Miyajima to Osaka
(So - today we have the Internet. I’ll backfill the previous days’ diaries in time — they’re written but uploading them requires a bit of reformatting and picture maintenance)
This morning’s breakfast was a “Western breakfast” of:
- Cornflakes
- Bread roll
- Croissant
- Marmalade and butter
- Fruit salad
- Orange juice
- Coffee
- Dressed salad
- Fried egg served with boiled vegetables
It was a good breakfast.
We checked out just as a busload of well dressed gaijin in sunglasses were arriving. In their suits and sunglasses, they looked like gangsters. The shuttle bus driver told us it was the wedding of a Swedish groom and a Japanese bride. What a lovely place to get married — but what an expense to foist on your friends.
Approaching the ferry terminal, we saw newcomers to the island excitedly approaching deer. As if they’d never seen a deer before. How soon the novelty would pale. We boarded the ferry, got off the island, heaved our heavy suitcases to the train station, and transported ourselves to Hiroshima.
The plan was to stow our bags in a locker, visit the Peace Park — you know, because it’s a bit of an obligation — then come back, free our bags and get to Osaka. Our first obstacle was some cackling and obstructive Germans. I suppose they thought it was OK to laugh in Hiroshima — the city of tragedy — because as Germans, for once they were only very indirectly responsible for the atrocity.
(Disclaimer: hartnup.net is aware that Hiroshima is a thriving city where levity is frequently encountered, and that the above comment about Germans is distasteful. Meh.)
Our second obstacle was a shortage of lockers. We tried. We did. But there was no way we were carting our luggage across town, and then around the peace park, so we looked at some photographs of the A Bomb Dome in the guidebook, paid our mental respects that way, and (after wasting half an hour standing around) made a dash for a train that was leaving for Osaka in 4 minutes.
Three cheers for smoking carriages. We had no reservations, and there were scarce seats on most of the train. Furthermore there were clumsy, smelly gaijin getting in the way. The smoking carriage had plenty of room though, and not nearly as much smoke as you might expect. I wouldn’t recommend passive smoking there every day of your commute, but for our purposes it was fine.
The Shinkansen stops at Shin-Osaka station, some distance from the city centre. Although there might be a simple way to get from there to the Namba district, where our hotel was, but we didn’t find it. We had competing primal urges: the urge to eat, and the urge to get to our destination so we could be free of our bags. The latter took priority, but there was a nagging danger that hunger would fray nerves.
We took the wrong train and found ourselves at Universal Studios theme park. That wasn’t such a big deal - but even changing platforms is hassle when you’re carting bags around. Did I mention we had heavy bags?
“Stop rambling!”, I hear you say. To cut a long story short, we eventually found our way to Namba station, using the ladies only carriage (outside ladies only hours).
A station map alleged the existence of an information desk, and we stuggled to find it. Eventually, we managed and were directed towards our hotel. It seemed like an awfully long walk, through a glistening shopping arcade built directly beneath a main road.
Emerging to ground level, we found ourselves in a noisy, frenetic covered street full of flashing lights, music, pachinko arcades, bars, restaurants and shops. Nestled among these was our hotel. The hotel begins on the third floor (more noisy garishness on the first two floors), and is a soundproofed oasis of calm. Our room has room to swing two or three cats, and Internet. At last!
It’s an odd Internet service. You plug your ethernet cable into a box under the TV. Before you get a connection, you have to turn on the TV and navigate some menus. You have to keep the TV on a certain channel in order to maintain your connection. Is their advertising funding the connection? Is that advertising indirectly funding this diary?
After opening all the cupboards to have a look (it’s tradition), and checking that the Internet worked, we went straight back out to attend to our secondary objective: food.
There was a bewildering choice of restaurants, but we couldn’t afford to be too fussy, since that’s how you end up spending an hour seeking the perfect restaurant, while digesting your own stomach lining. We saw a conveyor belt sushi joint, and stepped in. We’re good at conveyor belt sushi now:
- Waitress seats you
- Ask for water (”O mizu futatsu onegaishimasu.”)
- If the wasabi’s not circulating on the conveyor belt, ask the sushi chef for it.
- Grab a mug, make some green tea using the hot water tap in front of you
- Grab dishes for soy sauce, wasabi, pickled ginger; populate them
- Grab sushi and eat it
- Almost everything you read about the fine details is nonsense — we’ve seen locals do many things the guidebooks tell you not to do: dipping the rice in soy sauce rather than the fish, applying wasabi directly to the sushi, etc. This makes perfect sense. Think of all the different ways there are of eating fish and chips.
- When you’re full, ask for the bill: “Sumimasen, o kanjo kudasai?”
- Take the bill to the till at the exit, pay, exchange various polite phrases, and leave.
We ate rather a lot of sushi, and it came to an astonishingly cheap 1,800 yen between us: less than £9.
Back out on the streets after a rest, we sought out a post office (Japan tip: post offices open lateish, and have international ATMs), then Den Den Town — Osaka’s answer to Akihabara, and allegedly stiff competition.
We’re not sure we found it, but we did find some distinctly Japanese sights and some extraordinary neon displays as we returned towards Namba.
Having stuffed ourselves with cheap sushi, we leapt at the chance to eat a light dinner at Mos Burger — the high class burger chain we’d failed to find in Ikebukuro.
Burger rating:
- Meat patty: nothing special
- Bun: better than McDonalds, not saying much
- Salad: OK
- Onions: McDonalds style fine chop and lightly cooked
- Unique Mos Burger sauce: pretty damn tasty
- Chips: good
All in all, not the sensation we were expecting, but worth the visit, and certainly a cheap end to a cheap day’s eating. Apparently, after McDonalds, Mos Burger has more branches than any other fast food chain in Asia — yet most of us have never heard of it.
We found our way home through the fairground atmosphere of Namba. Along the way we witnessed crime! A girl was shouting and struggling to keep hold of her bag, as a young man fought to snatch it from her. I must admit, I assumed it was friends indulging in hi-jinx, but two shop assistants ran in, and manhandled the assailant to their premises, to chop his hands off or something: we’ll never know.
We bought some beer from a Circle-K convenience store (still no wasabi peanuts). Three cans each: Suntory Golden Dry, Enjuku, and Enjuku Kuro (dark beer: nice!).
I wrote this, and once I’ve uploaded it, I will disconnect from the Internet, so we can switch to a different TV channel…