I'm sitting on the bed, cross-legged eating pork buns and watching more Japanese game shows, thankful that we have a place to stay tonight.
The day started really well as we sadly said our goodbyes to Tokyo (and I realised once again that I still have a lot of things to knock off my to-do list. I did knock off some like Mt Takao and Nakamura) which don't really count as they are outside of Tokyo but I am still happy all the same, and it gives me a perfect excuse to hopefully come back one day.
We had our last trip on the Yamanote line from Otsaku to Tokyo station where we boarded the Shinkansen to Osaka ,
not without stopping to buy a really good bento box to eat on the way, and I savoured every mouthful (did I tell you how much I love Japanese food and especially bento boxes). This time on the train we were unlucky enough not to see Fujisan as the weather was pretty awful but hopefully when we make our trek back north we will at lest get a glimpse of the magnificent mountain.
Because I have quite a few things to knock off my to-do list that focus on Osaka we decided that this time around we were going to stay here rather than Kyoto and use it as a base to explore, staying at an air bnb so that we could save on costs and armed with our maps we managed to find our way around Osaka easily and despite issues of unrecognisable street signs we found the apartment complex that we were supposed to be staying in without any difficulty. AND THEN OUR DAY TURNED TO HELL!!!!!!
There was supposed to be someone at the apartment to give us keys and explain everything we needed to know about the area but there wasn't.,
We made phonecalls (I dread to think of the phone bill when we get back home) with no reply, in hindsight I think the message we got was that "the service was no longer available" rather than "please leave a message after---" We had to ring back home which took three gos before we got through to someone that could help(sort of). THE JOYS OF OVERSEAS CALL CENTRES!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not that the help was very good but at least they could understand us and we could understand them (sort of)!!! The company rang us back to say that they couldn't get hold of the person who owns the apartment and the email address we had for a contact kept coming back as account no longer available so basically we were screwed.
We were at our wits end and got a little cranky with each other but thankfully we had some lovely women try and help us out. The first was a pharmacist who spoke limited English but tried to get in contact with the people for us and made us feel a lot better. We then tried to get into a hostel around the corner which was fully booked and the receptionist there spent ages helping us find new accommodation and gave us detailed directions as to how to find the new place(only problem is we could only book for 3 nights so still had to find somewhere else to stay for the rest of our time in Osaka)
Thankfully the hotel is nice (Osaka Fujiya Hotel) and the area is really cool just a few steps away from Dotomburi which means some really great street food in our future but after sitting outside the apartment/in the chemist/hostel for nearly four hours while we made phone calls and sent emails and tried to find somewhere to stay we didn't really feel like venturing out to explore so instead we are sitting, chilling eating pork buns and watching Japanese TV and surfing the internet while I find us somewhere else to stay.
And that is where the lemonade comes from, we are staying in a ryokan for the last four nights and instead of paying the usual $235 a night we are only paying $112 so so who gives a crap about today's wasted adventures....we are staying in a great hotel in a great area and hopefully staying at a traditional Japanese inn will just top off our time in Osaka.