Kobe > Osaka > Kobe
When I’m safely ensconced in the Little House of Concrete one of the problems that recur in the day to day cycle is the relatively early rise. Except in exceptional circumstances, when the sun rises, so does Hughesy.
Not that I’m averse to sleeping in.
The lack of a decent set of blackout curtains in the bedroom means that it’s difficult to remain asleep once the roseate glow of morning sunlight starts to seep into the room, assuming you’re in any state of consciousness above totally comatose.
Which means that when I awoke fully refreshed to find the room in darkness at eight a.m. I was impressed. Previous references to Hughesy’s hotel ratings have tended to deal with the presence of abundant hot water (an important criterion) but if I had to specify one thing that raises hotel accommodation into the top bracket (at least in my book) it’s the possibility of sleeping in until the body tells you that it doesn’t want to sleep in any more.
And I found that to be the case in almost every hotel we stayed in over the next fortnight.
Having completed the morning preliminaries, just after nine we wandered into the larger of the two restaurants offering breakfast for my first encounter with the Japanese Viking (which is, essentially, a much easier way of spelling Smorgasbord).
After a light supper the previous night, and faced with the prospect of taking on enough fuel to keep us going till dinner time that evening, I attacked the range of delicacies on offer with considerable alacrity. One plate of more-or-less-Western-style breakfast, a plate of the Japanese version, a return to the Western option and an omelette.
This final selection was prompted by a sympathetic urge to relieve a chef from the boredom of standing at his station without anything to do, you understand, rather than any inclination towards gluttony. ‘Er Indoors pointed out that the two individuals rostered onto the scrambled eggs/omelette detail looked bored. Hughesy did something about it.
Any bookmakers fielding in the What’re the first two things Hughesy’s going to add to the plate when he reaches the buffet stakes would have lost heavily.
The first things added to the plate?
Cod roe spaghetti and parmesan cheese.
The alert reader will possibly have noted that I previously referred to more-or-less-Western-style breakfast.
Once we’d eaten, packed and checked out, we emerged into the outside world to find that conditions were much colder than anticipated, prompting the addition of several extra layers of clothing while we awaited the arrival of the shuttle bus.
Back at Sannomiya I had my first encounter with the subway system which, as you would expect, is designed to move the maximum number of people with the greatest possible efficiency.
For a start, there are lines that indicate where the doors will be when the train stops. So, if you anticipate wanting a seat for your journey you not only join the queue at one of the clearly marked boarding points, you decide to wait, assuming you can afford the time, for the next train should the queue be too long.
Which should, of course place you at the front of the queue for the next train.
Once the train has arrived, passengers alighting from the train leave through the middle of the doorway, passengers boarding do so from the sides.
Once aboard the train, we were headed, together with the totality of our luggage for The Mother’s apartment out in the dormitory suburbs at Myodani, where the quantity of luggage meant that we took a taxi from the station to the apartment rather than catching a bus.
‘Er indoors had carefully worked out the logistical arrangements. What we needed for the next day and a half would fit in my backpack. After that we’d be lugging one piece of luggage for the following week or so, replacing it with an overnight bag for the final Kobe > Kyoto > Nara > Kobe leg.
Everything surplus to our immediate requirements would remain with The Mother at Myodani.
Once the luggage had been sorted out, a bus took us back to the station, where we diverted towards an electrical store to pick up an improved set of ear pieces for the iPod and a 2 GB memory card for the camera before heading back downtown to the evening’s accommodation at the Urban Hotel.
On the way I learnt another important lesson.
When leaving the station, make sure you choose the correct exit. There were plenty of them, but only one matched the map Madam had printed off the internet, and it wasn’t the one we chose.
That was a significant issue since the hotel was discreetly tucked away in a side street and took quite a deal of finding.
But, on arrival, we found a spacious room which would do very nicely. A perfunctory attempt to find the establishment through a Google search while completing this entry failed to return an English-language result, which is why the reader won’t find a web-site link.
Once we’d showered and changed for dinner it was back to the subway system so we could head over to Osaka for our dinner appointment with the Office Manager and the Cereal Queen. We left the hotel, turned right (we’d come in from the left hand side) walked around the block and found, lo and behold, the exit we should have taken an hour or so earlier. In other circumstances I might have been tempted to pause for a brief browse through the bookshops that line the entrance to that particular section of the station complex.
Having plenty of time on our hands before seven o’clock, ‘Er Indoors decided that it was advisable to stop off along the way for a spot of cherry-blossom appreciation, and you can find the photographic record in the accompanying album imaginatively titled First Sakura.
