Scandinavia and Baltic Cruise 2026

Travel and Leisure

Part two of our European trip took us on a Princess cruise through the Scandinavian countries as well as stops at other Baltic countries. This won't be a review of the cruise (might do that later), but rather a photo memory-minder for me of where we went and what we did.

Malmö: While technically not part of our cruise itinerary, we had an extra day on the front end due to the rail issue in Hamburg, so we added on a night in Malmö (Sweden), only about a 1/2 hour train from Copenhagen airport. It has a charming old town area, with enough to see and do to fill a day. We stayed at the Hotel Mayfair Tunneln, which is one of the oldest buildings in town; the breakfast buffet is in the basement from the 1300s!

Copenhagen: Back across the Øresund bridge, we parked at the Hotel Bethel for three nights, right in the heart of the action in Nyhavn. I'm glad we stayed there for a while, because there is a lot to see and do in Copenhagen, but wow is it ever expensive there! That's one of the primary reasons for doing a cruise, as the Scandinavian countries have a very high cost of living. We met up with our other cruisers over the next two nights, enjoying cold beers on the canal and people-watching in Nyhavn. The Danish royalty participate in an annual event called the Royal Run, where they and over a hundred thousand of their countrymen run around town.

Visby: The "Medieval Gem of Gotland" as it is referred to by ChatGPT, was our first port of call after embarkation. I had done some research on this one, as Rick Steves had not described it in his guidebook. With dozens of ruined churches and a perimeter wall with guard tower and gates, it was easy to see why this was on our list of stops. We followed a rough loop around town to check out the most picturesque church ruins, towers and gates, and then had lunch on Stora Torget across from the ruins of St. Karins Church.

Stockholm: Another large city with a well preserved old town area, we were able to tour around with Rick Steves' walking tour, but still managed to get lost. After exploring historic Gamla Stan, we used our hop-on hop-off boat cruise to get over to the Vasa Museum, where the immaculately restored, 400-yr old ship was on display. It sank almost 400 years ago as it was on it's maiden voyage, due to poor design, and sat undisturbed for over 350 years. 

Helsinki: The weather for our only stop in Finland drew our Rick Steves walking tour to an early close (I've artificially brightened up the shots below). It is a big city, and doesn't have a charming old town area like almost every other port on our cruise. There is some neat architecture, and that's primarily what Rick's walk highlights, but we stopped when we took refuge in a shopping mall.

Tallinn: Probably the most idyllic old town area of the cruise, Tallinn offered a blend of architecture, history and hilltop views. Located on the Gulf of Finland, its UNESCO-listed Old Town is famed for its intact medieval walls, cobblestone streets, and lively Town Hall Square. With plenty to see, it was one of the stops where we barely made it back to the ship in time for departure.

Riga: Not to be outdone by Tallinn, Riga had it's own charm, albeit on a bit more subdued level. Just when you thought you couldn't find a main town square more interesting than the last, we arrived in Rīgas Rātslaukums, with the House of the Blackheads' ornate façade overlooking it. The town was filled with neat old medieval streets and interesting sights... until we got kicked out of the Russian Orthodox church for wearing shorts!

Gdańsk: When I used to think of Poland, I'd conjure up an image of boring, communist-era architecture and bland surroundings. Boy was I wrong! The Royal Way and "Long Market" were amazing, as were the adjacent streets and historical structures. We had lunch on the Esplanade, a bustling, pedestrian-only promenade stretching along the western shore of the Motława River. Despite being Corpus Christi Day (stat holiday) we barely had enough time to tour the main sights before we to grab our train back to the ship's port in Gdynia.

Klaipėda: This small port city in Lithuania didn't have as much to see as other stops, but we still made the best of it, by using a ChatGPT walking tour to take us to the notable sights around town. As you can see, this was one of the stops where the ship docked within a few hundred metres of the town centre.

Oslo: After a day at sea, we arrived in our last big port city, our only one in Norway. Wayne and I went to Akershus Fortress and the Resistance Museum there, followed by the Rick Steves walking tour of the Karl Johans Gate. There was yet another celebration taking place, and there were marching bands parading down the street. We stopped at the 1930s City Hall, which was very interesting, with the huge murals inside the main hall and outside carvings.

Skagen: Our last port was certainly the least exciting of all our stops, Skagen is a sleepy fishing town. We did what pretty much everyone else did, and rented bikes to ride out to the sandy point in Grenen, where the North sea meets the Baltic Sea. After a tractor ride out and back on the sandy beach (it's a long way, and not bike friendly), we rode back to the ship for the free lunch. Then we went back into town when the sun came out so that the girls could do some shopping on the cute main street that runs through Skagen.

