A couple of short Shinkansen (bullet train) videos

Watching the world go by at 300 kph.

On the road to Takayama

First it is the Shinkansen to Nagoya which takes about an hour. Then we wandered around outside Nagoya station looking for the Mazda car rental place to pick up our car. Eventually we find Mazda after asking a couple of people. The rental paperwork and explanations of everything took about an hour then we were on the road to Takayama. Takayama is in central Honshu about 160km from Nagoya and took about 3 or 4 hours. 40kph in built up areas and 80kph on the expressway is the speed limit. Yawn. We had to stop for snacks at a roadhouse.

Kigawa Asai

This will be our last chance to eat at Michelin restaurant in Osaka and also until we get back to Tokyo in about 2 and half weeks. Kigawa Asai has a long counter and a number of tables and some tatami rooms out the back. There were only a couple of people at the counter but I think the rest of the restaurant was pretty full. Unusually this place opens quite late and we needed it to because we'd been trying to get into a few sushi places and they were either just about to finish or they were full and that had taken a while. This was the last roll of the dice for us and it came up sixes. On the back wall of the kitchen there is a scroll that lists the entire menu. There are hundreds of dishes available. We have no clue of what to ask for so we just say "omakase", which means something like chefs choice or set menu. We're given 3 menus to choose from and again we have no clue. Basically it looks like small, medium or large. We pick the middle one. We think we were asked where else we'd eaten because the chef had seen our Michelin guide. I said the first place I remembered called Kigawa. It turns out that the similarity of the names of this place, Kigawa Asai, and Kigawa might not be a coincidence. The chef here had taught the chef at Kigawa.
One of the pictures below is of the remains of the fish - I forgot to take a photo of it before I demolished it. It looked kind of weird. At first we thought it was fugu but it turns out it wasn't. The picture of the Japanese steak doesn't do this tasty morsel justice. Japanese steak is divine.

The taxi ride back to the hotel was interesting. We had to convince the taxi driver that our hotel was where we said it was. He had worked out that the address was about a very small block away from where it was. We used our lighted trees from a previous post as a landmark and we could see where they were so we knew where the hotel was. At least there are two cab drivers now in Osaka who know where the Hotel Brighton City is (it is only 2 years old I suppose). We've since found out that it is also a Michelin recommended hotel. Didn't know that when I booked it.
And that was Osaka.

One minute at Umeda Station Osaka

This is a video I call One Minute At Umeda Station. Original eh?

Daytrip over, back to Osaka

Snacking on hot dogs, donuts and vending machine coffee. After a big wet day out we get back to Osaka's Umeda station just in time for peak hour. I counted people going past when we stopped for a few minutes. I quit when I got to 1 million. Then it's the subway again back to Kitahama and the hotel.

Himeji Castle

The original castle at Himeji dates back to 1346. Over the years it was hammered in various wars until it was rebuilt in its current form in about 1600. It is now one of Japan's most visited tourist sites and is UNESCO World Heritage listed.