April 21

We had time to eat a nice breakfast at the Comfort Hotel before heading over to the train station. The platforms were well marked and it wasn’t too difficult to figure out which platform we needed to go to. We watched the various trains pull in and out, noting that being on time was important if you didn’t want to miss the rain. We had gotten the limited express train to Osaka which meant it had fewer stops. It moved along rapidly compared to the local train we had yeseterday.

When we arrived to Osaka, we quickly realized that we were no longer in the small city format. The station was huge and just figuring where we needed to go was going to take some time. There were exits in all directions, so our plan of attack was to at least find how to get outside of the train station. Eventually we did, then the rain started pouring. We knew that the hotel that we were staying wasn’t that far away. What we didn’t figure out initially was that our google app was useless. We made several trips around the same block before realizing that the tall buildings didn’t allow our gps to work. A man approached us asking if he could help, we told him where we wanted to go and he said follow me. I must admit at first I wasn’t sure that this was a good idea. We realized that he was actually taking us to an information kiosk and when they learned what we needed, they pointed to a direction for us to follow. Happy to say we did find it. The name of the hotel was REI which was easy to remember as we related it to the big outdoor store in the States. They were able to keep our luggage until we could return later to check in. We devoted the afternoon to check out and be impressed with all of the shopping opportunities. Japan is known for giving gifts and there were so many opportunities to find gifts. We had read about the souvenir stores and were exhausted at looking at all the possibilities. The Malls were anywhere from ground level to up to 10 stories high. Each floor had a particular speciality, but unlike the states everywhere you went was a clerk to help you with any questions you might have. We decided to buy some chopsticks for gifts which we figured might be simple. There were walls of the different types of chopsticks as well as a big price difference. We looked at our options for awhile and then it was just time to buy some.At least they will fit easily in our backpacks. We had fun just looking and not buying. The bottom floor was all food selections, We were able to find a nice selection of tea and sake for gifts.

We were all shopped out and it was time to head back to our hotel. Time to relax and plan out our last two days in Japan.