It wasn’t till we were off the train and heading along the banks of the stream in the photos that I started to realise why cherry blossom time was such a big deal. You can’t tell it from the photos, since I carefully positioned myself to photograph flowers rather than crowds, but when we arrived just before five o’clock, a considerable crowd was already on hand and while we went for a wander the crowd grew.
It seemed, at least to the casual hairy foreign observer, that what we were seeing was as much about social interaction, an excuse to get together with friends and relatives to eat, drink and enjoy the scenery, as it was about the aesthetics of the cherry blossoms.
In any case, as the crowd built up we decided to leave them to it, resume the journey to Osaka and arrive at the rendezvous with plenty of time to spare.
The selected meeting point was outside the door of the Kinokuniya Bookstore at the entrance to Osaka’s Umeda Station, and that’s where the complications briefly set in. For a start there isn’t one entrance to what’s comfortably the largest book store I’ve ever seen. There are at least two, strategically located on either side of the concourse that formed the conduit for literally thousands of people heading into downtown Osaka from the suburbs in search of their Friday night entertainment and further thousands of people heading in the opposite direction.
We had enough time on our hands to sneak inside the book shop, where I found an Inspector Rebus novel (Resurrection Men, just in case you’re interested) brand new for a mere eight-hundred and something yen (around eight Oz dollars) pointing out, yet again that Australian readers are paying through the nose for their literary entertainment. I weakened and bought it.
Back outside we were faced with a difficult choice.
If we placed ourselves outside either of the entrances to the bookshop there was no way that we could keep an eye on the other one, and if we tried to strategically place ourselves in the middle we’d more than likely be swept away by the rushing tide of humanity and wouldn’t have been able to monitor either side effectively anyway.
Around us we could see people talking animatedly into mobile phones as they attempted to establish the whereabouts of the people they were supposed to be meeting. In the end we decided to alternate between the two sides and put our faith in digital technology.
In the end, we didn’t need to. Since I had a slight height advantage over ‘Er Indoors, and knowing that we were looking for two people arriving from opposite directions, one of them slightly above average Japanese height, one slightly below, I managed to locate them before they’d finished ringing The Mother’s mobile, which had been entrusted to ‘Er Indoors for the duration of our stay.
From there it was a case of finding the selected eatery, which wasn’t quite where our guide thought it was, necessitating the use of digital technology as an aid to navigation.
Once we’d arrived at Kitchen Stadium (and, no, I’m not kidding, that’s what it’s called and I gather the Iron Chef series is far enough back in Japanese TV history to have removed threats of legal action for copyright infringement) it was time for the ritual exchange of gifts before we settled down to matters involving food and drink.
‘Er Indoors had bought a number of packets of dried mango for gift-giving purposes, and the Office Manager was thrilled to receive some, while the Cereal Queen was sent into rapture at the sight of a packet of Just Right. Again, I’m not kidding. Your actual common or garden breakfast cereal is a rare commodity in the Land of the Rising Sun.
With that out of the way, it was down to exchanging news, eating and drinking. Kitchen Stadium is s a New York style restaurant and bar serving pastas, pizzas, rice, steak, chicken, seafood and vegetable dishes prepared in an open kitchen easily visible from the booth where we were sitting.
The four of us worked our way through a multitude of tastes, though the task of splitting some platters four ways was a slight problem. Still, you don’t always want to try absolutely everything. One dish arrived with an accompanying bottle of Tabasco, and when the waiter learned that I was partial to a spot of hot sauce he returned with a range of bottles from Belize. Very nice, but extremely hot and a perfect example of why Hughesy’s taste buds don’t detect delicate or subtle flavours.
Still, my appreciation of the sauces on offer was rewarded with a sample of an incendiary little number from Okinawa, home to our friendly waiter and the group sitting at the table next to ours, chain-smoking and engaged in a serious celebration of a win in the grand final of the national High School baseball championship which we’d spotted on various TV screens in the course of our afternoon’s travels.
Hughesy’s photo albums from the Australia filming in Bowen also attracted a deal of interest from two girls who’d spent six months helping out ‘Er Indoors and Bowen High’s Japanese teacher.
Our train back to Kosoku Kobe was sufficiently crowded when we boarded just after ten o’clock to make finding seats a matter of good luck rather than good management, though the population had thinned considerably by the time we arrived, well and truly ready for another good night’s sleep, which wasn’t looming on the immediate horizon since the convenient entrance to the station we’d discovered had been closed, presumably around the time the book stalls had closed.
However, our earlier attempts to locate the hotel had left us with some knowledge of the neighbourhood and, once we’d found our way out of the station, the task of navigating back to the accommodation wasn’t all that difficult.
Much easier than it would have been if we’d selected the right exit in the afternoon.
In other words, what you lose on the roundabout you make up for on the hurdy-gurdy.