After checking out and taking the metro to Nagoya station, we took the bullet train from Nagoya to Osaka. It was fast. Fifty minutes later we'd covered the approximately 190 km between the cities. It was almost too fast - we had to check out of our hotel in Nagoya by 10am, and couldn't check into the hotel in Osaka until 3pm. Undeterred, on arriving into Shin-Osaka, we found someone with a map of the local JR and metro lines, and worked out how to get to the station nearest our hotel. This meant a short train ride on the JR to Osaka, then another train on the JR to Shin-Imamiya. So far, so good.

We could see our hotel from the train station exit, and were able to check in, though it was not yet 1pm . The hotel was the cheapest of those we'd stay in in Japan, and it was 'Japanese style'. That's not a ryokan, but rather a mat on the floor and some bedding, in a tiny room. It was not en-suite, and though Booking.com said the room had air conditioning, what this actually meant was that the hotel had hotel-wide air conditioning that was not controllable in each room. This, together with a faint mouldy flower smell, meant we were happy to not spend long in the room if we could help it.

And then, despite all that, we napped for three hours. It had been a tiring few days, with lots of early mornings and late nights.

When awake, we looked up vegetarian places on Happy Cow, and realised they were all 2km or more away. So we took a metro ride to a cluster of them in the Dotonbori area. We found three of the four in the cluster, but only the fourth one was open. We had a great and expensive vegan meal, and picked up take out for the following day's lunch . We headed back to the hotel via the metro to do essentials like washing and drinking wine.

On Tuesday 29th, we took a day trip to Nara, a city about 40km away from Osaka. We took a JR line train direct to Nara, and ate pastries and drank coffee in a coffee shop in the city. We then walked a couple of kilometres to get to Nara Deer Park. This was a park with deer described as 'semi-tame'. There was nothing semi about their tameness; they followed people around for crackers or to investigate whether someone had food, and didn't seem to mind being touched. They also made a hilarious high pitched sad sounding squeaking noise. We wandered through and saw loads of deer. Some would come up to us and sniff us and our bags to work out if we had food. Mostly they followed others around who did actually have food for them. We saw no misbehaviour from them, though there were signs everywhere warning that they can bite, kick, or use their antlers. It was a lovely peaceful setting, with deer everywhere and the occasional temple looming up through the trees . We aimed for one temple in particular, as it has the biggest Buddha in Japan and is the largest wooden building in the world. Called Todaiji, we walked for a while to get there and paid the entrance fee. Like the deer park, it was busy, but totally worth it to see the 15 metre tall bronze Buddha.

Around the Todaiji Temple, we were stopped by various Japanese school children, evidently doing a schoolwork assignment, and asked for our picture, signature, and where we were from. We did this for about 15 school children, and one of them gave us a drawing she'd done. It was pretty hilarious being pictured with lots of incredibly polite school kids. We continued to wander through the park, and ended up visiting some more shinto shrines along the way, including Kasuga shrine. It was all very pretty.

It wasn't until later that we had our take out 'lunch' that we'd picked up the previous day. We wandered back through Nara as it got dark, and took a JR line train back to Shinimamiya and our hotel .

On Wednesday 30th, we did some exploring in Osaka. With the egg sandwiches from the 7/11 keeping us alive, we took the JR loop line to Osaka Castle Park. We walked through the park and said what a shame it was that we weren't in Japan just a couple of weeks later, to see the autumn leaves in all their glory. The leaves were just starting to turn, and the setting was very picturesque, with the occasional glimpse of the castle in the distance. We walked across a couple of bridges and walkways to get to the castle itself, which was popular. Inside, the castle became a viewpoint and museum. We started with the viewpoint and stood there for ages, drinking our cold bottled green tea and having a chat. The museum levels of the castle were full of treasures, including some really old swords and armour. It was fascinating and the swords are works of art in their own right. There were various displays about the history of Osaka Castle and battles which had taken place there. Being in Japanese, not a lot of it made sense. We did understand that lots of people fought each other, a lot, in the area. We had whiled away a happy two hours in the castle, plus time in the grounds, and continued to do so with coffee and cake, sat in the gardens and people watching.

