MY BIRTHDAY

THANKS everyone for all the birthday wishes - it's lovely to be away and to get texts, emails and facebook messages and pics from everyone   (slightly weird to get happy birthdays on facebook from people i don't know).

I headed out before the others were up to do a walk around on my own, finally i'm getting my bearings. i was listening to the abc this morning and john fayne was mentioning that japanese buildings are numbered in the order they were built, so put that together with no street names and what hope have you got. i have to say i haven't even noticed any numbers, maybe they're in kanji too.

i had a leisurely shop in a huge supermarket with all kinds of exotic and unrecognised foods and got some things for cal and i to have a birthday lunch together. miso, crab balls, spinach and sesame salad, a little creme caramel that we shared.  it was all lovely.

we were supposed to be having a sashimi dinner but it didn't happen. sayaka got caught up with a work visit out of town so ren, cal and i had beautiful tempura around the corner.

 my first success,

finding this building

up orange street. i

love the lettering.

just another manhole

this wall sculpture is in the building i was looking for - the huge namba station
which has the large supermarket and a roof garden where i can take cal. I'm
happy to finally have this as a central point to getting my bearings

the sculpture in the concourse of namba station

use of english in names of shops, products etc is always off the mark, sometimes hilariously so. these examples are just NQR

when we got home in the afternoon after a walk, north by northwest was on tv. a welcome change
from the normal choice of western films, clint eastwood, jason bigchin (don't know his name), jon
voigt,  all kinds of big boy action films, or b grade rubbish.  



we were supposed to be having a sashimi dinner but it didn't happen. sayaka got caught up with a work visit out of town so ren, cal and i had beautiful tempura around the corner.

walking back from

the tempura restaurant

i spotted this lovely

kanji on the ground -

rene says it just

states 'only small

cars can park here'

HALLOWEEN LOOMS LARGE

                 i'm lucky rene lives

in the one street

that definitely has

a name, it's on 

banners the full

length of the street,

ORANGE STREET.

this street i can

find :0)