Osaka and bits I forgot

We did a bike tour of Osaka today and learned quite a bit about the city and its history. Osaka sees itself as the food capital of Japan and the locals pride themselves on being able to eat until they drop. So it’s was more food amongst the sites.

People from Osaka look down on those from Tokyo, and vice versa. It’s a bit like the way the Scottish and English view each other. In a strange way of proving they are different, people from Osaka stand on the right on escalators while people from Tokyo stand on the left. Japan, as I’ve said, is a little bit weird.

As it’s our final day in Japan here’s a little list of things I forgot to put in earlier posts:

= We got leeches in the mountains. One each.

= I saw a snake on the path one day: long, thin and brown.

= Traditional Japanese pillows are buckwheat-filled bags of pain that should be banned.

= Ryokans are up-market inns. Onsens are hot springs. In spite of what I have been writing, you stay in a ryokan and you bathe in an onsen. Jennifer tells me this matters. I like both, but the bathing is special.

= It’s worth emphasising that although I did a lot of complaining about how hard this walk was, and it was, it was also deeply beautiful and atmospheric. The tall forests, the utterly green mountain-sides, the little shrines – it was deeply moving (and, yes, exhausting).

Now we are in Tokyo, at the airport hotel. The hotel has currently distinguished itself by having staff that are, for an Australian, embarrassingly obsequious. We were bowed into the lift with a full 90-degree from the waist bow that was held until the doors closed.

Tomorrow we leave Japan much as we arrived, with the rising Sun.