She returned with news that she'd found an interesting wine place, and a Subway outlet that appeared to be growing its own healthy greens, so we went for a squiz at that.
I was cut loose to commence my search for The Band rerelease if I could find the HMV store at they top of the building. It took some time to do it, and I'd drawn a blank when I did, but I did locate an interesting railway modelling shop offering scale models of familiar Japanese rolling stock at prices that translated into the several hundred dollars.
Not a hobby for school kids on a limited allowance.
We made our way back down the levels, with Madam stopping off to buy a belt along the way, then crossed the JR Station complex in search of Tower Records and a couple of used CD operations that eventually produced results, though the ¥14500 they were asking for what I was after seemed a little steep.
Subsequent research revealed it was available through Amazon for a tad under $US62, though the freight impost would probably be substantial.
In any case, despite the relative lack of success, we'd walked a couple of kilometres and worked off some of the morning's breakfast.
When we returned to the station and made our way to the relevant platform it seemed there had been some disruption to the network, and the express to Kobe was running a whole three minutes late, prompting profuse apologies for any inconvenience caused on the PA and misgivings about whether we'd manage to find seats among certain members of the travelling public.
But we did, and we decanted ourselves at Sannomiya, moving smartly over to the bus terminal, where the shuttle bus for the Okura and Meriken Park Oriental was just pulling in.