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As we arrived in Tokyo today it started a very light spitting rain. Once we were booked into the hotel it started a gentle, but constant rain which I knew wouldn’t get any worse, but which was making my travelling companion want to grab instant ramen and just chill in the hotel.

No, say I! If we’re going out, we’re going out for good food!

A side benefit of being out on a Sunday night in the rain was the opportunity for some nice moody rainy photos, free of other tourists.

When I was in school, dad collected and exhibited stamps. Being the son of a philatelist I was unable to escape my fate; I built a collection relating to transport and exhibited them a few times. I did it well enough to get me entry in to the youth philately trip to Germany in the late 90’s. Yeah, I’m a nerd.

While learning about all the ways people use mechanical contrivances to move themselves and their belongings around, I learnt about trains. Some of those trains go blisteringly fast. The two main fast-train runs in those days were the Japanese Shinkansen and the gloriously orange and French Trés Grand Vitesse (TGV).

The best laid plans of mice and men and all that. Turns out, if you’re trying to fish for your dinner on a Saturday night in Osaka you’re either booking in at a restaurant or doing it in the river… we probably should have prebooked 😂

No worry however, my usual trick of “open TripAdvisor and eat” worked out spectacularly well. We were already in the Dotonbori district, so I found us Chibo, a Teppanyaki Okonomiyaki restaurant.

Today we set out to find the Mozu Kofun tombs in southern Osaka. Our first train ride without the brain-melting pre-game of a long day’s transit. Namba station to Mikunigaoka Station didn’t take too long and it cost maybe… three dollars? It’s great what a huge population can do for infrastructure budgets.

The “pen pen pen” noise of train crossings is one I’ve known as an ambient noise for decades and brings back so many memories of anime and other media. Riding on the train today, it’s such a strange feeling to finally understand how much of the city culture of Japan revolves around them. Every couple of blocks you see a tiny side street crossing the line, with people on bikes and in cars waiting for the ever-present stream of trains.

The main goal today was to get JR train tickets for the rest of the trip. We’re going Osaka > Tokyo > Kyoto > Osaka > Hiroshima > Osaka > Kansai airport. This’ll happen over a few weeks, so the calculators I looked at showed it wouldn’t be worth the ~800-1100 for a 21 day JR rail pass. Our trips are occurring over about 23 days and we aren’t doing that many, so we opted to do it all as individual passes.

This’ll be a short one, as we got in late and crashed out hard. Finally getting to this point was quite the relief, only four hours late…

Kansai airport’s under heavy reconstruction at the moment and we turned up at about 11pm, so the only thing open was the train station and the vending machines. The latter was important, because that allowed me to get a SIM card for that all-important connection to the outside world!

I’ve always wanted to visit Japan, since the moment I started learning about it; I have absolutely adored the culture and the people for longer than I can remember. It’s a culture of contrasts; their incredible technology lives alongside their deeply held and revered traditions.

When the Small Child was talking about going overseas for schoolies, he’d cycled through a few different plans, finally landing on going to Japan with a friend after the end of year 12. Unfortunately being in year 12 the friend didn’t get his butt in gear, so that fell through; fortunately for me, the idea of the trip was still good, so it’s him and me for three weeks in Japan!

Coming into this trip there was a certain level of trepidation because of the industrial action that Jetstar’s been going through of late. Pay disagreements with the pilots and ground staff led to threats of flight delays or cancellations, then loads of flights cancelled for the day we left. Thankfully, we were one of the flights unaffected - Brisbane to Cairns early in the morning. Others on the same route, but later in the day were cancelled, so we got off easy.

This article on “Curving” - a dog body language element was fascinating to me.

Humans can utilize acts of curving with dog interactions. To approach a dog politely, instead of walking straight towards the dog in our very human direct way, you could walk in a slight curve. On approach, turning your shoulder away ever so slightly can put a dog at ease and is polite.

As the housemate of a dog with serious emotional issues, I really need to read more about this - anything to understand her better can only make life better for both of us. 🥰

There’s not much to say really. It’s angular, it’s stainless, it evokes feelings of 80’s and 90’s cyber stuff and it’s a big electric truck.

If I can’t afford whatever it costs by the time it gets to Australia in a few years time, I’ll get my $150 back. If I can afford it, I’ll be buying a badass stainless steel electric truck.