Up at 5am to get a lift to the airport. flight to Frankfurt was late leaving and arriving so no time all to hang around at Frankfurt airport. 10 hour flight to Osaka was uneventful but on a much more cramped plane than last year. route from Germany took us over Warsaw, Moscow, Novosibirsk, Ulan Bator, Beijing and south Korea.

landed at kansai on a lovely sunny morning and nice to get some fresh air after 15 hours in airports and on planes. Checked in for rail passes at the station and then caught train to Osaka and taxi to hotel. Slept all afternoon to get some rest. Hotel is very smart and we have a big room on the 13th floor overlooking the castle and park. Bit unlucky to be on the 13th floor but as the japanese think 4 is the unlucky number guess we shouldn't worry about it. The hotel has something like 15 places to eat in it so we are not going to go hungry whilst we are here. Like many places in Japan, the hotel is overrun with little uniformed men and women scuttling around being super helpful so no danger of suffering poor service here.

Ate some noodles at one of the hotel restaurants and picked up some useful tips on how loudly to slurp. Bravely embarked on a large bowl of soba noodles with some cooked rare duck and spring onions, all floating in something resembling brown hot water. It was heavy going but reasonably edible. Robin had chicken [barely cooked] with rice and egg, the latter also barely cooked. He said he was ready for another meal when he'd finished.

We ventured out on the tube to the shopping area at Umeda. It was buzzing with young people eating out and doing their shopping plus lots of very noisy amusement arcades. We were delighted to find a Starbucks and availed ourselves of two large decaff coffees. The place was packed with young people plus we were the only westerners.