Get to the platform and
the sexy train arrives (never thought I would say that, but bullet
trains really are a bit special) only to be disappointed that all the
seats are facing backwards... but hey, what's this? The cleaners get on and turn
all the seats round so they are all facing forwards. Never seen that
before, and it seems such a simple clever solution to not being able
to turn a train around.
Settle comfortably into
our seats, after having to lug all the ruddy cases onto overhead
racks, and then watch the world go by.
Here are a couple of
examples of what I meant before with houses being really close
together and using space really well.
And here is a shot,
with a quick video (if you can see between the power lines) of the
beautiful countryside and steam rising up.
And here is our sexy
Barbra Streisand of trains, leaving back to wherever it comes from.
So we arrived safe and
sound in Osaka, which is here...
We found our way to the
right exit easily enough and luckily the hotel is opposite the
station so that was a relatively painless journey, well done to the
Spy on his planning.
Went for a wander
around the locale, trying desperately to find a health food shop, as
I have been struggling a bit with my plethora of diet issues and the
change in diet and time zones, I conveniently forgot that last time
we were here I was the same... although we did both remember not to
drink any Japanese water, even bottled, as that set us both off last
time. Yes I know that sounds odd, but Ilya has the constitution of an
(albeit Russian) ox, and even he realised it was the water which
affected us last time, luckily we remembered a shop in the basement
of the building (there are shopping centres in the basement floor of
many large offices/hotels over here, like rabbit warrens) which sold
Evian, so we stocked up on that last time, and we both felt better
the next day. So this time that was our priority, like survivors on a
desert island, water is the most important thing.
But, back to health
food shops, they are rare (in the way we know them anyway) and trying
to translate things on Google searches is sometimes not the easiest
thing to do when the alphabet is unreadable (but very pretty) hieroglyph type things. Eventually we found somewhere though, and via
google translate we found what we needed, and headed back to the
hotel for a lazy hotel dinner.
Lovely drinks in the
19th floor bar overlooking the city, which looks so
different, so much more austere than glamorous Tokyo, led to us
visiting the LavaRock Grill and Restaurant on the ground floor... we
won't do that again. Let's just say, the Tokyo levels of service we
have come to relish do not apply here, side dishes 20 minutes before
the main, almost raw meat (when we specifically asked the English
speaking waiter for well done) on the grilled platter we ordered,
then only the beef was well done when it came back, we had lost the
will to complain by then. After we had finished eating, we waited
another while (we were drinking wine and chatting, we weren't just
sat there twiddling our thumbs) before about another 20 minutes later
we had to ask someone else for the dessert menu, and they still
didn't take away the plates, we had to grab someone else to do that.
We successfully ordered a pudding each, tiramisu (style) and a crème
brulee... and waited another 20 minutes until, losing the will to
live, we told them we wanted to cancel it and just sign the bill, at
which time they of course said it was ready, but we wanted to cancel.
The cheque came and Ilya crossed out the service charge as we didn't
want to pay it, only for the waiter to say it is the law in Japan to
pay it! Well, as I said in my strongly worded Trip Advisor review, I
am no lawyer, but I am not sure that is right (I have googled it
afterwards and the area is a bit shady, some people saying tax is
included as a service charge, but displayed in another way, usually
included in the price of the food, anyway, we were adamantly British
in this regard and were determined we were right!).
Anyway, off to Nara in
the morning, need to prepare my brain for that!
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