I'm back in Kyoto after several weeks visiting family in The States. The size of my waiting inbox is impressively depressing.
Though the flight back had pluses and minuses, it was much nicer than the flight the previous week. Here are some of the pluses and minuses of the day, on our Cleveland→Minneapolis→Seattle→Osaka-Kansai trip on Delta Airlines...
Minus: Had to leave the hotel before its restaurant opened; missed free breakfast.
Plus: Lady let us grab a couple of muffins anyway.Minus: 6:00am line at Cleveland airport security was unexpectedly long.
Plus: Airport staff said neighboring security area was close and empty. It was.Minus: Arrival gate in Minneapolis was far from our next departure gate.
Plus: Long peoplemovers were fun for Anthony; terminal is beautiful.Minus: Minneapolis departure delayed due to mechanical problems.
Plus: Still arrived to Seattle a minute early.Minus: Didn't have Seattle→Osaka boarding passes; had to pick up when we got to Seattle.
Plus: Arrival gate was directly across from where we needed to be.Plus: Delta's trans-pacific flight has USB charging ports at every seat.
Minus: Discovered that they're not powerful enough to charge an iPad.
Plus: In-seat movie selection was impressive; both Anthony and I satisfied for the entire 11-hour flight.
To top it off there were no minuses to the arrival into Osaka Kansai:
- The line at immigration consisted of just one person in front of us. Through in a jiffy.
- Our luggage was already visible on the carousel as we walked up, so it was grab-n-go.
- Zero wait at customs; through in 10 seconds.
From touchdown to meeting Fumie (and her dad, who kindly drove) was 16 minutes. Wow.
We arrived on Saturday afternoon (now it's Monday). So far I'm managing jetlag okay; I was zonked yesterday, but went to the gym to get Well and Truly tired, and slept a full six hours last night. I'll probably try to do the same again today, if for no other reason than to avoid my email queue.
“From touchdown to meeting Fumie (and her dad, who kindly drove) was 16 minutes. Wow.”
I realise that tourists cannot expect to be collected by Fumie and her dad, but can tourists to Japan expect such a rapid transit of an international airport? If Japan can do that then Japan deserves to be the premier tourist destination in the world.
You can’t expect it, but we just got really lucky with the immigration line (we could pick between “Japanese” and “re-entry”, so picked the shorter at the moment), and more than that, the luggage was already out. I’ve waited for 30 minutes before, so luck with the luggage was the biggest factor. Back before Kansai opened and the smaller Itami airport was the main international Osaka airport, I once went from plane to cab in, literally, five minutes. Had no checked baggage on that trip, and was sitting immediately in front of the door that opened, so all planets aligned in a way that I’m sure will never do so again. —Jeffrey