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Day 10: Osaka to Tokushima and Awa Odori

Checked out of the hotel and discovered that what had taken 30 minutes to hunt down the previous night was only a 30 second walk from the railway station; if only the hotel had bothered to provide directions! Caught a local train (a "thunderbird") from Shin-Osaka to Osaka itself. Quite often the main station of a town isn't suitable for the Shinkansen (it might not be a "through" station, or might not be possible to build the line elevated, etc) so you end up with "Shin-" stations on the outskirts of town. Osaka station itself is massive and extremely complicated to find your way around. There is a north and south tower and sometimes things will be on floor "B1F". I was ravenous and wanted something to munch, but could only find ponsy cafes. Eventually I found a food directory and the only place that wasn't going to cost the earth was Krispy Kreme Doughnuts. Had to laugh at that. Ordered three yummy looking doughnuts and went to find a table only there were none, so ended up sittin...

Day 9: Tokyo to Osaka

Todays mission was to get to Osaka for the night, however my train didn't leave till later in the day so I decided to visit Akahabara another time. I'd had the brain wave a couple of days earlier that there might be some model train shops there, and sure enough there wasn't just one, but dozens and dozens. So I headed off there with a rough map and started visiting shops. The shops I visited were all pretty good, albeit hard to find. A typica address might be: "6-14-2 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku, Sakai, Suehiro Bldg 3F" or another shop in a completely different part of Akihabara might be "3-15-7 Soto-Kanda, Chiyoda-ku, Asano Bldg 2F". You'll notice the road name is always the same, and the address is 3 different numbers…!??!? I still haven't been able to suss this out, and so without a decent map I have no hope of finding anyting in Akihabara!

However I did manage to visit 3 different shops, all with different methods of conducting a sale. One shop had everything in cardb...

Day 8: Sapporo to Tokyo

Last day here in Hokkaido, and it consisted mostly of trains, starting with a subway train to the central station, then a Furico train to Onema Koen. Turns out the Furico is actually a tilting train, which explains why it was so fast and smooth. Passed some great scenery as we ran along the coast.

At Onema Koen I hopped out and left the delightful little station. Onema Koen means Lake Onema (although koen actually means park) and it is definitely one of the highlights in Hokkaido, my decision to stop there being aided in no small part by the train stopping right next to it. I wasn't quite sure what to expect but soon weeded through all the street vendors and car parking and found the lake itself. Wow!

Onema Koen consists of the lake itself, and dozens of little islands. There is a great wee walkway that goes from island to island connected by little bridges. Some of the smaller "inner la...

Day 7: Sapporo to Otaru

A fairly slow start to the day, followed by a visit to the internet cafe to reserve a room for the night as the hotel had said they were full. However I reserved a room back there for that night, so they can't have been full. I don't understand either. My hour of wifi usage cost me 400 yen, ($6) a rediculous amount considering I wasn't even using one of their computers! Never mind, it was a beautiful sunny day and I hopped on a local train to Otaru and zipped off. Here is the only map of Hokkaido I have. Sapporo is the big 01 . Asahikawa where I've been on a few trips is in the middle of the island, and Biei and Furano are below that. Otaru is the complete opposite direction and lies along the coast.

It's only a short 30 minute journey there. We zipped along and I saw some of the sleeper trains waiting to be cleaned, and a big JR yard with lots of different colourful trains out sunbathing. Then we rounded a corner and there was the sea! Everyone was very exc...

Day 6: Sapporo to Asahidake

Bit of a sleep in this morning to try and stay ahead of the slight cough I've picked up; it appeared to work and I felt a lot better. 10am and I was off on another adventure. First stop was the river to watch the fish for a bit. My goodness they're big! And they move like 10,000 ton submarines too: slowly and ominously.

Note the size of the leaf floating past…

Down to the station again and snapped a picture of a Furico 283 ; JR Hokkaido seem to give most of their flagship trains quite cool names, and usually in "romanji", i.e. romanisced Japanese.

I was actually on a Super Kamui (ka-mu-i) again, and as usual it was a very quick, quiet and smooth ride. At Asahikawa I did a good job of working out where to wait for my bus and it soon arrived and all five of us filed on. I was a bit confused why no one paid and when I hesitated the driver smiled and waved me on. Well, if he i...