I'm looking forward to getting out of bed without stumbling to the bathroom with such tight calf muscles that I can hardly walk! Perhaps tomorrow. :-)

Whilst Michael jogged, I worked on my blog, spending my time over breakfast uploading and labelling the photos to go with it . (No croissants on the menu this morning, and so I had to make do with a couple of small sweet rolls with my fruit and yoghurt.) After checking out at 11am, we left our bags at the hotel and spent the next couple of hours exploring the area nearby. Our curiosity took us up a long flight of stairs (actually, we rode the escalator all the way up) to the Hie Shrine (Shinto) which is located near the government buildings. We then found our way to the Chiyoda area where we crossed a bridge over the river (moat) and took photos of an old bridge, guarded on the other side by two sentries in their individual booths. We walked a little further on, and then headed back to the hotel to collect our bags. On the way back, I discovered an elevator leading from the lower road to the upper road, thus allowing me to avoid the 64-step climb (the 102-step climb is located on another nearby road). Fancy discovering this on the last day! At least we were able to use it to get our bags back down to the lower level more easily than retracing our footsteps from the first day when we had to drag our bags up the steep hill (I need to this 
information on Trip Advisor) . 

It turns out that we would probably have been better off walking the couple of kilometres to another metro station in order to make the right connection, as the two changes we had to make involved a lot of climbing up and downstairs and walking almost half a kilometre through the underground tunnels! It was a good thing I had suggested we leave a half an hour earlier than Michael had suggested, as it took us about 40 minutes to cover this short distance in 3 trains, even though we hardly had to wait any time for each train. After emerging from the underground, with some assistance, we located the monorail and were soon in the airport lounge bemoaning the fact that all they had to eat were rice crackers (and we'd deliberately not eaten anything else, as we'd expected that there would be a few tasty snacks to savour in the lounge!). 

During our flight to Osaka, we noticed a sign indicating that there was wifi available on board . With the first 15 minutes being free, I contacted Dad and had great delight in giving him a window seat so that he could watch our descent into Osaka airport as we flew over the city. Although overcast, we still had a great view of this extensive city. (The flight attendant told me not to talk whilst using my iPad, even though Michael agrees that my voice wasn't very loud -- she was just passing down the aisle at the time I made the connection, and so I think she was just making sure that I didn't disturb the other passengers. Maybe it's one of their rules?)

Whilst waiting for our bags in the small terminal, a young Japanese woman sitting next to me started up a conversation with us, eager to tell us that she had visited an uncle in Perth a few years ago. Then on the train into the city, another young woman, seated between us, consulted her phone to advise us on which subway train we needed to catch to get to our hotel. The Japanese people are very friendly and helpful.

The main railway station was teeming with people -- it was almost overwhelming! With construction works going on outside, it took a while to get on to the main road down which apparently would eventually lead us to our hotel. Michael's calculation was about 30 minutes walk (which I had accepted, rather than catching the metro, as I agreed it would be interesting to get our bearings and see a bit of the city . Mind you, Michael's estimate wasn't based on any objective data -- simply how far it "looked" on the map he'd downloaded on to his iPad! After about 40 minutes (it was now 7:45pm and getting dark), we came across a metro station. A look at the map suggested we hadn't even reached the halfway mark, and so I insisted we take the underground train the rest of the way. (I later found that it would have taken us another 44 minutes to walk the rest of the way! There were quite a few flights of stairs to go up and down, as well as a 450m walk to the correct line. Three stops later, we emerged on to the streets, checked the direction with a young man with access to the Internet on his phone, and then walked the last 3 minutes to our hotel. 

Our room here is slightly bigger, and the bathroom actually contains a bath. The bed is not quite as hard, and so I didn't use my air bed, although it was touch and go! A nearby supermarket, the first large one we've seen, had a wide variety of interesting and inexpensive foods, and so we decided to dine in. (And Michael was thrilled to finally find some tonic water to go with his gin.) A shower of rain greeted us as we emerged from the supermarket, and so we had to race back to the hotel (only about a minute away). We filled our bellies, and then I washed a few clothes before finally calling it a day.