Saturday, 10 November 2012
After two weeks on the road, Madam had designated the two day stay in Osaka as a rest and recreation spell, and after the previous night's indulgences, rest and recreation was definitely what I needed. It started with a long soak in a warm bath, which did some good, but not enough to overcome the effects, and after breakfast at the downstairs coffee shop I would have been happy to roll the rock across the door and hibernate, but we were faced with an eleven o'clock checkout time and a move to fresh quarters.
Friday night's hotel had been selected with an eye to convenience (and very convenient it was) but it had one major drawback. It didn't as far as Madam's initial research could make out, offer a coin laundry, and after the two weeks on the road we'd have a pile of washing that would need to be done.
That was what prompted the relocation, and neither of us was happy when she found that the first stop did, indeed, offer such a service. Had it been evident when the bookings were made we'd have stayed put, I could have taken further recuperative baths and the washing could have been started much earlier, giving Madam the chance of a longer rest before we set out to dinner with The Principal.
As it was, we left the checkout as late as possible, took ourselves out for a walk with the baggage in the cloak room at the old hotel, located the new one and made a futile attempt to kill time before the check-in time there.
We headed down to the middle of the business section of Osaka, an area that would presumably have been much busier from Monday to Friday, and while things were pleasantly quiet my head throbbed as a result of overnight overindulgence and my right knee was doing something similar as a result of something I'd presumably done just before we'd shipped the Black Monster back to Kobe.
The knee had been troubling me on and off for the previous couple of days, not to any great extent, but enough to make things uncomfortable. Now, when a lengthy walk might have served to remove some of the toxic elements from the system by way of exercise, the knee was saying, Hang on there buddy boy, this thing needs some rest.
So rest I did. In a park on the banks of a river while the knee delivered constant reminders that it was there and the head pleaded for somewhere to lie down and quietly expire. Eventually, on the off chance that we might be able to check in early, we headed over to the new hotel and made polite inquiries, which saw us upstairs and into the room well before the regular time. I slept, Madam ran the laundry routine, and still managed a bit of a spell before the evening appointment.
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