Osaka

After breakfast Marsha and I took the hotel shuttle to the Osaka airport to catch a train into central Osaka.  We wanted to be at Shin-Osaka terminal because tbat is close to our hotel.  We got an express train and it was about an hour ride.  This railroad station is huge- think of a really big airport.  Again most everything is in Japanese so we asked someone how to get to our hotel.  The directions were easy and it was an easy walk to the hotel.  We dropped off our bags and walked around to see the area.  The area around the station and hotel appears to be almost all residential and it was quiet.  We checked into our hotel at 3pm and the front desk had taken our luggage up to our room. We then decided to take the subway to the Umeda section of Osaka.  There was supposed to be shops and entertainment there.  We went to buy subway tickets from the machine but didn’t know how much they cost.  A person from the subway (in uniform) assisted us and off we were to Umeda.  Everything here is very crowded but Umeda is indescribable.  The subways were jammed full and when we reached the surface street there was wall to wall people.  I have never seen so many people.  I can’t even tell you how many malls there are in this area there are so many and they are all full of people. We picked one and went in.  Beautiful mall with 9 floors of really nice shops and restaurants.  We stopped at a French Bistro for a glass of wine.  All of the restaurants had long lines with people waiting to eat.  I think there was 93 restaurants and they were all busy.  As I told you indescribable.   Marsha and I decided to eat at one of the little places in the station near our hotel.  While we were at the Shin-Osaka station we bought our bullet train tickets to Tokyo.We got back to the hotel and put on the pajamas provided by the hotel since there was no room for our suitcases the room was so small.  Every hotel in Japan had pajamas for us to wear along with sandals in the room.  I took a picture of the bathroom so you could see how small this place is and it was not cheap. There is also a pic of Marsha in bed so you can see how small the room is.

I forgot about the vending machines.  There are banks of them everywhere.  There is never less than 2 together.