), we were soon up to our rooms and making a mess.

By this stage we started getting hungry, as it was getting on to 3pm, and with most of us having eaten our bento somewhere between Yokohama and Fuji, we were getting to the "Can't think, need food" stage. In my internet travels, I had found that there was a decent sized shopping mall about 500m or less to the east of our hotel. So we decided to head there, as Paul, Dean and I all needed clothes for the meeting on Sunday.

We trundled towards Abeno-Q's and as we passed the express way, the buildings got a little nicer, and less dodgy looking. To get to the mall, we went through a couple of smaller arcades, that probably get a bit of pass-through business for people going to Abeno-Q's. By this stage, Paul was getting grumpy, so we headed up to level 2 and grabbed Mos Burger. It was only a shopping centre outlet, so they didn't have the chilli cheeseburgers that I like, but we needed food, so it didn't matter. Eating burgers is a lot more expensive over here. Although Mos burger is better than McDonald's for quality by a long shot, it's still not what you would call cheap. For 2 double cheeseburger meals and a Mos Burger meal, it was 2370Y. Considering we could have had a big bowl of ramen each for half that amount, I see why most people still prefer to eat the local food. We'd need all the energy we could get though, as we were with 2 girls who love to shop, and after eating around 4pm, we didn't leave this mall until 8.30pm.

I ended up getting 4 full-cotton meeting shirts. 2 are to replace ones I have previously bought but are now stained or old, and 2 new ones. Some more smart looking chinos for witnessing, and a pair of sketchers meeting shoes for a cheap 2890Y. In all, I ended spending about $230 on clothes, something I'm reticent to do at home, but where can you get smart looking, full cotton business shirts for 2990Y?

We continued to trundle around looking at ties, boots, more boots (Paul was cursing this place because of his boot mad wife), and eventually with our feet getting sore, we started walking back to the hotel. We stopped off at the Family Mart around the corner, and grabbed some ice cream and beer. And headed to our room. We decided to teach Paul and Zoe how to play up and down the creek, while Mum and Whitney watched, before they decided to turn in for the night. We stayed up just a little longer though, with Dean being the eventual winner, and decided to meet at 9am to go get breakfast.

Ok, so I'll make another post for tomorrow. For a day where not much happened, I suppose I did write about a few things.