Day 26, in which we go too far to get to Osaka

We rose early, checked out of our hotel and took the train south to our next destination: Osaka. It turns out Osaka is less than half an hour away from Kyoto – one of the suburbs, in Tokyo terms – but fortunately we went to the wrong train station, travelling from Shin-Osaka (where the bullet train pulls in) to Osaka Station, then back to Shin-Osaka again when we realised that's where our hotel is, only to find our hotel wasn't ready for check-in so we dumped our bags and took the train back to Osaka Station again. This all helped to pass a very exciting morning.

In the afternoon we went to Kaiyukan, the Osaka Aquarium, whose stirring motto is “Ocean, You Meet Whale Shark”. We did indeed meet whale shark, as well as a range of dolphins, penguins, otters, turtles and fish. Kaiyukan (which is supposed to be the best aquarium in Japan) is divided into just thirteen separate tanks, each of which represents a different eco-system and spans up to five different floors. You start right at the top – watching, say, otters frolic on the beach – and then descend down, seeing the different strata of each eco-system, right down to the seabed where the bottom-feeders lurk.

Star of the show was the Pacific Ocean tank, the largest and most exciting, housing a large number of manta rays, school of mackerel, zebra sharks, hammer head sharks and the much-advertised whale shark. Just as lovely, in single-storey tanks 14 and 15a-c lived the creaking world of the long-legged spider crabs and the colourful and mysterious jellyfish.


We tried to eat in a Japanese fast food restaurant, but the maitre d' (if fast food joints have maitre'ds, otherwise the spotty wee girl standing at the front) insisted we write something down on her piece of paper, and since we didn't know what she expected us to write we just left and ate from KFC instead, as the Japanese for 'chicken fillet burger' is easy to remember (just say it as though you're a weak Italian stereotype: 'chickena filleta burgera').

We returned to Shin-Osaka to check into our hotel, the New Osaka Hotel Osaka, a charming hostelry constructed between two fly-overs and two separate train lines, which nevertheless contains four separate wedding chapels. Despite the opulence of the reception area, our room is the smallest yet. There is no real room for our luggage, and the only place to unpack clothes is a small drawer in the middle of the room and two coat hangers hanging on the mirror.

Shin-Osaka is in the northern part of the city and comes with little to recommend it, but we couldn't face another train trip into Osaka proper for dinner so we googled for nearby food and ended up at an Indian restaurant called Khazana. Although our food was okay, I wouldn't recommend eating here as the premises primarily served as the depot for a food delivery service. We waited for our meal under the watchful eye of a burly delivery man, who sat across the room from us smoking a cigarette. They also forgot to put any prawns in the prawn jalfrezi.

We went to bed and watched season one of Nighty Night, which was terrific even if it went a little far in the final episode.