We woke up in Copenhagen the next morning, and after some difficulty trying to get our Uber to the airport, were on our way home after two weeks in Germany and another two in Scandinavia and the Baltics.











 

Germany 2026

Travel and Leisure

 We did a big trip recently, our longest European vacation by far. This is part 1, the two weeks we spent getting from Munich to Copenhagen. More of a memory trip for me when I am thinking, "where did we go in Germany again?", here's a brief photo essay on our itinerary.

Munich: First stop was Munich, not for any reason in particular, other than it's a big international destination with lots of flight options. It has a surprisingly historic old town, given the destruction that occurred in many/most large German cities during WWII. As we usually do, we don't plan a lot for our arrival day, and we used Munich as our decompression stop from the trans-Atlantic flight.

It was unseasonably cold there, and so we abbreviated the Rick Steves walking tour around the old town area. We did go to the Residenz, which is pretty cool and well preserved. The weather prevented us from enjoying some of the outdoor eating and drinking areas, like the Marienplatz market.

Füssen: This town was our second stop, as we wanted to visit the fairy tale castle of the Mad King Ludwig. What made this side-trip even more fun, was that our friends from Zurich came up for the day to visit with us and see the castles. We toured the inside of Hohenschwangau, as it was actually used and lived in, whereas the Neuschwanstein one was never finished, as Ludwig died before completion.

Nuremberg: The next stop took us to the "recreated" old town of Nuremberg. WWII destroyed about 90% of the Altstadt, but instead of re-building with new structures, they spent decades trying to preserve the medieval landmarks and buildings in the historic core. 

Rothenburg ob der Tauber: This "forgotten" medieval town, sat for centuries after economic challenges and the black plague ravaged the population. It was an easy day trip from Nuremberg, and is definitely a highlight of the Bavaria region.

Leipzig: Rather than taking another long train ride all the way to Berlin, we broke it up into two, and stopped overnight in Leipzig. Again, many sites had been restored in this city to original appearance after the war, and there was plenty of historic things to see. The Leipzig Forum of Contemporary History was excellent, and free as well. The Old Town Hall dates from the mid-16th century, and is now used as a museum and event space.

Potsdam: With so much to see and explore, we set up in an Airbnb for four nights in Berlin. But with weather and museum closure timing, it seemed like our first full day there was the best to do the day-trip to Potsdam. It's kind of like visiting Versailles from Paris; Potsdam is a brief, 30 minute train ride from Berlin. However, unlike Versailles, the palaces in Potsdam are spread apart, so we rented bikes to tour around the Potsdam sites and the old town area.

Berlin: While Christine had been to Berlin before, it was a long time ago, and she says that they didn't have the money to see and visit the places we went to. It's hard to sum up in a handful of pictures, but the Rick Steves walking tour did an excellent job of guiding us around town, and then we did our own tour of the Wall, and other sites that represented the division between Communist East Germany and the West. We also stayed in a great area of town called Prenzlauer Berg, which was great for restaurants and another Rick Steves walk.

Hamburg: We had put Hamburg on the list of places to go in Germany, as it was along train route required to get to Copenhagen. We booked an Airbnb here as well, knowing that we'd want to do one last load of laundry before getting to the ship in Copenhagen. We ended up picking one in a great neighbourhood, a short walk from the main train station. For touring, Rick Steves recommended doing the hop-on hop-off bus & harbour cruise combo, so that's what we did.

We had one glitch in our travel plans, as there was some sort of construction on the rail line we needed to get to Denmark on, and the alternative was a 6+ hour bus ride. So we pivoted to flying to Copenhagen instead, which made for a much easier day. 

Next up: Scandinavia and the Baltics!

Upcycling a safari shirt into... a duffel bag!

Retirement

Sun Microsystems UltraSPARC T1 chip

25 years ago, almost to the day, I put on a "product launch event" for an upcoming line of servers that were being released under the architecture codename "Serengeti". See, across the country, other offices were running coffee n' doughnut sessions for their customers, but this was a pretty big leap in tech for us. So my boss asked me to come up with something better, and so I decided upon a safari-themed afternoon party at a downtown pub; yep, the only region in the country to serve booze at a product launch. 

Yes, that is a real crocodile!

