Train day!

Fri 16th April: Slept overnight at the onsen on traditional Japanese Tatame style of bed (on the straw mat floor, with a thick layer for the bed and a thick blanket). Woke up in the morning at 6:30 and we all decided to make the most out of our money by going for another dip before we head off. It was quite literally freezing outside, but this did not deter us from going to the hottest pool in the whole Onsen one last time. We noticed that there was something in the air and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was in fact, snowing (very small partially melted flakes, however). That really topped out trip to see snow (and snowing) at a Japanese onsen.

I did say no pics - but could not resist going down to take some (since everyone was at breakfast and no one was at the springs.. perfect opportunity for photo shots)!

After eating a traditional Japanese breakfast (Japanese actually eat rice for breakie), we set off on a bus trip back to the JR train station and the 3 hour 20 minute trip back to Ueno in Tokyo. We then changed over to the Tokyo to Osaka Shinkansen (bullet train) for the 3 hour trip to Osaka.

Shinkansen ("New Iron line" official name of the bullet train services) is an extremely fast train service that goes between major metro centres of Japan. It did not disappoint me at all and when I put my Phone (running Garmin) against the window to check the speeds, we were quite literally going at 260+km/h to our destination. Since our pass was only a standard, we could take any JR (Japan Rail) train except for the fastest Shinkansen (which is clocked at over 320km/h and cuts the trip by 30 min or so). The distance from Tokyo to Osaka is roughly about the same as Brisbane to Sydney, so imagine only taking 3 hours to get to Brisbane! The trains was running so fast, that even my SLR pics blurred when I focused on things close (although the far away objects are ok as you can imagine).

We got to Osaka at around 6pm (total trip was around 8 hours between the stops) and the next challenge was to figure out how trains worked here. Osaka has a "City circle" that basically runs around the city in both directions. If you make a mistake (like us), we ended up at Universal Studios! We eventually found our hotel, went down to get some food (some Omlette mixed with sauce that Tom wanted). Then went around Osaka to visit the shops (since most closed late).

Shops in Osaka are layed out very weirdly with mega long shopping facilities (basically one street that is a couple of km's long but have a roof). Just goes on forever, but was interesting. Was also interesting to find that there were heaps of these young japanese Guys and girls on the street too who are willing to become your BF/GF (for a fee of course).

Anyhow, the weather was crap - rain after rain. Depending on weather, tomorrow may be Kyoto with the bike ride.