Apparently people aren't too big on Osaka, or not at 6 AM at least, because the flight was only half full. I had two seats to myself, but didn't get in quick enough to score a whole row of four in the middle before other people grabbed them all. Didn't really matter though as I wasn't planning to sleep the whole way there.
Having not flown on Jet Star before I wasn't prepared to have 1) no meals and 2) no entertainment. I had about 3 hours of podcasts to listen to, and spent about five more staring at a headrest and trying my best to deal with the onset of leg soreness. Having a half empty plane means it was much easier to get up and move around though. Even without full capacity the greatest mystery of plane flight still mystifies me, why do people need to use the toilet so often on planes ?
I did some research on the topic and came up with the following numbers: plane capacity = 300 total approximately, number of toilets = 7, percentage of time there was a line to the use the toilets = about 50%. So lets say there was 200 people on this plane (but probably less), that means that if each person needed to use a toilet once per hour (incredible), for two minutes at a time, with seven toilets available, that's 210 per hour. So why there is often a queue of two or more people just makes no sense to me.
Anyway, with that mystery no closer to being solved without the assistance of a detective duo we were ready to land in Osaka, or the Kansai airport that serves the Osaka area to be more correct, it's not really that close to the city. For the record, I've had a Big M and a small stick of confectionery in about 14 hours at this point.
Got through the airport pretty efficiently and we were left to our own devices. First impressions were that it was very hot and humid for 6 PM and there's not a whole lot of english signage to be seen. Tracked down an international-friendly ATM and grabbed some extra money (handy tip: using the local ATM, even with two sets of fees, worked out better than using the currency exchange back in Australia - what a system!). The train map and computer to get a combined ticket for the airport train and subway crossover was somewhere between complicated and impossible, for someone just arriving in the country, so just bought over the counter instead.
The train arrived at Namba station in the south downtown of Osaka after taking in some of the city and countryside on the way, although I have no idea where the train took us and what we passed by. Finding the way between this train and the subway platforms was a journey. All of the major stations, and even many of the smaller ones, are just massive and similar to the ones you get in Manhattan. It's not uncommon to walk for ten or more minutes underground to get from the platform of one train line to the platform of another. In a way it's good that you can do all the connecting underground, but it's also a little deceiving when you look at the train map.
Since this is all new it took probably five times longer than it otherwise would have, but we made the subway change to go all of ONE stop north to Shinsaibashi (yes it's only one stop, but you don't want to walk the distance of one train stop with all of your luggage - although taking several flights of steps and escalators is not much more fun). Exiting the train station and trying to find the hotel was another struggle, since the addresses are just in the form of numbers e.g. 1-7-24 Shinsaibashi which means absolutely nothing against the few major street signs that are in English. Tip for Japan: put street signs in English and Japanese at all major intersections, and have some way to correlate these names with postal addresses. Thanks in advance.
I should have done my own research into how to get to the first hotel, so I could have made some contribution to the search, but instead I was relying on the others to get us there. I don't really like to rely on other people (such as for directions), so that was probably a bad move on my part. After getting nowhere fast, we asked at another hotel and found out it was only a couple of streets away, but even when knowing that it was not very well marked so you could easily walk straight past it.
Dumped stuff in the little hotel room and off to find food. Yep, that's the next thing that contains very little English, restaurants. After walking around the streets near the hotel and Shinsaibashi-suji for a moment (and passing a Daimaru, I remember them!) I realised I was going to be holding everybody up trying to find a vegetarian-friendly restaurant so went off on my own to find something quick before they started closing for the night. I found a little cafe chain called Freshness Burger (note: most of the restaurant/store names will be in English, but that doesn't mean you'll find any of it once you go inside) and managed my first awkward English-Japanese conversation to find out that I could only get takeaway and ordered a tofu burger (choices being tofu or beans). The tofu burger was one massive piece of tofu in a burger bun. Terrible, you can't have so much tofu on it's own like that. I should have had the beans!
There was still a bit of time left in the evening so I went for a bit more exploring down Shinsaibashi-suji - basically this is a ridiculously long mall street with a roof covering the two sides of the street to keep the rain (and sun) away - what a great idea! All kind of fun stores to see along the way, most of the retail & cafes were closing, but others were still going.
I passed my first pachinko parlour which is basically a whole lot of noise and lights, the machines themselves are similar to the pokie machines here in Australia, but it looks more like a game of pinball. I did not investigate the game any further or go into one, but I found this quote from wikipedia kind of strange, particular when these places are literally everywhere.
Because gambling for cash is illegal in Japan and Taiwan, balls won cannot be exchanged directly for cash in the parlor. Instead, the balls are exchanged for token prizes, which can then be taken outside and traded in for cash at a business that is nominally separate from the parlor, and may be run by organized crime
Anyway, by luck I bumped into Kris and Lauren along the street and we headed south until we reached the bridge to Dotonbori.
This place is famous for Glico man! the moving crab! and other stuff, and it is quite popular with tourists and out-of-towners.
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