Anyhow, it was a major success. I had a friend who coordinated the live crocodile and snakes, along with a troupe of scantily clad dancers. Yes, dancers. All of the Sun Micro team wore safari shirts that someone bought at a local outdoor supplier, and I designed a pattern that was embroidered onto the back of the shirts. I bought some styrofoam pith helmets from the party store, and with some khaki shorts, it completed the look.

How to re-use these features?

Fast forward 25 years, and I noticed the shirt hanging in the back of the closet. With fond memories of the safari party, I couldn't bring myself to throw it out, but what to do with it? I had recently converted my PGA Tour ProAm caddy smock into a tote bag, so I had proven that I had some rudimentary sewing skills, but what could I make that would be different? After some Googling, I landed upon a duffel bag. I seemed to have enough material for a "personal item" sized one (would I ever use it travel?), so I set about unstitching the pockets and other features from the shirt. 

The donor bag stripped of the goods

The major thing that I didn't have, was a zipper. So one day when she was going to Value Village, I tagged along with her, and found a dusty gym bag with a suitable zipper that I could harvest from it. As a bonus, it had a shoulder strap and associated D-loops, as well as a hard plastic, removable bottom. I also salvaged the velcro wrap handle grip from it, and inner mesh pocket. All of that for only $6! Ok, so I had to go to the craft store to get some black bias tape to cover up the inside seams, as well as some matching thread for the safari shirt fabric. I happened to have a long piece of black nylon webbing to use for the handles too.

A peek inside

I won't go into the build here, but I did follow (somewhat) the process outlined on this website. I also consulted with ChatGPT extensively on what I could build into the bag, what to use as lining, and what extra features might make it unique. I have gone through at least 3 man purses (murses) in the course of our travels, and made note of the features that I liked and disliked. While a duffel bag might be too big for day touring, it might get used as my personal item along with my carry on piece. 

Despite some challenges with my sewing skills, and learning new things on the machine (e.g. buttons/button holes), I was able to put together what I had in mind. You can't see my mistakes, as the most important stitching is on the inside of the bag, which is now covered up by black bias tape. The double-layer construction gives the duffel bag just enough structure, but not so much that it looks stiff. At 15" x 11" x 5", it is definitely under the personal item size constraint for most airlines. Will it come with me on the next European trip? We'll see.

Travelling in Japan

Travel and Leisure

Well, for our first trip to the Orient together, I would call it a moderate success. We did and saw amazing things, but also endured challenges and frustration along the way. Not enough to ward off others from going, but sufficient that I would offer a number of cautions before sending friends or family to Japan.

The downsides

In a nutshell, it was too hot, crowded and difficult to work around the language issues for us. Additionally, we found the cuisine not to our liking, which I know is a specific issue to us. Let's review each of these.

Too hot even for this local

The heat: We had picked the first two weeks of October primarily because we had pivoted away from another trip that we were going to take to South America around the same time, so we had this gap in our travel schedule. And we managed to get good prices for air for this window, vs. any time later, where the price jumped up significantly. Daytime highs were always above 28º C, but mornings started out in the low 20s, with 85% humidity. We'd literally be sweating at 7 pm at night, even after the sun had gone down. This made for abbreviated days; by early afternoon, the oppressive heat had sapped our energy such that we'd head back to the air-conditioned haven of our Airbnb. In retrospect, we should have gone in late October/November; we would have caught the autumn colours too. You can/could travel in the spring to avoid the heat, when you'll get to see the cherry blossoms, but you'd get even more of the associated...

Of course it's busy at the Shibuya Scramble

Crowds: I knew it would be busy there, but still was not really prepared for just how crazy it was. We'd been to the big attractions in Paris, Rome and other major European cities... how bad could it really get? Bad. Aside from a couple of times where we got to the temple early or went a lesser known site, the masses of people around us was astounding. I had told her that since they drive on the left there, that they walk on that side as well; that turned out not to be true, and often there'd be signage to walk on the right side of the stairs instead of left! We did find a few oases of calm here and there, but for the most part, were surrounded by a sea of people.

Wait... is this a bear warning?

Language barrier: In Europe, most people in the service industry have some level of English proficiency; not so in Japan. We'd have to use our phones with Google Translate to decipher signs or instructions multiple times each day. And despite being a popular 1st-world tourist destination, not all attractions were well-equipped with English information or summary descriptions. Sometimes, even Google Maps would give you directions to turn right at "外苑東通り/都道319号". Wha? Thank goodness I managed to recalibrate my iPhone's GPS to actually point me in the direction we needed to go, as many times we would have been lost.

