My return flight to the UK has been delayed by at least 4 hours. Delays are always a pain, but I always find that on the homeward journey I get in to a kind of 'return mode', and so I find delays on the return journey particularly painful. I've been wandering round Osaka airport for a couple of hours already, randomly spending money to try to pass the time. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but I seem to have amassed quite a collection of pens — I go into a shop, see some fancy, 4-colour gel pens that you can't find in the UK, and buy some. At this rate, I'll have a supply to last me about three years. I'd better start writing things in lots of different colours...

Anyway, I've just found a wireless hotspot, which conveniently extends to the inside of a coffee shop, and parked myself in a seat by a power outlet with a large cup of coffee. Surfing my [checks] 427 unread feeds should kill an hour or two.

I'll write much more about it later when I've had time to collect my thoughts, but it has been a fantastic trip. Japan is a fascinating country, although we've only seen a tiny portion of it. I've utterly failed to learn much of the language. I know the words for 'yes', 'no', 'please', 'thank you', 'hello' and 'beer' (you know, the Standard International Survival Set), and the Kanji for 'big', 'little', 'open door', 'close door' and 'button'. This will come in handy when I next get stuck in a Japanese lift and have to choose between something big or something little.