Yes, I did see the actual
Before I could see the bus, we had to get to Japan. Our flight on JAL was nice. (international flights always tend to be “easier” than long-haul domestic) the large seats with ten-inch screens and new movies made the nearly twelve hours on board somewhat comfortable. The food was decent for an airline and stewardesses kept checking back to see if I was okay after I asked about nuts (and they couldn’t check ingredients, so they just kept checking to see if I survived). The best thing about the flight was the 2+4+2 design which let Sam and myself have our own two seater section by a window.
By the time we got through security in Japan and collected our
As someone who got into the coffee drinking game much later in life, I prefer cold coffee with no extras (if only because all the sugar and milk in the sweeter drinks make me very uncomfortable after the coffee is long gone). Simple, inexpensive, not sour, cold black coffee is hard to come by in America but is available on every street corner in a variety of brands in Japan (even in the small towns).
Suntory “Boss Black” seems to be the best widely available iced black coffee. I found something better at Hokkaido University, but that’s for a later post.
Monday morning, while Sam waited for me to wake up, she went next-door and went up and down the escalators at Don Quijote. It’s a sort of department store, Japan-style with things crammed into every corner of the compact multi-story building.
After breakfast at the

We walked north to check out Dotonburi on our way to the Owl Cafe.

At the Owl

Back at

Another cab right took us to


By the time we left, dusk was arriving, so we walked to D

We took the subway to Abeno Harukas 300 (across the street from our hotel) to take night photos of the city from the observatory.
