"Sayounara".

MONDAY October 8 Day 74 Fine, Mild, Warm Later.
We arose as usual about 10 a.m. and attacked an unusual "brunch". There was an incredible selection from which to choose:
A wonderful selection of nigiri zushi.
I suppose everyone now knows almost everything there is to know about sushi, but we didn't; so, nigiri zushi are composed of a base of rice that has been cooked in seaweed flavoured water. After cooking, the rice is further flavoured with sugar, salt, vinegar, and mirin (or dry sherry will do). Spoonfuls of the prepared rice are pressed by hand into an oval shape. Now an appropriately sized piece of raw fish (you can use tuna, snapper, bream, eel, prawn, squid, and so on) is spread with wasabi, turned over, and placed on the rice oval. Attractive to the eye; refreshing, and satisfying.
Corn and potato croquettes.
Potato and ume boshi (preserved plum) croquettes.
Sliced cold meat, various varieties.
Lettuce, carrot, potato, and tomato formed into a salad.
Renkon (pickled lotus root). And here we noticed a peculiarity of Japanese pronunciation; the "r" sounds to us like "d". It is a very difficult sound to achieve, especially if you can remember the spelling of what you are trying to say; but, Colin thinks, if you put your tongue into the position to say "r", but say "d" instead, well, at least people will know you're making an effort.
Sesame flavoured daikon (white radish) jelly with pickled carrot. A generous selection of French breads, including pain au chocolat; but we couldn't fit any in; a great shame.

Our Pacfic Ocean voyage was fast approaching. We both felt slightly digestively focussed. Could it be travel anxiety? Something we had eaten? Maybe we had just eaten too much?

We looked at each others' photographs, and talked. Akihiro and Masako have a married son who lives several hours travel away. There is a grand-daughter, Yuuka. About three years old.

At 3-50 p.m. the convoy departed from Nakanishis'. Noriko went first. We followed with Akihiro and Masako. Noriko's car had a satellite navigation system that was to find the right pier in the Nanko part of Osaka Port. When we looked at the extent of the port, at the number of ships, and compared it to Port Phillip, we didn't know whether to laugh or cry; so maintained a stiff upper lip instead.
Relieved to find we had a credit card that worked, we collected the tickets that Akihiro had ordered by telephone. The tickets cost 7,000 yen (about AU$120 at the then exchange rate) each, one way.

Time for an important aside. Way back in the planning stage of this whole journey, we were greatly mentally exercised by the problem of how to get from Sakai (in central Honshu) to Kanoya (a Geelong-sized city in southern Kyushsu).
Kanoya could not be reached by the regular air services. Worse, Kanoya had been separated from the incredibly far-reaching Japanese railway system by an earthquake, and never re-connected.
We could make our way by rail to Kagoshima City, but our Kanoya hosts refused to trust us, with our limited command of spoken Japanese, to the local bus system; so they set themselves a six hour round trip by car to collect us from Kagoshima station and to bring us to Kanoya.
What saved them from this was the expense of the train journey. This made us keep looking for alternatives.
One day, gazing at the map of Japan, we noticed a dotted line crossing the sea between Osaka and the port of Shibushi in southern Kyushu. The map legend explained that the dotted line represented a ferry route.

Eureka! Shibushi is only thirty kilometres from Kanoya. A great deal of time searching the www, and a three minute telephone call to the Japan National Tourist Office in Sydney revealed to us that the cheapest ferry tickets to Shibushi were half the cost of rail tickets to Kagoshima. We could have bought return tickets and saved another 2,000 yen each on the entire journey, since we had to return to Osaka to depart for Australia, but Colin's brain had gone into linguistic melt-down after his cleverness at the rope-way on Mt. Kongo, and he didn't understand Akihiro asking if he should buy us return tickets or one-way.

After collecting the tickets, while remembering the fantastic times we had enjoyed during the previous week, we took photographs, sorrowfully said our awkwardly inadequate farewells and hopelessly inadequate thank yous, and struggled ourselves and generous supply of luggage up the gangway to disappear into a large reception area.
Not a moment too soon; seconds later, at 6-00 p.m. the ship's whistle blew, and the vessel drew away from the wharf. We were beginning the next chapter, Crossing The Pacific