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 blackout curtains in the bedroom means it’s difficult to remain asleep once the roseate glow of morning sunlight starts to seep into the room, assuming you’re in a state of consciousness higher than totally comatose.
Which means when I awoke fully refreshed to find the room in darkness at eight a.m. I was impressed.
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 anymore. 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, faced with the prospect of taking on enough fuel to keep us going until dinner time that evening, I attacked the range of delicacies on offer with alacrity.
One plate of more-or-less-Western-style breakfast, a plate of the Japanese version, a return to the Western side and an omelette.
The final selection stemmed from an urge to relieve a chef without anything to do rather than an inclination towards gluttony. ‘Er Indoors suggested two individuals rostered onto the scrambled eggs/omelette detail looked bored.
So Hughesy did something about it.
Bookmakers fielding in the What’re the first two things Hughesy adds 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 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 conditions were much colder than anticipated. That prompted several extra layers of clothing added while we awaited the arrival of the shuttle bus.
Back at Sannomiya, I had my first encounter with a subway system designed to move the maximum number of people with the greatest possible efficiency.
For a start, lines 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 can always decide to wait for the next train, assuming you can afford the time, should the queue be too long this time around.
That should, of course, place you at the front of the queue.
Once the train arrives, passengers alighting from the train leave through the middle of the doorway, passengers boarding do so from the sides.
Aboard the train, with all our luggage, we were off to The Mother’s apartment in the dormitory suburbs at Myodani. At Myodani station, the quantity of luggage meant we took a taxi the rest of the way.
‘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 Kōbe > Kyoto > Nara > Kōbe 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 earpieces for the iPod and a 2 GB memory card for the camera.
From there, we headed back downtown to the evening’s accommodation at the Urban Hotel.
On the way, I learnt another valuable 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 on a side street and took quite a deal of finding.
But, on arrival, we found a spacious room that would do very nicely.
A superficial 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 website link.
Once we’d showered and changed it was back to the subway so we could head over to Osaka for our appointment with the Office Manager and the Cereal Queen.
We left the hotel, turned right (we’d come in on 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 browse the bookshops that line the entrance to that section of the station complex.
Having plenty of time on our hands before seven o’clock, ‘Er Indoors decided it was advisable to stop off along the way for a spot of cherry-blossom appreciation.
It wasn’t until we were off the train and heading along the banks of the stream that I started to realise why cherry blossom time was such a big deal.
You can’t tell from the photos since I positioned myself to photograph flowers rather than crowds, but we arrived just before five o’clock.
There was a sizeable crowd already on hand, and while we went for a wander, the crowd grew.
To a certain casual hairy foreign observer, it seemed 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.
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 meeting point was Kinokuniya Bookstore at the entrance to Umeda Station.
That’s where the complications set in.
For a start, there isn’t one entrance to the largest bookstore I’ve ever seen.
There are at least two, on either side of the concourse that formed the conduit for thousands of people heading downtown 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 bookshop, where I found an Inspector Rebus novel (Resurrection Men, just in case you’re interested) brand new for eight-hundred and something yen (around eight Oz dollars).
It served to point 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 entrance to the bookshop, there was no way we could keep an eye on the other one. And if we tried to put 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.
Around us, people were talking animatedly into mobile phones as they attempted to establish the whereabouts of the people they were supposed to be meeting. We decided to alternate between the two sides and put our faith in digital technology.
In the end, we didn’t need to.
I had a height advantage over ‘Er Indoors and knew we were looking for two people arriving from opposite directions, one slightly above average Japanese height, one slightly below.
I sighted 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 (I gather the Iron Chef 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.
‘Er Indoors had bought packets of dried mango for gift-giving purposes. Office Manager was thrilled to receive some while the Cereal Queen went into rapture at the sight of a packet of Just Right.
Your actual common or garden breakfast cereal is a rare commodity in the Land of the Rising Sun. When that was done, we settled down to exchange news, eat and drink.
Kitchen Stadium is a New York-style restaurant and bar serving pasta, 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 presented 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 bearing 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 number from Okinawa, The island was home to our friendly waiter and the group sitting at the table next door.
They were chain-smoking, celebrating of a win in the grand final of the nationwide High School baseball championship that 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 Kōbe was crowded when we boarded just after ten o’clock, which made finding seats a matter of good luck rather than good management.
The population had thinned considerably by the time we arrived, well and truly ready for another good night’s sleep.
That wasn’t looming on the immediate horizon. The convenient entrance to the station we’d discovered had been closed, presumably, around the time the bookstalls closed.
However, 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.