Curtis in Osaka

Today Curtis traveled from Hong Kong to Osaka, actually to an outskirts of Osaka in a place called Shin-Osaka. It was a very full travel day of about ten hours, start to finish. It all went smoothly but just takes a lot of effort--one bus ride, a flight, a train trip, passport stations and currency exchange. Also I have to attempt to calculate how much $ was lost when I changed Hong Kong dollars into Japanese yen, it is tricky.

Yesterday I sweated profusely at the island next to Hong Kong but now it is freezing outside. I should have brought my down vest. The hotel room has a good internet connection so I feel better. However doing this blog site all the text for the site is in Japanese. I have to remember what button is for what, the Japanese characters are no help. For a while it felt a little like prison with the 10 feet by 10 feet room size (including the desk), the absence of any English TV and total silence except for the outside traffic. I feel better connected now. Emails are sure nice to get.

My room overlooks the train station and you can see that it is pretty at night (below) and not so special during the day (above).

Dinner was a bit of an adventure as usual, though my experience from last time here is helpful. I asked for a receipt and the waitress asked me to write my name down on a paper. I wondered what it was for. Eventually she returned with a customized receipt with my name on it. The food was excellent--soup, rice, fried fish, cabbage and some wierd pudding tofu like thing.

The time changed an hour for me. I think I am now 14 hours ahead of California.

Good night.