Suckers go to Osaka

Today we leave the fleshpots of Toyama

for the fleshpots of Osaka, the city who's motto is "eat till you drop". We stock up on some basic victuals and board our little train

World's sexiest train?

but have to change onto the Thunderbird express(the trains here have such cool  names). Osaka station was quite bewildering

but after lugging our suitcases around for 30 minutes we find the rank taxi rank and make our way to our less than splendid lodgings-the Sofitel it aint..
Our activity for tonight is finding the train station

and then making our way to our home visit with a Japanese family

-this turned out to be great evening with all that cross-cultural exchange stuff. On the way home we stopped for a snack of onikomyaki.