Once the train has arrived, passengers alighting from the train leave through the middle of the doorway, passengers boarding do so from the sides.
Once aboard the train, we were headed, together with the totality of our luggage for The Mother’s apartment out in the dormitory suburbs at Myodani, where the quantity of luggage meant that we took a taxi from the station to the apartment rather than catching a bus.
‘Er indoors had carefully worked out the logistical arrangements. What we needed for the next day and a half would fit in my backpack. After that we’d be lugging one piece of luggage for the following week or so, replacing it with an overnight bag for the final Kobe > Kyoto > Nara > Kobe leg.
Everything surplus to our immediate requirements would remain with The Mother at Myodani.
Once the luggage had been sorted out, a bus took us back to the station, where we diverted towards an electrical store to pick up an improved set of ear pieces for the iPod and a 2 GB memory card for the camera before heading back downtown to the evening’s accommodation at the Urban Hotel.
On the way I learnt another important lesson.
When leaving the station, make sure you choose the correct exit. There were plenty of them, but only one matched the map Madam had printed off the internet, and it wasn’t the one we chose.
That was a significant issue since the hotel was discreetly tucked away in a side street and took quite a deal of finding.
But, on arrival, we found a spacious room which would do very nicely. A perfunctory attempt to find the establishment through a Google search while completing this entry failed to return an English-language result, which is why the reader won’t find a web-site link.
Once we’d showered and changed for dinner it was back to the subway system so we could head over to Osaka for our dinner appointment with the Office Manager and the Cereal Queen. We left the hotel, turned right (we’d come in from the left hand side) walked around the block and found, lo and behold, the exit we should have taken an hour or so earlier. In other circumstances I might have been tempted to pause for a brief browse through the bookshops that line the entrance to that particular section of the station complex.
Having plenty of time on our hands before seven o’clock, ‘Er Indoors decided that it was advisable to stop off along the way for a spot of cherry-blossom appreciation, and you can find the photographic record in the accompanying album imaginatively titled First Sakura.