A bit of a tiring day today – a travel day, between Osaka and Tokyo. Don’t get me wrong, travelling in Japan is amazingly easy and efficient in general – not least because of the wonderful Japanese custom of takkyubin. It’s one of the things I love most about this blessed country, one of the things that appeals most to my orderly, efficient, love-of-good-logistics heart is the takkyubin/luggage forwarding service..for AUD$16, a nice man will come and pick up your suitcase or whatever else you'd like conveyed from wherever you are, and deliver it to wherever you're going, mostly same day or overnight at most, so that YOU don't have to wrangle suitcases into taxis or onto trains or up escalators or whatever and whatnot. Here's my suitcase, waiting to be picked up.
It’s amazing. There’s even ‘cold takkyubin’ for when, say, you’re on a day trip in another part of Japan and you decide to buy a crab or whatever, but you don’t want to lug it around with you for the rest of the day, so you send it home ahead of you, refrigerated all the way. The people are mad geniuses.
Anyway, be that as it may, it's still tiring by the time you walk around stations and change platforms and squeeze through crowds and hurtle about the country, and since I was starting off early today and had already sent my suitcase on ahead of me via takkyubin, I went to one of the many 24 hour ramen joints in Osaka at 8am, Ichiran Ramen, for a bowl of THICK, rich tonkotsu ramen. I love this place because every part of its ordering system and layout has been designed to minimize any interaction between staff and customers – intentionally. It’s ramen for introverts. You even get a private dining booth, and the kitchen is behind the booths, and your order slip is taken (from which you’ve paid into the vending machine at the front and then circled your preferences on a sheet) and your food delivered to you from behind waist-high curtains, which then drop again to render you in blessed privacy. You never see a face.
Anyway, I circled – strong flavour, ultra rich soup, 1 clove of garlic, extra green onions, with char shu pork, with medium spicy sauce, soft noodles. They DO have this form in English, on the back, but I like to practice my Japanese and see if I know what I’m doing (I mostly do.) This is a picture from the web of the English side.
Not sure what it says that their toilets had this much toilet paper..
And this was the line for ramen, at 8am!!
Then, I had a weird experience at Shin Osaka station – my first run in with a Japanese sex-pest! I’m not totally unused to being hassled by men in general, but this was my first persistent Japanese harasser, following me off the train I was on and through the station for about 10 minutes, walking VERY close to me and asking me over and over if we could have a coffee, if we could go on a date, if I “like romance” (hint: I don’t).
Interestingly, apparently when highly annoyed with Japanese sex-pests, I turn VERY and uncharacteristically Aussie:
"Listen, mate, yeah I get that you're trying it on and I don't want to get agro with you, but you might want to have a punt on another chick; I'm in a deadset hurry and I have to shoot through, OK??
WHO AM I.
Anyway, feeling now more than a little peevish, I finally managed to lose him by ducking into this beef restaurant and once there and hiding in a booth, felt obliged to order something, so I had this amazing bifu katsu sando (beef cutlet sandwich). DELICIOUS.
Then I bought a beautiful temari sushi bento to eat on the train (it’s about a 3 hour journey; a girl could starve, you know.)
But the irritation of the morning was cancelled entirely when I arrived in Tokyo and - you know how sometimes you meet someone and for some inexplicable reason you both start giggling within the first 30 seconds and just don't stop? After a very hilarious and immediately chortle-y conversation with this legend in half Japanese, half English, he said, "Wanna see sakura?? I take you on hanami-tour now! You are my friend!"
And he turned off the taxi meter and took me for a 45 minute sojourn zooming around Tokyo to look at the cherry blossoms of Aoyama, Jingumae, Naka Meguro and Shinjuku, and then cheerfully dropped me at my Airbnb and got out of the taxi and stood beside it and waved and beamed and bowed until I was out of sight.
So that was lovely. I’m now here, in my Airbnb, which is very nice – and the kitchen is big, by Japanese standards, so I’ll get some cooking done.
Bit worried about figuring out the recycling though..
Dinner was a non-event – a snack bag of squid soft cartilage – yes, the beaky bit, can’t really recommend them – and another beef bento I bought at the station, because I knew I’d be tired tonight.
And some sake – although I was a bit sigh-y that this apartment only seemed to have giant water glasses, which don’t feel at all right for sake – and then I remembered the sake glasses I bought yesterday. And so have christened them. 
