Arrival

Only slept for about an hour, feeling very tired, curse the 60 on demand movie entertainment system, and the singapore slings. Flight from Singapore to Osaka was quite turbulent, seatbelts most of the way. Closer to the window this time, next to a Japanese business man who took up the entire luggage rack with his duty free bags (until the flight steward intervened). Don't think he liked westerners at all, or maybe we had embarrassed him re the luggage. He waived away any approach of food, and soon he was asleep, so we left him alone.

Getting off at Kansia / Osaka, straight onto the train/shuttle between, I noticed Gillian & I were taller than everyone else around us (a Lost in Translation moment) . Hitting the escalators, I noted the local custom of keep right if you are standing still, as the left is used for people walking/running up the escalator.

Took us forever to finish the quaranteen form, as this was the only form we hadn't been given earlier...much digging around for all the contact details they required. We looked up and we were the only ones left... felt like a stupid foreigner. Customs line was nice and short then and once we got into the right (foreigner only) line.. all was well. At the final customs exit point we were asked a ton of questions in Japanese.. to which we stared dumbly before the girl finally switched to English...... And with much relief we push through to get our luggage.

Purchased a phone card to arrange for Yukiko to meet us at Oehommashi. Tourist info pointed us toward the correct bus stop and the ticket machines. Ticket machines are the key to Japan. Master these and you can get anywhere, bus, subway, train.

A girl in white gloves point to the "English" button, and we purchased the tickets. Unfortunately Gill hit one wrong button and got one of the tickets for one stop further along. We were given a luggage stub for our bags and they were loaded on the bus. Gillian got on with the good ticket, the driver questioned me in Japanese over mine, luckily I could pronounce my destination enough and explained the error with the machine. He let me on (after all we had only paid over, not under). Then after I sat down the driver came up and gave me change for the difference, this my the first encounter of "Service" Japanese style.

The bus trip was about 1.5 hours, through very grey, drab, air poluted industrial area. At one point the entire vista was gas/fuel refinery towers. Then there was the wood production areas where all the water surface was covered in floating logs, the banks of which were poluted with plastic bottles. It impossible to describe any of this "first impression" as pretty. The industrial buildings had pealing paint, wharehouse building up against giant worksheds, next to chimney stacks, very few green bits, maybe a tree now in a pot now and again. Not the Japan I was expecting, this was the ugly underbelly of prosperous industry.