Uneventful landing, which is always welcome. Everyone piled off the plane, and just as quickly piled onto a monorail style train to the customs check-in gates. After lining up for no less than an hour with 3 girls that were hot, tired and didn't want to be waiting in line, we eventually snaked our way to the front. The difference in check-in between the Japanese citizens and foreign passport holders was laughable. the Japanese passport holders virtually had to wave as they walked through the customs gates, whereas we had to have everything checked, from photographs, to fingerprints to a record of where we would be spending our first night. I was ready to protest loudly and violently if i was approached by a customs official wearing a rubber glove. After clearing customs, at which time all of the Japanese passengers would have been at home in bed already, we got through to baggage claim. We were nearly last through because we let everyone push and shove in front of us on the way to the custom queue, so our bags were virtually the last ones from the flight. We put them on a trolley and headed off. Smooth sailing, or so we thought. It wasnt until we got to the JR rail ticket counter to exchange the rail passes that we realised that our surname wasn't Davies and our lock codes would not open one of our bags. Super! Some bloke called Davies was probably halfway to Tokyo on a bullet train with our bags. As we powerwalked back to customs (paniced powerwalk # 2 for the trip), my mind started ticking over as to what i was going to tell the insurance company was in the bags. Paul, a mate of mine recently bought a Nikon D3 camera ($6500) that he would still have the receipt for...so that crossed my mind. As we explained our situation to the very helpful but thoroughly overwhelmed girl behind the Kansai information counter, she pointed to a group of people looking just as worried and annoyed as i was. THE DAVIES FAMILY. Laughs and jokes were had by all, but i think the husband quietly blamed me, because i sure as hell blamed him for the stuff-up. So with all of that sorted, we got our train passes, and got onto a train. Brightly lit on the inside of the cabin, so we spend 50 minutes looking at ourselves in the windows. Half asleep we eventually got to Shin-Osaka railway station and bailed. We made our way through the crowded station with 2 now utterly exhausted girls. On our way upstairs from the platform some guy took a swandive onto the tracks 15 meters in front of us, causing a mad rush of official looking guys with torches and hats. I bundled the girls upstairs as quick as i could incase a 180km/h train came barrelling through there at that point, but from what i heard behind us he was ok. It was then after midnight, and we were faced with the task of trying to find the hotel. Wandering through the Osaka back alleys after midnight we should have been concerned in what is apparently japan's most "dangerous" city, but even at that time there was hundreds of bicycles lining the footpaths, without a bike lock in site. But a little lost, we asked some guy walking into his appartment whether he knew where our hotel was. If this was sydney he would have just tried to mug us, or swear at us in lebanese, but instead this guy walked 4 blocks with us right to the door of the hotel, before bowing and backtracking to his house. Completely different culture to Australia. So we found the hotel, checked in with no worries and called it a night. The Chisun shin-osaka hotel. Quite dated, and the room was tiny and a bit knocked around, but very clean and it could have been a mud hut and we wouldnt have cared.