Osaka

We're in the airport hotel in Osaka.  It's the middle of the night.  I am awake!

We got here at about 8am yesterday morning after a very, very bumpy flight from KL. The cabin crew were told to "be seated immediately" not once but twice during the six hour flight!  Fortunately, bumpy doesn't worry me much, although I don't think the crew were very happy about it.  It didn't really keep me awake, although it did mean that the hot drink service was suspended. You can see their point. You wouldn't want hot drinks flying around the cabin in an unsupervised way. But orange juice don't quite cut it as a wake-me-up! The second plane was quite a bit smaller than the first, which had been the first "double decker" plane I had ever flown in. First class and part of economy downstairs; business and the rest of economy upstairs. Lots of room to play with. Our seats were much less wide on the second flight.  More than enough legroom though, even for The Builder

Flight #1

Waiting for Flight #2

We were given beef and chicken satay sticks before dinner on both flights.
Very tasty!

We got through immigration and customs with remarkable speed and trundled over to the airport hotel. Fortunately, I had had the foresight to arrange an early check in! We showered and changed and went for a wander around the airport which, you may remember, has a large array of shops and restaurants. We had thought about going into Osaka itself and going for a ride on the Osaka Wheel, however the day was very hazy and cloudy and it didn't seem worth the money - we wouldn't have seen very much.  In any case, The Builder was rather tired after the London adventures. His feet and back were hurting.  He was quite happy just to sit in the hotel and mess about on the internet and relax. We are likely to be quite busy over the next few days in Kyoto, so a day just chilling and not travelling or exploring seemed like a good plan.  We did stir ourselves to go to the brasserie for the buffet dinner. We never really get our money's worth from the buffet, but it is very delicious and we do enjoy it. At the moment they are doing a "Brazilian barbecue" (I assume in honour of the Olympics).  There were no South American spices discernible in it, but I have to say it was very, very tasty.

And, of course, I had to have my now customary, build your own soft serve ice cream:

They are meant for the children
I don't care!

And now, alas, I am awake. It's not yet 4 am. Much too early to be awake. I might have a cup of tea and then perhaps an early morning snooze before breakfast.  Checkout here isn't until midday, and checkin in Kyoto isn't until 3pm so there's no real hurry today