So Osaka is sorted -- turns out St. Regis is doing a promo until Jan 26 for bookings until the end of May offering rooms from a scarcely credible Y19,000 for two, including breakfast. (Add Y2000 on weekends, rooms limited, etc.) Even more surprisingly, this doesn't even seem to be all that great a rate, there's a whole slew of just-above-Y20000 plans on their website. Given that this is about a third of what you'd pay in Tokyo for the same class of hotel, whoever decided to build a St. Regis in Osaka must be contemplating seppuku...

Alas, it doesn't quite work that way. We're too small a company to get much in the way of corporate rates, and "scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours" deals for free accommodation are very much frowned upon. Now occasionally there are friend-of-a-friend things where a colleague knows somebody, which is eg. how I used to get F&F rates at Fairmont Singapore, but there are none that I know of for Japan. So that's why I'm trawling for deals on FT...