Monday 9th February 2015.
Up at 7.15am today. There is a Nespresso machine in the room, which is yet another nice touch. We had a coffee and got sorted – number one project this morning is to sort out the confusion of when we are actually flying out of Osaka because my profile with Air Asia has got us checked in on the cancelled flight still and emails haven’t been replied to!
First things first, down to breakfast, the lounge was quiet when we arrived and we had a really good breakfast, there was a superb fruit selection, then lots of hot food to choose from, then the expected mix of east meets west with a huge array of things including western cereals and an attempt at sausage – very anaemic looking and probably best left! I enjoyed a nice omelette – a variation on the them was that you select your own fillings and put them in a bowl, the chef then mixes them into the omelette – very nice. We ate our fill and headed out into the bright sunshine.
Later – Today could have been a disaster, but turned into a good day where someone appeared to be looking after us – all because I made a very, very basic schoolboy error 😉
All appeared to start well, we mastered the ticket machines on the subway and bought day passes for 800 yen each (about £4.40). We got a red line train and headed back along our route of yesterday north past Shin Osaka and then on to Senri Chuo (M8) where we had to catch the monorail to the airport. We had noticed that there was a driver change at the Esaka (M11) station, three from the end of the line but didn’t think any more of it, we were just amused by the antics of the driver waving his arm to point in the direction of travel before setting off.
When we got of, it was explained that the last three stations were on a private railway, not part of the subway and we had to pay a surcharge – it was less than 50p so not a disaster. We found the monorail after wandering through yet another big shopping complex and bought a ticket out to the airport for 330 yen (£1.80). the runout gave us some fine views of the cityscape showing how the huge Marriott dominates and also some good views of Japanese urban life as we slowly edged to the airport.
By a massive twist of fate – just as we descended the monorail towards the terminal, my phone went – it was Air Asia apologising for the delay in contacting us but assuring me that we had been swapped to the flight on Wednesday as we had asked, and we are still in Business Class and she would be emailing me details to confirm. This is where the twist happens, we had come to the WRONG AIRPORT! (I now know) there are two in Osaka – Osaka International (where we were) and Osaka Kansai (where Air Asia fly from). How awful could that have been if we had turned up with suitcases expecting to fly? We are a good way north of the city and Kansai (KIX) is south!
I was feeling somewhat silly, to out it mildly. After a quick look round Osaka International Airport we bought a return ticket on the monorail, then we paid the 100 yen extra at Senri Chuo and we headed back to the City!! Sue had read that the main shopping area of the city is Shinsaibashi (M19) so we got off there and had a real good mooch round for the rest of the daylight hours.
As we left the station, the first thing was saw was the Louis Vuitton shop, then we went down a long covered pedestrianised shopping street called Shinsaibashi-suji Shopping Street, lots of small retail outlets, but with a few familiar names like Body Shop, Tommy Hilfiger and McDonald’s dotted in between, the funniest thing was seeing a girl outside a children’s clothes shop called Babydoll hawking obviously fake Minnie Mouse children’s nightwear, right next door to the Disney Store.
Running parallel to the shopping street is a busy road called Mido-suji Avenue and there we saw like a beacon a huge Apple Store. We went in and were able to get on the wi-fi to see that the phone call from Air Asia had been correct and we were able to check in for our new flights on Wednesday in seats 2a and 2c – still in Business Class. We were also impressed by the orderly queue for the Genius Barr – nearly all the way round the store.
Back on Shinsaibashi-suji, our next stop was a Tourist information place on the third floor above Tommy Hilfiger, it all looks very new and we seemed to take them by surprise as actual tourists looking for information! They were lovely, offered us all sorts of leaflets, asked us to sit down for a comp cup of Japanese Tea and searched the internet for hotel near KIX before printing a list off for us. I had asked because I thought they may be able to book for us, but they didn’t appear to do this.
More wandering that took us as far as the Doutom Boribashi Bridge over the Doutomborigawa River, there were lots of Japanese folk here taking photos, as it is a bit like Piccadilly Circus with lots of adverts all around and is obviously a landmark. It was here that we saw the first snow flurries in the air – nothing much as it is a mainly blue sky, but the wind is biting. We continued to wander off the beaten track a bit and found ourselves in XXXXX Market.
This was quite an eyeopener. for a westerner with lots of ‘meat’ and fish stalls – including one with what looked like shark’s heads in water. One of the stalls sold barbecued fish of various shapes and sizes cooked on a small charcoal BBQ. We watched the owner put a skewer of white fish on the barbie, but he wasn’t happy the current ones were cooking fast enough, so he took a blow torch to them to hurry them along! A fascinating wander – some of the restaurant offerings also made us wince a little.
Back into the main shopping area, we called into an absolutely massive 8 level bargain type shop called Don Quixote we had a good mooch round and bought some green tea flavoured Kit Kats which seem very popular here – if bag space hadn’t been such an issue then we could have got all sorts of interesting bits and bobs. I think we would have resisted the DIY piercing kits that were being advertised, complete with video demo above the stands. As we went back to the station there were a few more snow flurries, it was a lot busier with more shoppers and lots of school children making their way home, some with shorts on as part of their uniform!
The train back to Tennoji wasn’t too busy, as I think we are just before the rush hour. Back at the hotel, we went up to the lounge and I printed off our boarding passes with the help of one of the lovely ladies on reception who took me into the Business Centre and pointed out the English computer. We also had some nice cake and a cup of coffee and before long the evening food and drink service started.
The food is very similar to yesterday, so I had some of the meatballs in cheese and some salad, Sue had some salad and we both had some lovely salmon quiche, it is only nibbles but we had our fill, very nice – we also had the drink to supplement it. I had Asahi Beer and Sue had some wine. I also booked a hotel for tomorrow night – after some debate we decided to get as close to the airport as possible for a morning departure and I used hotels.com to get their last room in the Washington Hotel at a place called Rinku near Kansai airport – more about that tomorrow.
After eating, we went for a walk outside – first job at the JR Station below the hotel was to recce where we are going tomorrow – we need the Hanwa Line and a very helpful young lady gave us a map with all of the stations in English, as they are all in Japanese on the wall, with only the main selected ones translated. Once that was sorted we braved the biting wind outside to walk over the road to get a view back to the hotel for photo-op – we made our way to a park we could see from the room, which is actually a Zoo and got the required angle.
Back in the warmth of the shopping centre we wandered round a bit more including book shop – the books and magazines here are ‘back to front’ by our standards and the lines of text on the page run from top to bottom, but we still recognised a lot of European and US faces in the magazines. Back up to the hotel for another drink and a piece of cake before a relatively early night, as we have an early start in the morning.
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