We decided that Osaka might be a good place to fulfill another of our ambitions - to stay in a capsule hotel. So last night we entered the Namba entertainment district and sought one out. It was a great experience. Ours was called the `Capsule Inn Namba` and was a fairly old one, so it had a kind of seventies retro feel to it (and was also very cheap). Women and men go on different floors (pink carpet, blue carpet) and you get two keys - one for your shoe box and one for a locker. The capsules are basically bunkbeds that you enter from the end rather than the side, but they come with a TV, alarm clock-radio and reading lights which all make for a very cosy space. It was just long enough for me to stretch out in - 1m x 1m x 2m. Also (for the men only!) there is a roof top spa room with huge Jacuzzi bath and sauna. Rach, sadly, had to make do with a shower. Speaking of Rachel, she is currently paying the price for our ill-advised trip to the sand dunes in the rain back in Tottori. She has developed a very sniffley cold and has gone to bed early tonight in an attempt to shake it off for tomorrow. We`ve moved on to a much more spacious hotel by the way - capsules make you check out at 10am and there is no facility for leaving luggage which would have been a big hassle for us..
Meanwhile, big plans are afoot over the coming days. Sadly our rail passes are due to expire at the end of the week and we`ve decided that the best way to get to China is to go via South Korea. So (if we`ve decoded timetables correctly) we`ll be taking the overnight ferry on Friday from Shimonoseki to Busan in Korea where we`ll spend a few days working our way up to Seoul from where we can catch another boat over to China. We acknowlege all these boat trips may be ill-advised during typhoon season but it will be much more of an adventure than flying. Having said that, we will be flying back - probably from Shanghai to Tokyo on the 12 September.
So that leaves us with tomorrow to explore Osaka before heading back down south. They do things big here - if she hasn`t recovered by morning Rachel might well be off to the world`s largest spa and we both want to go to the aquarium where they have the world`s largest fish-tank - home to a whale shark, amongst much else.