Well the beautiful weather of yesterday has gone and we found out from a Japanese friend that a strong Typhoon is on its way to Tokyo via Osaka and the day was rather cloudy with a light rain most of the day.
After breakfast we made a quick visit to the Supermarket hoping that the shelves had been restocked, which they had, and purchased some food for a couple of days to cover us for when the Typhoon arrives. We then decided to go and have lunch at a Tempura Restaurant recommended by one of the front desk staff of the Hotel and so we followed the instruction and went down Orange Street , named because the tarmac is Orange in colour, and the located the restaurant. With the usual pleasantries and bowing we were shown to the table and were given menus with a rather large choice of dishes however the waitress recommended a particular dish and so soon after up came the usual Miso Soup, a bowl of pickles, a bowl of mushrooms of various types and the a few minutes a very large bowl of tempura prawns, fish, squid and green vegetable. It was extremely good and very filling. Now the wait begins to see if Noel would be affected by the first fried or perhaps slightly fatty batter for a few years as in the past he has dire consequences. However just in case of a problem we returned to the Hotel.
Later in the day we decided to walk around the shopping area which is very large and mostly with a covered archway and as the weather was quite warm it was a pleasant experience looking in at the completely different types of shops, no chain stores here just load of stores selling anything from Kimonos to a leather coin bag and all with great colours and cute faces. It was still raining and all the bars and restaurants were pretty much full and lots of ‘Gaijin’ or foreigners around this quite touristy area.
For tea that evening we enjoyed some sushi which we had purchased for the food store and then flicking through the cable tv channels came across the game between Arsenal and Everton, at the point we joined it was 2-0 to Arsenal with about fifteen minutes to go but at this point it was rather boring and of course the commentary was in Japanese. On our notebook computer we have Netflix and so watched a film which was quite good however the sound volume was low. We plan to purchase a HDMI cable and plug the pc in there and/or a cheap powered small speaker to use over the next couple of weeks as TV in Japan is great if you are Japanese but for us Brits there is only a few channels to watch and that is in Tokyo, in the sticks of Japan we would doubt there are any English speaking channels at all, we shall see.
And so to bed whilst the rain continues to fall.