Typical Japanese-only menu

The cuisine: I thought I would love Japanese food... after all, I like sushi, teriyaki anything, tempura, and noodles. Unfortunately, she doesn't really eat any seafood, but I still thought we'd be ok, knowing that there's lots of chicken on rice, bbq etc. to get us by. However, what I didn't realise, is that many dishes use a fish sauce base or broth, which threw even me off. So almost every afternoon, we'd be on Google, searching for meal options that we thought we'd like. We defaulted to some non-Japanese restaurants a couple of times (Indian and a kebab joint), and went to the same beef restaurant twice (Japanese beef is excellent). And I'm not ashamed to say that we had hamburgers a few times as well; they were some of the best burgers we've ever had!

Getting around

I wouldn't say it was easy navigating around Japan, but if you know what you're doing, it's relatively fast and efficient, most using the prepaid IC card (Icoca, Suica). But since we were Japanese travel rookies, we made quite a few mistakes. Our first was trying to use the bus; since they are usually quite full, they actually open the doors before the actual stop to let out passengers, and then pull up to let new passengers in. We did not know this of course, so ran back 20 metres or so when our bus pulled up, pressing the button on the rear door for access (noobs!). Finding the stop for a particular bus at larger transfer station also proved to be a challenge, and we missed more than one bus while trying to find the right place to stand and wait.

The Icoca card we used is worth discussing for a moment. These IC (integrated circuit) cards are used for pretty much all your public transit needs. Confusingly, they are called different names based on the region in Japan where you purchased it, but they all operate the same and are interchangeable. For us foreigners, you can't use your smartphone, as the app isn't built to accept our VISA cards for some reason, so you have to go and buy a physical card from a station. The other annoying thing is that you need cash to re-charge your IC card, as we found out when trying to exit a station once, and her card had run low on funds. You can use your IC card to pay for things at 7-11, Lawsons and Family Mart, but it's not really a benefit, as you can tap your VISA or smartphone there anyways.

We struggled with the metro a number of times, where the name of the end stop was not listed on the signage for the subway platform we were waiting on (or couldn't find the right platform since the end destination we wanted was not shown). Sometimes we just gambled that Google Maps had the right time and platform was correct, and got on the train that was loading at that specific time. And even if it was listed correctly, you'd have to wait for the English version to come up on the overhead sign.

Some fare gates are IC card only!

Then there's some of the "Limited Express" trains where you pay for reserved seating on top of the fare subtracted from your IC card. This got us when we were trying to go to Nikko, as we thought we had become Japan train veterans by this time. Nope. Since we had not pre-purchased the reserved seating leg of our trip, we had to wait almost 2 hours for a train with available seating. You end up tapping in/out with your IC card and inserting your paper ticket for the Express portion. Confused yet?

Standing in-between cars to Osaka

The final gotcha was booking our Shinkansen ride from Odwara to Osaka. We used the "Easy for Foreigners" ticket machine in Kyoto, and we were successful on that trip, but this time we screwed up royally. It seemed we had found the train that was leaving around the desired departure time, but no Green Car (first class) or Ordinary Car reserved seats were available. We thought, we'll just buy the non-reserved tickets, and do the festival seating when the train shows up. Well, when our train arrived at the station, it was coming from Tokyo and all of the seats were taken already, so we ended up having to stand for over an hour and a half!

Stranger things

In no particular order, here are a number of things that seemed odd to us, as Canadians who are relatively well travelled.

You need cash here: I was surprised at how often we needed to use up our Japanese yen, especially at restaurants. Many/most of the food vendors on the street and smaller establishments were cash-only, so it was something that you need to verify before you sit down with only your VISA. Also, in most/all of the cultural attractions, cash was the only way to pay, specifically at the temples in Kyoto. And then there's the aforementioned IC card recharging; I'd say that in general you need 2-3 times more cash in Japan than you'd bring on a European trip. Oh and for you Americans using your credit card, make sure you know your PIN, as almost 1/2 the places we went did not accept tap to pay.

A small park where we ate in Nikko

There's not many places to sit: When we were walking around the public spaces in towns and attractions, we found that there was not a lot of seating. Apparently this is by design, to eliminate loitering and their cultural emphasis on order. Nonetheless, it does make things somewhat annoying for foreigners, as it is also a no-no to eat or drink on the street. So what do you do? For street vendors, you stand and eat/drink right in front of the place you bought it, then move on. If you've bought some take-away, you either take it back to your hotel/Airbnb, or as we did a couple if times, go to a nearby park where there's benches to eat.

