Day 4

 After another bad night (don’t ask) I watched the alarm go off at 8 and thought I’d lie there until Joss moved

The next thing I knew it was 9:15 and I’d already had one text from Hattie asking where we were

Bugger, again

So we finally met up and went looking for breakfast

This is a hotel / shopping mall / train station / tube station complex and it’s MASSIVE

We were quite overwhelmed and after 15 minutes of stumbling around we fell upon a Starbucks

That’ll do

Pastries were nice and Joss said it was the best coffee she’d ever tasted from a Starbucks 

Over breakfast we discussed what to do next and decided to sort out our train stuff

We had already bought JR vouchers for unlimited travelling on certain lines and needed to exchange them for the real tickets

In the queue we met a guy from Arizona who’d lived there for a while so gave us the heads up on getting an ICOCA card - a prepayment card for tubes/buses and convenience stores

After we got the JR tickets (and reserved seats for Hiroshima and Tokyo) we eventually found an ICOCA vending machine and Joss and Hattie worked it all out

We then walked round the internal market and found another Starbucks - kieren immediately stated he was hungry so our transition to Japanese living was further delayed

After that we caught the train to Ikeda (very brave) and went to the Cup Noodle Museum






Yes you read that right

A museum to the cup noodle - Hattie was in her element

You bought a cup, decorated it yourself then got them to add the exact ingredients for your noodle delight before they sealed it for you to take away

Joss wouldn’t allow me to do cock and balls ….










Kieren was adamant he didn’t want to have any part of eating it so labeled it up “Kieren’s pretend Noodles “ 🤣



On the way back to the station we saw a sign for Ikeda Castle ruins which wasn’t far away so we decided to walk it

It was slowly uphill and we noticed that all the streets had really deep trenches cut alongside them for drainage and as Hattie said “you wouldn’t want to walk along here drunk” - I like her thinking

As we turned the last corner Joss looked upon the last thing she wanted to see for the sake of her knee - stairs






It did take a bit of doing but we finally made it and the effort was rewarded







It does say ruins in the title but we could only see a bit of fire damage - I reckon even I could fix that 😜

We then meandered back to the train station and back to the hotel for an hour or so’s respite before taking the tube to Dotonbori - Osaka’s renowned food and shopping district

It was mad












Of course being famous like we are, we were papped …


Although some might say it was because we looked like these



You were all thinking it…..

Despite going past a plethora of restaurants we actually ended up in a fried food place as we didn’t have the strength to muscle through the crowds to google translate the menus




Kieren was super pleased as he must have expected the worst after a kieren-friendly breakfast and lunch - his time will come tomorrow 

Now we are back at the hotel with a couple of beers and  a day trip to Kyoto to look forward to - bring it on


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