After leaving the castle, we headed to some of the sights we identified from the viewing point. We couldn't go into the martial arts building on site, nor the keeps sadly . So we ended up taking a metro to the Dotonbori area, eating curry, and picking up take out for the following day for lunch. On our wanderings around, we came across an island in a river so went to check it out. It contained some lovely gardens, and a giant rubber duck from the Rubber Duck Project. It did indeed make us smile. Presently, it became early evening, so we took a walk around the Dotonbori area to explore its charms. Like Akihabara in Tokyo, Dotonbori is known for its neon lights and colour. We walked down Shinsaibashi-suji, a famous market street, followed by a road running parallel to the canal Dotonbori-gawa. It was busy, and filled with things like a moving giant crab, moving giant octopus, a creepy drumming clown (a 60 plus year old machine), a big dragon, a big pufferfish, and a big hand holding sushi. All designed to try to sell things, usually food. We peeled off down a small side street and went to a tiny temple called Hozen-ji. Here, a statue is covered in green plant life, because for luck people throw water onto it . We took another walk back along the crazy people-filled boulevards, and failed at playing pachinko because it was overwhelming in the pachinko parlour. We took the JR line back to our hotel and were glad to be out of the crowds.

On Thursday 1st October, we took a day trip to the nearby city of Kobe. About 35km away, it was easy to get there on the JR lines. We'd checked the weather forecast before leaving, which said 'light rain late in the afternoon'. This was clearly lies as it started to rain as soon as we arrived into Kobe. We quickly walked to the nearby Kobe City Hall Observation Deck. In the lift, a nice gentleman spoke to us about where we were from (he'd been to Birmingham), then proceeded to help us find maps and identify places of interest for us in and around Kobe. We took in the views from the glass windows, until many, many school children arrived and we ran away. Unfortunately this was into heavier rain, and our remaining activities were outdoorsy...

We checked out the gardens by City Hall, which contained memorials to the 1995 earthquake victims in the form of a series of water features . We then walked to the port, to the Earthquake Memorial Park, and watched a video of the impact of the earthquake on Kobe and it's residents. Until the school children arrived again. We moved on to the rest of the park, which included a section of the port as it looked after the earthquake, deliberately preserved for posterity. There were more water features here, but no shelter, and we were getting hungry. So we walked into Kobe city in search of a Lonely Planet recommended vegetarian restaurant, via Chinatown. We reached where the Lonely Planet said the restaurant would be, and couldn't see it. We were looking lost and a woman came out of her shop and gave us an umbrella, then directions to the restaurant. We were the only idiots out there without an umbrella, and were too 'cost-concious' to buy one. We were soaked by this time, and the umbrella saved us about 20 metres of the rain to the restaurant. There, we had a lovely meal and expensive coffee, before returning the umbrella to the nice shop lady as it had actually stopped raining. Amazing.

We walked to the nearby Ikuta shrine, and admired the beauty and calm of the place. We walked along a street renowned for it's izakaya's - Japanese bars, selling sake, amongst other things. We found an izakaya and ordered a small bottle of sake from a very loud and friendly bar woman. It was surprisingly alright and not like the sake we've had previously. The bar woman plied us with questions in her half-english and laughed, a lot. We headed back to the JR station and went a couple of stops further along the line to Hyogo, where we went to see some more shrines, and a giant Buddha - the third largest in Japan. This Buddha was surrounded by shrines and temples and graves. We walked further along the road and saw more of the same; temples and graves, and met a nice lady who asked us questions like what can we say in Japanese, and found the answer quietly hilarious. (Not much.)

We headed back on a JR train to Osaka, and were determined to play pachinko at the parlour by our local train station. So we did. As we understand it, the object of the game is to capture balls in a tiny slot in the machine. What the other flashing stuff and caricatures of scared teenage schoolchildren on the screen were about were quite beyond us. The noise and smoke were pretty unbearable and we weren't upset after burning our 1000 Yen on the machine.

We retired and drank wine. Unfortunately, that night was incredibly hot in the hotel. As there was a storm outside, the owners must have been determined to not put the air conditioning on, or something, but it was pretty unbearable. The following morning, we were pleased to pack up and leave for our next destination - Kyoto!