Restaurants: Aside from the issues we had trying to find places we wanted to eat, there are some other curiosities to be aware of. When you sit down, wet towels, called oshibori, are provided for cleaning hands before eating; this is not to be used to clean your face or wipe food from your mouth. However, often we'd find that either no napkins/serviettes were provided, or if they did, they would be small waxy things that were almost useless. We ended up buying a pack of paper towels to bring with us to restaurants for this purpose. Finally, the idea of having a separate dessert course after a meal is not traditional in Japan, so once you're done with your meal, you simply get up and pay at the till. A few times, a bill was presented after delivering our food, and you brought that up to pay on exit.

Minor hotel differences: As with other countries we've visited, it was not common to get wash/face cloths in Japan, nor was there any bar soap provided. We bring our own for both, but just something to be aware of for those who prefer these. There was always shampoo and conditioner, but those with brand preference might want their own products. We booked Airbnbs because we wanted to be able to do our own laundry, and at each place they provided the necessary washing detergent pods. One unique feature of their shower/bath rooms, was the integrated heating system, where you could hang your laundry, and dry your clothes overnight. It was very effective, and we used it a number of times. Lastly, all properties we visited had automatic bidet toilet seats!

All things cute: We both knew about Hello Kitty, anime and other cute icons that are popular in Japan, but we didn't realise the extent of it. It's referred to as "kawaii", a cultural phenomenon which emphasizes cuteness, childlike innocence, charm, and simplicity. Hello Kitty traffic barriers? Why not? They were also embroidered into the headrests on one of our trains! There's even these shops, where you buy nothing but cute little keychains and things from rows and rows of vending machines. We didn't get it.

Clean streets, but where are the trash bins?

It's very clean and orderly: Everything is very clean and you're safe pretty much anywhere. Unlike major European destinations where pickpockets abound, you don't need to worry about that here, even in crowded areas. The people are courteous, but since many/most don't speak any English, they do not engage with foreigners whatsoever. Despite sometimes questionable signage, everyone was very orderly (even tourists) and queued up properly for transit or other busy places. 

A rarely found recycling container

Trash talk: Speaking of clean, there's virtually no trash anywhere to be seen, despite the lack of rubbish bins. You heard that right... they don't have garbage cans in public areas. Apparently this was as a result of the 1995 Sarin gas attack, and cultural norms to keep things clean. So you end up packing your trash around with you, and then dispose of it at the hotel or Airbnb. However, we did find the amount of plastic waste to be astounding, considering that there is no soft plastics recycling, and it ends up in the garbage incinerators. Even in the free public washrooms (which are almost everywhere), there's no trash bin, so you don't get paper towels to dry your hands (most did not have the air dryers either).

The conclusion

Japan was definitely an interesting country to visit, and it is certainly a unique place to travel. While I think the above may deter first-timers from going, that is not my intent. You will experience a country rich in history and culture that is far different than anything we've ever seen before. At 16 nights, I feel as though we did a pretty decent job of seeing a variety of things and places; if I had to trim a couple of nights, we could have dropped our "decompression stop" day in Kyoto, and another on departure from Osaka. I would also suggest that maybe, just maybe, an organised tour (vs. self-guided) would take out much of the angst that we experienced with missed opportunities and transit mishaps.

In summary, the obvious question is, "would I go again?", to which the answer is "no". Not because I didn't like it, but because I've seen enough to satisfy my needs. Even if the handful of negative issues could have been overcome, I'd still say that I don't need to go back. Sorry Japan.

Japan Act III: mountains, onsen and Osaka

Travel and Leisure

Day 12/13: Nikko

After the hubub of Tokyo, I knew we would need a break. While you can do Nikko as a day-trip from Tokyo, it's a pretty long day. And being the newbies to Japan rail that we are, we screwed up by not pre-booking the "Limited Express" seats, so we had to wait for availability and only got to Nikko around 2 pm. After a whirlwind experience with the woman at the tourist information centre, we mapped our visit into two blocks; afternoon at the Kanmangafuchi Abyss and Tamozawa Imperial Villa, then next morning around the historic temple sites. And it’s cooler here… thank goodness!

The abyss was a short bus ride and 15 minute walk from where we dropped our bags at the Nikko Station Hotel II. It is an easy riverside stroll along this relatively short length of gorge but the dramatic term "abyss" seemed a bit overstated. Sure there's some small waterfalls and swirling rapids, but the area was also used as, you guessed it, a place of worship. There are about 70 stone statues of Jizo, a Bodhisattva who cares for the deceased. The red hats and bibs have something to do with protecting children or just reverence and kindness for the dead - it's not really well defined on western websites.

