There are two alcoves over that way, the first containing a variation on the old salad bar, with a nice array of mesclun leaves, a tray of cherry tomatoes, the assorted fruits and melons you'd expect to find at the breakfast table, a rather tasty variation on a peperonata (which probably explains the grated Parmesan cheese) and a couple of salad dressings (which in Hughesy's universe would tend to explain the croutons). I mean, if you're going to have something approximating a Caesar salad for breakfast you're going to need croutons, n'est ce pas?
The other alcove delivered the variations on bacon and eggs, with a chef on hand to do you an omelette on the spot in a non-stick pan and another doing what looked like perfectly done fried eggs without any hint of frizzle around the edges. I wasn't 100% sold on the sausages but a fresh omelette, some bacon and a few other bits and pieces from the other alcove and a croissant or two made up a pretty solid first go at breakfast, and I ventured back for seconds from the salad bar and a bit more from the pastry department. Expecting a fair bit of hoofing I reckoned I'd need the carbohydrates.
Back upstairs we finished sorting things out and caught the 9:55 shuttle into Sannomiya (the same free service looks after the to and from business for the Okura and the Meriken Park Oriental) and arrived at the city's transport hub around five minutes later, and after a brief diversion to investigate replacement options for watch batteries headed off to a Japan Rail booking office for what was probably the most important part of the whole trip.
I've been referring to a voucher but the JR information booklet calls it an Exchange Order, and you need to have bought the little devil before you land in the country. You lob at the JR Office with your Exchange Order and your passport, fill out the form you get at the office and after a bit of peel, paste and laminate action you end up with the document that looks after the majority of your ticket purchases.
It won't get you on to the top level Shinkansen services and the Pass doesn't work on railway lines that aren't part of the JR Group, but it does cover some bus and ferry services.
Once you've accomplished the exchange the fun really begins. Given the nature of the beast and the likelihood you'll be sitting in a booking office with a queue of people looking for their own tickets, this is something best done over a couple of sessions rather than all in one fell swoop.
So you get the tickets you absolutely must have first. If there's no one waiting you go for more, and if it looks like you're holding up the queue you head off to do something else, and come back for another go, or find yourself another quiet office and proceed from there. We were looking at a leg from Kobe to Kitakami with lunch in Tokyo the next day so we needed those tickets for a start. Having got that batch we set off for the optometrist for a pair of computer-specific reading glasses and stopped in at another JR booking office when we got to the right general area and filled in the ticketing for another couple of stages.
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