Sunday, 11 November 2012
There were no breakfast arrangements in place for Day Two in Osaka, and in a way that was just as well. Given the way things had turned out over the preceding thirty-six hours a sleep in, a late checkout, a move to a third hotel and a rendezvous with The Sister at a French restaurant provided a painless way of filling in the morning, and we'd already planned to catch up with The Former Secretary some time during the day, so when it transpired she didn't have anything else on her plate we suggest she join us for lunch at the Bistrot des Mauvais Garçons.
There was a slight degree of confusion regarding the actual location of the Bad Boys' Bistro, but we arrived more or less on time, just before The Sister lobbed on the scene. There was no sign of Former Secretary, it was drizzling and we were standing in front of the door of another establishment (Bad Boys go upstairs), so de decided to follow the Bad Boys and head up, expecting Former Secretary to find us upstairs.
As it turned out, FS had done been there earlier and gone to check on something or other when we weren't there well before time and made it back late, by which time we were upstairs and she was scratching her head wondering where we'd got to. A quick text message, one of a couple she'd sent without Someone noticing, sorted that out, and we were all set for a lengthy and leisurely lunch, with a bottle of quite acceptable Pinot Noir from your actual Burgundy.
The wine went down very well, the lunch (salad, cream of pumpkin soup, squid in a tomato sauce, beef slowly cooked in red wine, dessert and petit fours) delivered a pleasant combination of tastes though the portions weren't over-generous. The conversation kept things rolling along to the point where, having been the first customers to arrive, we were the last to leave.
The attempt to find the lunchtime venue had delivered us onto the famous Ebisubashi bridge across the Dōtonbori Canal, just underneath the legendary Glico Man billboard. The bridge was originally built to provide access to the nearby Ebisu Shrine, and is associated with a legendary curse on the Hanshin Tigers, Osaka's baseball team. Given the familiarity of the Glico Man and the fact that it lies between the Shinsaibashi-suji and Ebisubashi-suji shopping districts the bridge is a popular meeting place and it's known as nanpa-bashi (by foreigners) and hikkake-bashi (by native Japanese), both of which translate as the pulling bridge due to the alleged ease with which girls can be picked up in the vicinity.
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