Thursday, December 8th .....

Jamie came across this Canadian ad somewhere. Maybe we should be looking for royalties!

Our proposed trip to Japan, still 24 weeks away, looks set to become the most over-organised holiday ever. The internet certainly draws you in and I find myself following up question after question. When we were in Japan last, in 2005, we discovered that we could travel from our hotel to the Tokyo Railway Station without ever standing on the surface. We simply took the stairs down to the nearest subway station and, by judicious following of our noses, we found ourselves emerging where we wanted to go.

I was interested in seeing whether this might be possible in Osaka. There are 6 railway stations, main line and subway, within 15 minutes walk of our hotel and it didn’t take me long to discover they are all connected underground, not just by tunnels but by shopping malls. Osaka claims to have more underground shopping than any city in Japan, and possibly the world. This may be so because there are many kilometres just near where are staying without looking at other transport hubs in other areas of the city.


So, within 100m of the hotel, we take the stairs down to the Diamor Shopping Mall and walk through to the station we want. On the way, we can get a meal or a snack. There are several coffee shops, two MacDonalds, a couple of noodle shops and, our favourites, bakeries.
Japanese bread is delicious, a little sweeter than ours but that’s not always a bad thing. Certainly, Madi got a taste for their buns and we got into the habit of buying a bagful before we got on the train. Each of us took a tray and pair of tongs and chose what we liked best. How many can I have Grand-dad? was the constant cry. Sometimes the answer was three, sometimes four, but I was never sure I was on the right track.

We keep discovering new forms of wildlife on the ‘farm’.
Today, we noticed a very healthy-looking echidna snuffling through the grass. When he heard us, his snout started twitching as he tried to find where we were and he curled into a ball hoping we would leave him alone. We did!