Second, while we're heading off on a Sunday, there will be issues with subways and sets of stairs if we stay in downtown Osaka. ShinOsaka is towards the edge of the city, as Shinkansen stations tend to be due to the issues associated with putting new railway lines through densely populated areas. Stay in Osaka and you're going to be doing a bit of crosstown travel.
The Station Hotel at Kishibe, on the other hand, is right beside the station, which is three stops from ShinOsaka, where a lift or escalator will deliver us up to the relevant platform for the bullet train to Nagoya.
The Station Hotel also has a coin laundry, and that allows a load of washing. Those jeans I'd been wearing since Cairns needed a wash, and there were socks and jocks and under layer items that needed the same treatment.
The laundry wasn't available until four, but there was free WiFi in the lobby, so I checked the email and the cricket score. England had been bundled out for 176 on what was supposed to be a flat drop in track in Adelaide, with the supposedly unreliable Mitchell Johnson taking 7 for 40.
From there it was back to the Travelogue and a read before we headed out to dinner. the drier in the laundry hadn't quite delivered, and there were items of clothing with varying degrees of dampness draped over everything that could accommodate something in the room when we left, and while some progress had been made when we returned we left everything in situ rather than doing a check and rearrange thing in the evening. On the evidence to hand things should be right by the morning.
There were a couple of possibilities for dinner, including a place near the hotel specialising in octopus balls, a sort of family restaurant chain operation, a teppanyaki establishment that might have served the purpose if we were up for a substantial meal, and a fourth place, which I was informed served fried oysters. The Astute reader might sense Madam's logic in those descriptions, but the four also lay in a progression from the hotel to the other side of the supermarket that fronts onto the station parking lot.
I'm not a big fan of octopus, though I don't mind calamari. The description of the second place suggested someone was disinclined to eat there, and while we could have gone for the cook at the table option, I was able to sense that the fried oyster place had some particular appeal, apart from the fact that Hughesy likes oysters and is quite happy to eat them fried.
I had a platter of four oysters, another of crumbed, deep-fried pork, both served on a bed of cabbage along with chicken rice.
Before I'd selected anything, however, Madam had grabbed a plate that held a whole fish, something akin to a cross between a gar and a sardine that had been given a steroid treatment. Long enough to be one of the gar family, but fleshed out along the body. Obviously, I'm not a fisherman.
Madam, on the other hand, is a big fan of whatever it was, and announced that she'd been looking forward to this as the self service trays hit the table.
I was looking forward to an early night, but that didn't quite eventuate. A visit to the supermarket on the way back revealed large cans of Yesibu for ¥288 each, and at that price I couldn't have just one, could I?
Sunday, 8 December 2013 Kishibe > ShinOsaka > Nagoya > Matsumoto