Another short walk from the entrance to the abyss, was the Imperial Villa. With almost no tourists, this was another great find for us to explore. The original core of the complex was actually used by the emperor in Tokyo around 1872, but was moved to Nikko in 1899. The rest of the complex was built around this, and used as a summer house for crown prince Taisho. I imagined the scenes from the Vancouver-shot Shōgun tv show, taking place in and around this extravagant villa.

The next morning, since we were already up early (we never really adjusted to the timezone), we hit the temples. Armed with the info from the tourist information, we hit ‎⁨Rin’nōji Taiyū-in Temple while the rest of the tourists were waking up/taking the train in from Tokyo. Since we were told that our next temple stop would be very busy, we made our way over there just after opening at 9 am.

Toshogu Shrine was already getting slammed with visitors upon our arrival (I use Google Photos to remove people from our pics). With over a dozen structures scattered over the shrine site, the crowd was spread out a bit, but it was still very busy. You end up following a stream of tourists up a lengthy set of stairs to the tomb of Ieyasu, which after a lot of huffing and puffing, was really underwhelming. Back to our hotel to grab our bags and get on our reserved seats back to Tokyo then onward for...

Days 13 and 14: Hakone

Hotel photo of the open-air onsen

Hakone is known as an onsen (hot spring) town, where dozens of springs provide hot water for the town's spas and ryokan. We stayed at Hotel Senkei, in a traditional room, where the property's hot water and spas are fed by a local spring, as we found out our first evening, when a tree fell and disrupted both services!

The town itself is small and spread out, so with a supper-time arrival, we really only had time to grab dinner and settle in. The next day, we did the big loop of Hakone, using train, cable-car (funicular), ropeway (gondola), pirate ship (?!?) and bus. It is pretty touristy, but you get nice vantage points over the valley and on clear days, views of Mt. Fuji. We pretty much followed the Hakone Round Course outlined on the website, but did not stop at the museums or Gora Park. With a stop at a lakeside restaurant for some schnitzel, this took most of a leisurely day.

Back in town, the feed pipe for the hot springs had been repaired, so we both took in the spas (hers outside on the 5th floor overlooking the valley, mine inside). The thing about these towns, is that they are really catering to the daytrippers, and so restaurant selection is limited at night (same with Nikko). Still trying to avoid the fishy-taste of the Japanese food, we settled on a small (and pricey) burger joint called Box Burger, but we were not disappointed! Down a series of tiny streets and alleyways, this little place served up a meal as good as or better than our Wagyu burgers back in Kyoto.

Days 15-17: On to Osaka

We made a mistake on booking the Shinkansen high-speed train (more on the next post) but managed to to make the ~4 hour journey to our Airbnb in Osaka, located in the Namba area. I knew we'd be getting pretty exhausted from our journey thus far, so I had chosen one that was really in the heart of the action, and we definitely were! We didn't need to use the metro to get around, as we were located only a block from Kuromon Market and a few blocks from bustling Dotonbori; we certainly did not lack for Osaka atmosphere.

Our first night there, we took in the action on the brightly lit Dotonbori street, where there are thousands of tourists taking pictures and sampling the food along the way. There's a little historical street that runs parallel to this, Hozenji Yokocho, with narrow alleys that are lined by traditional restaurants and izakaya, and are reminiscent of the atmosphere of past eras. We had our dinner there, at a neat little spot called Dotonbori Terrace, where we had our last Okonomiyaki.

We'd pretty much urban-Japan'ed out by this point, so we spent a leisurely morning poking around the Namba Parks & City shopping complex, adjacent to the Namba station. During our trip planning, we searched for festivals that would be taking place in Japan during our trip. We found in a suburb of Osaka, there would be the Kishiwada Danjiri Festival taking place while we were there, and so we made this our last afternoon/evening event.

During the day, a hundred or more men pull elaborately crafted wooden Danjiri floats perilously fast around street corners, while riders "surf" on the rooftops, egging their teams on. We didn't see any crashes, but apparently it does happen! After an evening break where the respective teams split off for their bbq dinners, they decorate the floats with lanterns, and parade them back through the streets at night.

It was a fitting way to end our Japanese trip, if a little frustrating, as I'll detail next in...

The trials and tribulations of travelling in Japan