Japan by Sea – Part 2

The Crowds

As is often the case when Barb and I travel, it takes a day or two to get acclimated to the new time zone and our first night in Osaka was no exception. We were both wide awake around 3AM local time and by 7AM, we were eating breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I should point out that 7AM is several hours earlier than we’d normally be eating. The other byproduct of getting such an early start was that when we got to our subway station, we were met by lots of commuters on their way to work. Every subway car was packed cheek by jowl and you had to be fairly determined to get in the car before it got filled up right to the door and you are left standing on the platform.

Walking the City

As we only had 3 days here is Osaka before we board our cruise, we tried too make the most of it and see as much of Osaka as we can. It’s been humid in the mid-20’s here and while we has some rain on the first day in the city, it didn’t prevent us from walking over 10 Km that first day, with lots of up and down stairs at the subway stations. Needless to say we got a much better sleep after walking around so much. Osaka is a large, sprawling city and even with taking the subway, we’ll only touch on the highlights of the city in just 3 days.

The Language

Ok, this is the big one, how are we getting by with the Japanese language? While only on Day 3 of our 18 days here, we have been getting by. At the large hotel we’re staying at here in Osaka, most of the staff speak English but several of the restaurants we’ve visited so far, it was pretty common that none of the staff did. In a lot of cases, we used our translate app or the waitress would use her translator app but we’ve always been able to get by. I’ll update again on this by then of the trip to see if anything has changed.

The Toilets

In perhaps no other country other than Japan would it be even worth mentioning about the toilets, but here we are. For years, I’ve heard about the high-tech nature of Japanese toilets and all of the rumours are true. In all our travels, I’ve never needed to use Google Translate to figure out how to use a toilet as I did yesterday as most of them have only one control mechanism, nothing I would call a control pad. The toilet in our hotel is perhaps easier to use as the toilet control is in English and Japanese, one of the buttons clearly marked as flush, although it often flushed automatically but I’ve found sometimes a bit prematurely. I’m not a big fan of the heated seats but I will admit to trying the button that clearly shows as “bum wash”, only once. The big problem is in most restaurants you’re faced with a similar control pad but only in Japanese, which is where I had to employ Google Translate.

Today being Friday is our last day in Osaka and later today will board our cruise ship for the next stage of our Japan adventure.

I’ve now started uploading my photos to my photo web site here.

Baden