Back to a travelling day, with an early morning subway to Fukuoka airport. After arriving late morning in Osaka, we moved to a monorail, train, subway and finally a walk to our new hotel in downtown for the start of our 9 day G Adventures tour.

In our rush to get the flight to Osaka, we managed to leave behind both our jackets in the departure lounge. It’s our first loss of the trip to date, but we haven’t given up hope we can get the airline to organise for them to be posted to us when we return to Tokyo in a week or so.

After checking into our great new Holiday Inn room, we went for a walk around Osaka and it was clear we were staying in the well healed part of town, particularly when we walked past not one but two Ferrari dealers!

Alongside the uber wealth of Ferrari and Chanel, Hermes et al, we came across Nambi-jinja Shrine. The enormous lion head-shaped building, measuring 12m high, 11m wide which was particularly eye-catching.

Back on the main drag, we were back in the land of high end luxury brands, more Chanel, Christian Dior, Comme des Garçons and PARCO, the go to shopping centre mall for the wealthy Japanese. Boy do these people love to shop and if you need to ask how much then you can’t afford it.

Alongside this wealth, is the cute and cuddly with miniature cats and dogs for sale or just cuddling if that takes your fancy.

We had a pleasant hour or so walking the arcades checking out the stores and restaurants on offer.

Late afternoon we had our induction meeting with our tour guide Noriko and 13 new friends who we’ll be spending the next week or so together as we travel to Hiroshima, Hakone, Koya-san and then a short return to Kyoto and Tokyo. They seem like a good bunch, with a mix of Americans, Canadians, Australian, German and English.

Tomorrow we are heading to Koya-san to visit the centre of Buddhism in Japan, with a stay in a local monastery overnight on the top of Mount Koya, along with the opportunity to witness the monks at close quarters.