But not for very long. You might be ignoring the bullhorn instructions, but you know why they're being issued and follow the spirit rather than the letter. After all, there are a huge number of people behind you who are patiently waiting for the opportunity to do what you're doing.
Once you're through the illuminated arcade there are any number of stalls and outlets offering food, drink, lotto tickets and commemorative stamps, but we started to wend our way back towards Sannomiya, which raised the interesting question of what to do about the rail passes and tickets for the first few days' train travel.
What turns up in the mail when you've bought one online isn't your actual rail pass. It's an order form that has to be converted into the document that gets you your actual tickets, so the first thing that needs to be done is the conversion.
You hand over the order and your passport, and, initially, you get a form to fill out. Once you've done so, that gets checked against your passport, and part of it is attached to the Pass, which features a laminated ticket detailing the document's validity.
And once you've done that, you can collect your tickets.
As The Astute Reader will realise, the process outlined above is somewhat time consuming, and when you're in a crowded ticket office with a queue behind you, a sensitive soul will avoid buying a whole week or two's worth of tickets for an extensive itinerary.
We collected the tickets that would take us from Osaka to Matsumoto, and on from there to Niigata, and made room for other travellers with, possibly, more urgent itineraries.
From there, with everything that needed to do done duly done we headed back to the hotel, pausing en route to pick up more beer, and that, effectively, after a little more tapping and perusing of email, was that.