 After arriving in Osaka, and after having passed the check without being asked embarrassing questions by the customer officers, and after we rejoined the other three of us, we immediately receive bad news when collecting our baggage: both Nadia and Francesca found their luggage open and tampered with.
Luckily nothing is missing, but there are clear signs of tampering (and Nadia found her Sayaka's gun broken).
So we decide to denounce the fact just as a precaution; this leads us to be somewhat late on our schedule, despite our arrival on early morning, and we manage to get to Kyoto, our operative base for the next three days, only when it's lunch time.
 From here on our struggle to reach our ryokan starts.
The map we have is at least... inaccurate, and we start turning around for more than one hour, with our heavy luggage, on foot and under the unbreathable August Japanese air. A nightmare.
From this time on, we will decide that taxis are our best friends, always, anyhow and wherever!
We manage someway to accommodate thanks to the useful help of a gentleman who makes our struggle his own and who, just like any real opera fan, can even speak a word or two in Italian!!
Tired to their bones, Francesca and Paolo decide to rest in the ryokan, while Rob, Nadia and I, not happy with the few flight hours and the incumbent jet lag, leave again to Osaka for a fast tour in Den Den Town.
And we do manage to get to Osaka only late in the afternoon, so we have just a few hours to walk around and waste the first thousands of yen in some good shops (cospa shop and the like), not minding the exaggerate weight produced by ten Cospure like magazines and only singing “I want it all and I want it now”, we let ourselves be plunged into the unruly and wild shopping pit.
We get back to our base well loaded but visibly satisfied and we crumble on our futons, tasting the flavor of the vacation just started.
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