Trivia update – we placed third in the Progressive Trivia.  Little did we know that all that quizzing was simply honing our brains to cope with the complications of the Japanese railway system.  We’d already booked seats on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to get from Yokohama to Osaka – but how to get to the Shinkansen station from the cruise port?  Armed with prior research, we set off looking for a local bus, but the words “free shuttle” caught my attention, especially as this meant not dragging our suitcases outside the port area, or negotiating payment of a bus fare.  We were dropped off a few minutes walk from a local subway station in Yokohama, along with about 50 other passengers.  We all stopped and intently studied the subway map, scratching our collective heads.  Our particular problem was that the Shinkansen station didn’t appear on the map on the wall.  We knew we needed to transfer to another train at some point, but had no idea where or how.  Eventually Ian figured it out, and we started making our way towards Osaka.

Two painstaking hours later, we’d navigated first to Kikuna, then to Shin-Yokohama station.  We’d even bought lunch, found the correct platform, and had an hour to kill, watching the bullet trains arriving and departing.  Ours pulled in right on time.  We stood at the assigned place on the platform, before alighting and taking our seats.  Suitcases were heaved onto the overhead rack, and we settled in for our comfortable 2.5 hour ride across the country.  The train is quite full so making seat reservations was a good idea.  If we are passed or overtaken by another Shinkansen, all we see is a brief white blur, and we feel our train shaking a little.

At Kyoto the train emptied out, and we continued another 20 minutes to Shin-Osaka.  The last bit of the journey sounded simple enough – transfer to a local train and ride to Shinsaibashi, a short walk from our apartment.  We started to realise just how enormous these metro stations are; with suitcases its even more complicated as we need to find the right elevators.  It took us ages to find our way onto the street, and by now our brains were pretty much fried from the intensity of information overload.

Luckily our apartment is on a quiet side street, and we managed the door codes without mishap.  It is quite comfortable and practical, although the sofa is terrible and we have no plug for the sink.  The beds are good, we have a small kitchen, the wifi is really fast, and the washing machine works a treat!  Its so nice to have clean clothes again.

Too tired to think about shopping or cooking, we headed to the “Oko Fun Bar”, a very small café which serves gluten free vegetarian pancakes.  It is popular, and we waited in line for 45 minutes to get in.  The pancakes were tasty and the serves very generous, but we decided we wouldn’t want to eat there every night.  So today, our mission was tracking down gluten free food that we could cook ourselves.

This proved quite the challenge.  Shinsaibashi is a major shopping precinct, but all of the supermarkets are small, and you have to glean what you can.  After visiting several, we tracked down GF pasta, plus the other ingredients to make a one-pot spag bol; no luck with GF cereal, bread or biscuits.  I don’t know how coeliacs get by in Japan; it took us all afternoon just to find basic ingredients for a couple of meals.  This is one of the reasons we like cruising – we don’t have to expend all our time and energy hunting down food.

We are staying in a tourist district; hotels abound, there are lots of foreign faces, and most locals speak enough English to sell whatever it is they are selling.  We’ve never seen so many shops – it is a multi-level maze!  The Japanese love signs, the more colourful the better, and its quite tiring trying to decide which ones you need to take notice of, and which to ignore.  Even our apartment is full of signs – we will be fined for dyeing our hair or wetting the bed, and there are multiple safety warnings attached to every appliance.  Osaka itself has a nice feel to it; safe at night, and lots of people on bikes.  Tomorrow we plan to start exploring further afield, and make use of our 7 day rail pass.