Baseball crazy town, and time. From The Guardian.

A large police presence in downtown Osaka means there is unlikely to be a repeat of the canal-diving antics should Hanshin win the series decider on Sunday. Instead, the commercial city, whose people pride themselves on their carb-heavy street food and sense of humour, will mark the team’s feat with department store sales and cut-price deals at bars and restaurants.

In Kanazawa, we stayed at a Japanese business hotel. The buffet had virtually no western food and what little they had a ran out of quickly. Had an excellent spa. Excellent yukatas is in the room but no bathrobes, low furniture, buckwheat pillows. The electrical plug is required by innovative adaptive solution, hardly any of the staff spoke any English, no hooks, no luggage racks.

In Osaka very different. Large westernized, business hotel. Outstanding buffet, spa, with high security and three levels of entry., no yukatas, asked for, and got foam pillows replacing the feather ones, electrical plug westernized, all staff seems to speak good English,

QB still suffering, has started a course of antibiotics

Retailing in cities: every which way we turn, including up and down, there is massive retailing. Stores are crowded. Passageways are crowded. Markets are crowded. Everything is crowded. You can walk along and market area and every 50 to 100 feet you hit another drugstore that has many times. What a CVS would have. Department stores are generally nine floors.

After wandering along Dotonbori – a well-known street along the canal – we went and search for tea.

Was fruitless to search for black tea, other than the one type of Japanese black tea that we do not favor. The only solution: Starbucks. There are Starbucks everywhere, and they have good English breakfast, tea, and you can get two teabags, and a large size.

We did try to get tea in a department store and we were advised first to use B1 then 2 then 10 then 9th then 5F and we finally gave up and went to Starbucks

Finally got a small bit of rain on the walk back to the hotel. My hat got slightly damp.