Osaka ho!

Last night I decided to visit Osaka!

In a completely unlike-me spontaneous decision I decided last night to spend the holiday time between Christmas and returning to work in January visiting my friend in Japan, where he went to teach English back in July. Since then he's started his own foodblog, and I've been very tempted by his recipes and reports of the wonderful places to eat; apparently there are 200,000 restaurants in Osaka, and it's the dining and entertainment capital of Japan!

Today I managed to convince another mutual friend to join me (didn't take much convincing, to be honest)and we set flight for Japan on 28 December for about 10 days. Yay! Yes, it's going to be freezing cold, but we plan on lots of time in warm restaurants, yakitori joints, karaoke bars.... :-) And I do plan to be blogging from his laptop; I imagine we might have the same content on some days!
We're already making lists of things to do and places to visit. Kyoto and Kobe are both nearby, and train travel is pretty cheap, so they're high on our list. I visited Japan (Tokyo and Kyoto) in 2003 and was blown away by it; I never expected to love the country so much, so I'm very excited about returning.
Anyone with any good acommodation suggestions in the Honjo Higashi section of the Kita district would be much appreciated. Our friend doesn't have enough space in his little tatami matted apartment to easily accommodate sleepover guests!