Madam had purchases that needed to be made en route in Osaka, and we needed to kill some time. I added a sure fire time killer with a suggestion that I'd be interested in tracking down a copy of the remastered and vastly expanded Rock of Ages.
After we’d checked out of the hotel, we made it over to the station without needing to bring out the umbrellas. It was a brisk fifty metre walk between the hotel and the nearest overhead protection offered by the station complex, and describing the weather conditions as muzzle was probably being overgenerous.
On the other hand, it was cold, and if you stayed out in it for a while you would get wet.
We packed ourselves onto an Osaka-bound train, and alighted to join the crowd at Osaka Station, where the first job was locating the coin lockers.
From there we were off into one of the new retail precincts, and descended into the basement for the World Beer facility, where Australian brews were conspicuous by their absence in the display.
I needed something to keep me occupied while Madam headed off to make a few purchases and take the odd photograph, so she left me there with a draught wheat beer, which was eminently drinkable.
At the price (¥900) you're not going to be getting a skinful. I nursed one, and was just finishing the dregs when she returned.
It wasn't so much the absence of Australian beers that prompted my inquisitiveness, more a matter of seeing which ones, if any, had secured a spot.
Looking at, for example, the American beers in the highly decorative sales pitch, I couldn't spot anything I'd heard of apart from the ubiquitous Budweiser.
And I've seen suggestions that Bud hardly qualifies as beer at all...
A careful scan of the all-in-Japanese listing at the back of the folder revealed three Australian brews listed as #s 176, 177 and 178, and with the most likely translator away with the shoppers I was still no wiser as to what they actually were.