Last time zone before GMT

At least,  it's the last time zone if you don't count Frankfurt.  Which I don't because we will only be there for an hour or so and we won't leave the airport.

You find us in a cough lozenge sized room in a hotel in Osaka.  We arrived last evening on a Jetstar flight from Cairns - which I have to say was altogether a pleasant experience. Getting out of Australia  through a small international airport is every bit as easy as getting in. I had been thinking that we might fly directly to and from Melbourne next January but I am rethinking this idea!! And I have to say that flying with Jetstar is a very much nicer experience than flying with Ryanair. I had prepaid everything that needed prepaying so we had food on the flight. And rather nice food it was too. We got to Osaka on time and proceeded in an orderly and expeditious manner through immigration (nearly all the passengers were Japanese nationals so they had a huge queue and the aliens did not :-D ) and customs.  Alas we had just missed the hotel's free shuttle bus and the next one wasn't for an hour so we took a rather more expensive than I had expected taxi to the hotel.

I was a bit nonplussed by the hotel.  I knew it was a budget hotel - I had chosen it precisely because it was a budget hotel. But it was a bit more budgety than I had expected and appeared to be out in some sort of industrial wasteland.  However,  it fulfilled all my basic requirements of a hotel in that there is a bed,  internet (although bizarrely it only works on the iPad and not on the laptop!!!) and access to a loo.  There is a shopping mall five minutes away which is open until late so there was also wine and a picnic of sorts last night.  And we woke up this morning to a deceptively sunny morning to find that we are by the docks of the harbour. I thought there were rather more people in the mall than you might expect to find in an industrial wasteland!

Shortly we are off to work out the intricacies of the trains and with a bit of luck we should be in Nagoya by lunchtime. Wish us luck!!