It’s currently the 17th of Feb and we’re back on a train travelling from Kyoto to Nagano so we can get on a bus to Shiga Kogen for more skiing. Given the hours of joyous train travel involved, I’m hoping it means I can catch up on a few days of our adventures! Kind of Ironic that on day 9 of our travels we were actually travelling in the opposite direction, having left Madarao bound for Osaka.
To achieve that we had to endure the chaos of twelve of us
packing up to get out of the lodge. I know from all my work travel that I have
an amazing capacity to spread my crap a long way in a very short space of
time. So if you give me four nights in
one location and a lot of stuff, getting it all back where it belongs can be
something of a challenge. Add another person to that and packing day can be
pretty stressful, especially with skis and stuff involved. We managed though,
sending a bag of stuff we wouldn’t need straight to the airport and our ski
gear off to Shiga Kogen to await our next round of skiing.
With the packing taken care of we bussed down to Iiyama to
catch the train. We had just enough time to dart into the local supermarket …
the first time we’d managed to get into one this trip. Given we had a decent
travel time ahead of us (five hours or so) we stocked up on a heap of stuff we
really didn’t need (as well as some fruit) to help survive the journey. I love
the fact that you can get basically everything you need to satisfy your
immediate and not so immediate needs from a Japanese Supermarket. I picked up a
crumbed pork cutlet to eat on the train, some baked goods, chocolate, whiskey,
chips … and even managed to get out of there just in time to make it back to
catch the train.
It was also where we farewelled Michael and Olivia as they
were due to head back home and so were travelling to Tokyo rather than Osaka.
From there it was mostly a matter of enjoying the train
ride. All of our previous trips to Japan had seen us travel from Tokyo to
Nagano, but this time we were heading down to Osaka for the first time and we
travelled West form Nagano to Kanazawa and along the coast of the sea of Japan.
The scenery was spectacular; mountains, lakes, tunnels and
of course an array of Japanese housing, but other than that there’s not a lot
to say about a 5 hour train journey where everyone survived connections, no
luggage was lost and we arrived at our destination. I mean, maybe it’s a sign
that everyone’s grown up when no-one provides me fodder to write about. All I
can say, is that I don’t always pee on the train, but when I do, I like to do
it at 300+ Km/hr with a window people can watch
through! That’s a very slight embellishment. The window isn’t to the
outside of the train (sadly) and is really just enough for someone to see if
the toilet is occupied or not (and only for the urinal, not the sit-down
toilet). But still, if they see you in there, it’s pretty damn clear what
you’re doing.
We arrived in Osaka around mid-afternoon which gave us time
to check in to the hotel and then to go for a walk and explore some of the
local shopping (with my express purpose being to find some whiskey). I was
targeting the Daimaru we’d seen in the train station, but along the way we
stumbled across Liquor Mountain. It was like coming across a rich vein of gold.
I managed to pick up an elusive bottle of Yamazaki along with another single
malt to keep it company, but given I was going to have to carry anything I
bought for the rest of the trip (and had already picked up a bottle earlier in
the trip) and hadn’t really scouted out a lot of prices, I limited myself to
the two.
We split up after that, exploring the shops, including
finding another pokemon store and the food gallery at the bottom of the
Daimaru, before meeting up to organise dinner.
We again split up and sent the youngsters off to do their
own thing and opted for Yakitori with Jasn and Bel, which was entirely
delicious and nice and simple to organise given there were only four of us to
cater for!
We retired relatively early given our plan for the following
day was to take on Universal Studios Japan and would require something of an
early start.
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