Monday, April 23^rd .....

It’s been a pretty miserable, rainy few days and we’ve not felt inclined to do very much.  Marilyn has had a chest infection and all she wants to do is mope around the house drinking cups of tea and watching TV.  We’ve started the series of The West Wing which we missed the first time around.  We bought the complete 7 series and are now digging away at them.  It’s quite lightweight compared to what we normally prefer: Silent Witness, Wire in the Blood, etc – but it draws you in like all good drama.

Today is shaping up to be much brisker.  The clouds are breaking up and the sun is struggling to break through.  A friend of Jamie’s stayed over last night so we’re a bit slow in getting organised, what with conversations and shared cups of coffee, and so on.  Our family joke is that we would prefer to become helmets and live on our own.  If you ever watched Gilligan’s Island, you might recall Gilligan’s confusion between helmet and hermit.  It’s sad, isn’t it, that I look at pop culture for literary inspiration.

I’ve also spent a lot of time on the computer in the past week.  Having broadband encourages extra usage but I’m amazed at how much information I’ve winkled out about Japan now that I’m not limited in how far I can dig.  When we arrive at Osaka airport, we will catch a train to Osaka and then walk through the underground shopping mall to our hotel.  Using Google throws up moments of magic.  I had an idea where the hotel was but any maps I could find were all in Japanese.  But I discovered that, if I right-click on a location, I get the option ‘What’s Here?’  This gives me a list of businesses at this location (all in Japanese).  Patiently, I click on each of them in turn then ask Google to translate.  Voila!  There is the Sun Members Umeda just where I thought it might be.

サンメンバーズ大阪梅田‎ - Sun Members Osaka Umeda

Not only that, I’m given the option of an interactive street view so I can see what the front of the building looks like.  Anyway, after an hour or so, I’ve mapped the whole walk from the station, through the underground mall to the right exit to the surface (Kitashinchi Station, East exit, #F-92), the pedestrian crossing we need and the street we walk along to the hotel.  What can go wrong?  If I were really anal, I could print out images of each step of the way and carry them with me to make sure we didn’t make a wrong turn.  But, I’m really not that bad.

I’ve also discovered that the Osaka Aquarium claims to be the largest in the world, it is 8 storeys high and you start at the top (like Questacon), and walk down through the different levels to the bottom and that one of the attractions is a whale shark!  Wow!  Clearly, we’re going to run out of time before we do everything we want.  And we could spend the week without seeing a single temple.