Saturday - Day 2

I'm currently writing this sat in Tom's apartment in Daito, Osaka - as he's at work right now and I have a bit of jet lag to work out of my system! Yesterday morning I met Tom in the arrivals lounge at Kansai airport and we headed off to catch the JR Loop train into the city centre. The train map shows you how much each station costs in yen so you select the price of your ticket at the machine rather than the station itself and it seems straight forward enough. The harder part is working out what train to actually get on so I let Tom work that out and we didn't have to wait too long before we were off. The first thing you notice is that the train seats have reversable backs so you can either sit facing forwards or backwards and most opt for facing forwards it seems!

Osaka at first glance comes across like the outskirts of most major European cities as it's predominantly high rise housing and smaller scale shops - the obvious difference being the limited use of English on signs and a lack of any graffiti (which seems to blight most cities across Europe, London very much so). The JR Loop Line is like the M25 of the train world - as it forms a circle around the city and we head up the east side - passing the Nagui stadium (host of England vs. Nigeria in the 2002 world cup) and the Osaka Dome before changing trains at Kyobashi station and making our way to Suminodo. There's a much better system of queuing for entry onto the trains though here and trying to get onto the next train seems much more civilised than the scramble I normally have at Baker Street station! Suminodo is Tom's stop and his apartment is a five minute walk away.