Ireland day 1318. Thursday 08 May 2025- Arrive Osaka

Today’s summary	Completed our transpacific flight to Osaka without major issues, although the our seats were close to the toilets so having people queuing by our seats was a bit irritating. Also the aircraft was rather cold. But arrived in Osaka safely and more or less on time, then made our way through immigration and downtown on the train to our hotel. Adventures start properly tomorrow!
Today’s weather	Spent most of the day 10km up in the sky so it’s hard to tell. But Osaka was mild dry and comfortable. Light north easterly breeze. Appx 21c

Today’s overview location (The white mark shows the location of our route)		Close-up location (The white line shows where we flew) (No GPX today)

Commentary

Well we have just crossed the international dateline so it’s Thursday here already, and it must be time for another blog! I’m starting writing this mid-flight, somewhere over the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Kamchatka. I’ll finish it, if I have time and energy, when we get into Osaka this evening.

It’s been a pretty uneventful journey so far. It was a reasonably comfortable flight, although perhaps not quite as good as we’d hoped. For a start, the cabin was a bit chilly and draughty, and also slightly detracting from the enjoyment were the usual assortment of noisy infants and people standing over our seats while waiting to use the toilet, which was right next to where we were sitting. Anyway, the most important thing is that were transported safely and efficiently, and on current projections it looks like we might even arrive in Osaka a few minutes early.

The enforced in-flight downtime was spent listening to podcasts and catching up on the news. On reflection, I’m not sure in my case that this was a sensible idea. I’d more or less successfully avoided polluting my mind with current affairs while we were in Vancouver, and I’m pretty sure I felt a lot better for it. I must make sure I do the same in Japan. But the views, when the cloud layer beneath us broke, were occasionally quite uplifting, especially when crossing over the spectacular mountains of the Aleutian peninsula.

Anyway I’m going to stop now as I only paid for 1 hour of satellite internet from the plane, and it’s about to run out. We have the delights of Japanese immigration and customs to test out, then a train ride downtown to our hotel. Hopefully the time we spent generating our QR code on the Visit Japan website should help smooth our passage through the border formalities, so we can get on our way quickly. There may be another update tonight (Japan time), otherwise tune in tomorrow for a fuller story.

So – we made it painlessly through immigration and customs (the QR code did indeed make things a little easier) and then figured out how to get a train to our hotel direct from the station. We only had to wait about five minutes for our train – which was actually quite busy (but I suppose it was rush hour) and slower than I expected. It took nearly an hour and a half to get to our hotel but eventually by about 6:30pm local time (which was 2:30am Canadian time – although a day earlier) we were checked in and ready to start planning the rest of our trip. We rounded off the day with a short walk round the environs of the hotel and a snack from a local shop. let’s see what excitements tomorrow sends our way!

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Settling in for the long haul. Although the flight was well over ten hours, it actually seemed to pass quite quickly	The northern tip of Vancouver Island is visible just above the aircraft engine, in the centre of this photo

First view of Osaka	Osaka Kansai airport train station. A bit confusing at first but between the two of us we eventually worked it out. Caught a stopping train to downtown Osaka which was surprisingly slow (took an hour and a half) but cheap. The contactless Suica card (on iPhone wallet) made payment straightforward

Osaka main station. Busy, crowded and confusing – but never chaotic or disrderly	The view over Osaka skyline from our room on the 25th floor

The Alaskan coast, near Kodiak island