Arrival: Ōsaka KIX airport

Our journey from Abu-Dhabi to Ōsaka was a pleasant one. Initially, there were turbulence, but the Aircrew reassured us that these turbulence are very common in the current geographic location and it won't get worse than some few shakes, and the flight will be safe. Also gave us information on which geographical areas we might face turbulence, so we had prepared ourselves. We managed to fall asleep somehow, and the next thing we know, we are flying over Seoul. Again, we were served with Pasta (this time as breakfast), and we swore to ourselves not to eat Pasta in our entire Japan trip....
We arrived Ōsaka soon, and we were treated with much better weather than expected, and got to see the ports and the land meeting water without any seashore scenes. There were so many solar panels that were planted in the midst of the ocean/sea, and we started believing Japan to produce most of their energy via green sources. We got to see the Solar panels arranged spelling 'KOBE' while we were descending. We landed safely in Ōsaka Kansai International Airport (KIX). The only discomfort though with the flight was when it landed, seemed like the pilot was hitting the break too hard such that we almost hit the seat in front even though we had fastened our seatbelts.
After reaching KIX, we were introduced to the world of cuteness and politeness, as there were many cute signs that were informative enough for us to understand what to do next. The Airport staff as well were very polite and helpful, guiding us with their broken English to make us understand what are the next steps. We went through the entry gates without much hassles and we're surprised that our luggages have already been removed from the luggage pickup belts and kept aside - made our job much simpler and easier. However, we were a tad bit disappointed as the airport was not as grand as we expected an international airport to be, so we were wondering if this really is an international airport. It looked like an old shopping complex more than an airport.
After exiting the arrivals, we started searching for connections to go to Tokyo, through Ōsaka city. Since it was around 14:30 hrs already, and wanted to reach Tokyo by 19:00 -20:00 hrs, we started looking around for the Japan Railways (JR) station. One of the shopkeepers at Lawson helped us locate the station (somehow managed to know about it using my broken Japanese, after confirming that they can't really understand English). So we had to go to the 2nd floor through the escalator and take left. In Japan, there is no concept of Ground floor (0th floor). So basically, 2nd floor was just one floor above us. Our original plan was to take a JR Pass epr person for a week with which we can roam around anywhere in Japan with any train just by using this pass (even in Japan's famous Shinkansen - the bullet trains). We thought we can directly purchase this at the counter. Turns out, we need to purchase the subscription atleast 2 working days in advance! We thought it would then not be a good idea to subscribe for this pass as -
a. It won't be worth it if we just manage to take one Shinkansen ride with this pass (each Shinkansen ride from Tokyo to Ōsaka costs around ¥14000-14500 per person (around €90-94), and the JR Pass itself was around ¥50000 (around €300))
b. The tickets would be delivered to us by post to our residing location, and since we will be roaming around already, it won't really help as we might already have left this place, and even if we would have stayed, there are chances of these tickets being misplaced and cause unnecessary panic.
So, we decided to taking separate Shinkansen tickets to Tokyo, and get a ICOCA (in Japanese, Iko-ka translates to: Shall we go? / Let's go!. Found this fun and intuitive way for letting their customers know. ) which we recharged for ¥10000 (actually ¥9500, and ¥500 as a deposit for the card). However, the Shinkansen could only be taken from Shin-Ōsaka station, and to get to this station we had to take another ticket, as only Limited express trains were available from KIX Airport to this station. For these express trains, we had to take separate tickets, as ICOCA card can just pay for the basic fare, the additional fare needs to be purchased separately. Therefore, the lady at the ticket counter also offered us to buy separate tickets to Shin-Ōsaka, so that till the time we reach Tokyo, we needn't use ICOCA card at all, and we opted for this option. We headed for the train station, and we remembered: in Japan, at each train station we can get stamps/seals for that station, which depicts the regional specialty around this station. We asked the Station master, and he promptly guided us to the stamping area. After collecting the stamp, we waited for our ride to Shin-Ōsaka, and to our luck, we managed to board the Haruka Express train.
This train was so cute!! The train had Hello Kitty themed wallpaper (outside as well as inside), and the seats were cozy with enough leg space. It was kept very clean and tidy, and we were mighty impressed with the train. It took off smoothly from the KIX Airport and we started our journey to Shin-Ōsaka..Läs mer