Thursday, 18th December

We got up and had a complimentary breakfast at our Okayama hotel. It was western-style with toast and things, and cute fruit salads with 1 piece of pineapple, 1 grape and 1 tiny piece of orange in a small plastic container. I had three (giving the pineapple to Charles).
We left our luggage with the staff and HIT the TOWN. First we went to the Okayama park via the Ugliest Fountain Ever. We went over a Smelly River and found the park and had to pay to get in. It was a pretty park with lots of little different things in it, like a crane (the bird) enclosure and several tea houses and fish in the ponds.
Next we went to the castle. When we found out that it was 800 yen each to go in, we decided to just look at the castle.
"Is that the Castle beyond the Goblin City?"
"Turn back Sarah. Turn back before it's too late."
Then we went back into town and had a coffee and cake break at a cafe. YUM. We went to Loft department store where I bought a Frog and Toad book for Emi's niece for Christmas. It's in Japanese so her mum will be able to read it to her. I loved Frog and Toad when I was little! They also had frog and toad soft toys but I restrained myself as they were poorly made and I think I could do better myself.
We got our luggage and took a taxi to the station (it's a long annoying way and I wasn't feeling too well) and got the shinkansen easily. It was an uneventful ride and I got to watch The Wonder Years on the lappy. Aw Kevin!
At Osaka it was an easy trip to our hotel because it's just over the road from the station. It's a business hotel, and our room is smaller than other times. The bed was advertised as being a "semi-double" which is ... compact. We will manage. Maybe one of us will sleep upside down. The man at the desk had some confusion when he thought we were a guy called Frank. We managed to communicate in the end.
After a brief rest we went out again, taking the (unfortunately NOT JR) subway into the city, where there is the largest underground shopping arcade in Japan (or the world?). We found Metamorphose which was smaller than the one in Kyoto, but had some shoes on sale and I was able to communicate with the adorable shop girl enough to try them on and figure out that there was only one size - too small. She even took out the laces for my gargantuan foot! No shoes for me.
Then we walked around the corner to the Aranzi Aronzo shop. Aranzi Aronzo is a shop that sells merchandise to do with some characters that you can make. It's hard to explain, but I have two Aranzi Aronzo craft books which tell me how to make all these little felt animals. The shop sells other stuff with pictures of those animals, and storybooks about them. I bought Chucky some boxer shorts with Robot Panda and Normal Panda on them, and he bought me a little tiny calander with pictures of all the characters. We also got a little postcard book and I bought a small bag and some stickers. The lady gave me a tiny purse to go with the bag for FREE! I was so happy to be there. There's a character that's a little scotty dog which is based on the owner's dog Tetsu. In the shop there were photos of the real Tetsu and a bowl and a leash and a mat where he usually sits. I wish we could've seen Tetsu!
On the way back to the station we got food at a place in the arcade. There was no English menu so the waitress came outside with us so we could point to the plastic food we wanted. Almost every Japanese restaurant has creepily realistic plastic food in the window. I also managed to say that I don't eat prawn. Yay!
We only got a little bit lost at our station. It's big!
I'm feeling homesick tonight, so we watched Monty Python on the lappy. Episode 2: The Larch.
Chucky promised that he would let me sleep in until TEN tomorrow.

December 17th

Charles: Today was basically a travel day, we were heading from Takayama in the Mountains to Okayama which is more south than Kobe and near the coast. We woke up, packed up our stuff and walked down the street to the station to get the 9:37 train to Nagoya. We weren't very happy with the ryokan because that morning our fridge locked itself and some of our food inside and I think I lost some earphones somewhere but we were in a hurry so we didn't take it up with the staff.

The train ride back to Nagoya was just as bumpy as going the other way, but we had a nicer time because we were prepared for the hot carriage. The views were really beautiful with the river below and fog falling down valleys above. This trip was just over two hours and we got to Nagoya at 12:00. We've been to Nagoya station a few times now so we headed directly to the shinkansen gates and ordered tickets. We thought that we would need to go further down the line and change to a lower level of shinkansen so we ordered tickets for Kyoto on Hikari 367 departing at 12:11. When we got to the platform (12:05) we saw on the board that Hikari 367 was going to Okayama! Chrissy was skeptical but I argued that we could go back downstairs and ask the man to rebook our tickets for Okayama. We ran down the stairs (me carrying both bags) and managed to get this concept across to the man and got new tickets for the same seats. We got to the platform again just as the train was pulling in, perfect timing hm? Chrissy didn't think so and spent the next few minutes staring me to death.

No trip to Japan is complete without a stressful shinkansen experience.

This train trip was smooth and relaxing and we got a nice view of Himeji castle as we zoomed past. We got to Okayama and 2:15 and wanted to take a taxi to the hotel. We thought this would be easy. Comfort Hotel, we could point to it on a map, it wasn't very far. The taxi driver couldn't understand us saying Ko n fo ru to Ho te ru and couldn't read the english name. Eventually we communicated and he thought it was so amusing that he laughed all the way up the street. We're on the 9th floor of the Comfort Hotel.

Our afternoon was slow because we were tired and Chrissy felt a bit sick. We got some takeaway for lunch and played on the internet. In the evening we went for a walk and found a nice mall with Kinokunia which, even in Japanese, is a fun shop. We tried to find a particular tofu restaurant but as a nice lady explained to us in English, tofu is a morning thing and it's a lunch place so we ate cheap katsu-don instead. Yum.

Chrissy: Chucky bought a fruit salad dessert that he thought would be pear, peach and apricot. It turned out to be pineapple, Something and Something. In jelly.
The hairdryer here actually dried my hair and didn't just warm it!