One of the things I wasn't particularly eager to reach had arrived with an I'll tell you what it is later which is the proverbial dead set give away in the probably oh yuck department. Whatever it was turned out to be chewy, not particularly interesting, and not much to my taste. Subsequent inquiries as to the identity received a single word response.
Guts.
There was a bed of noodles as well, which was more to my liking, and I pecked at it intermittently. Interestingly, no one else seemed particularly concerned to finish it off. Any suggestion to this effect will undoubtedly be met with an immediate denial, but I suspect there's a bit of the old let's see what the foreigner reckons about this one operating here, much like the two exposures to the surprisingly crunchy jellyfish last time around...
There wasn't any hint of a wine list, but Korean goes better with beer anyway, so I managed to knock over (figuratively, of course) several pitchers while we made our way through the platters.
It wasn't all that late when we called stumps and wandered back through Motomachi, guided by the old school friend, who'd parked very close to the Okura. We'd headed in via the Cape, with Madam suggesting the deals they're offering at the Okura and the Meriken Park Oriental were related to a slightly inconvenient location compared to the competition, but if you know where you're going and you're willing to walk, Motomachi is only a hop, skip and a jump from the Okura.
Across the road at the zebra crossing, through the car park and over the pedestrian bridge and you're a bit over a stone's throw from Motomachi, and with shuttle buses to Sannomiya for most of the day and well into the evening isolation is a relative thing.
Still, if they're going to offer deals like the one we were enjoying we'd be mugs to knock them back. We'd picked up the rather impressive deal (two nights with full Viking breakfast for the special rate of ¥23000, remarkably good value when you work on Madam's easy conversion rate of ¥100 to the Aussie Dollar, and still pretty good value when you do the sums at the actual conversion rate opting on the day concerned. By comparison, I'm looking at a base rate of $229 per night as the base rate for my preferred accommodation option when I head off to catch Elvis Costello in concert in Sydney early next year.
Back at the Okura we finished most of the preparations for Travel Day One and clambered into the cot just after eleven, looking forward to whatever the morrow might bring.