Feb. 17

We had a 4:00am check in time for our flight to Cairns and then on to Osaka. After scouting the route to the airport yesterday, we decided to walk from our lodging to the airport during the early morning hours. We arrived to the doors just as they were being unlocked at 4am. We found the JetStar gate and proceeded to check in. Everything was automated, but we did have some helpful hints by an employee. We have shed most of our excess gear and are mainly traveling with what is in our backpacks. Always reassuring when the flight is on time. It was a 3 hour flight with breakfast served. We soon realized what the word budget means when food is concerned. The flight was great, the food not so much. We had ordered meals for both flights today and will definitely be purchasing some food before our next flight. As we flew into Carins, the landscape looked tropical and very humid. A cyclone had hit this area in Dec. when we were hiking the Overland trail. One could still see some of the effects from the storm on the ground. We are still coming to the relization that we are headed to Japan to hike the 88 pilgrimage Route.

We first heard of the 88 Shikoku Pilgrimage route when we were hiking on Catalina Island in California. It sounded intriguing and definitely out of our comfort zone. We had gotten several guides and read numerous posts about the route on the internet. The more we researched the more what if’s came to mind. Now here we were getting ready to board the flight to Osaka and hoping that the planning we did would at least get us a little way down the trail. Our object at the Cairns airport was to spend our last Australian dollars. This wasn’t hard to do with all of the bakery options. We bought food to supplement the food that we had ordered for the plane ride. Immigration was quite simple for leaving Australia to go to Japan. They just wanted us to show them that we had a flight leaving Japan.

We settled in for our 7 hour flight to Japan. Osaka is almost directly North of Cairns so the change of time is just an hour earlier. The flight was smooth and our arrival time was even a little early. We filled out the immigration forms on the plane. We had tried to do them on line, but it seemed rather complicated. The paper forms were easy. After we saw the lights of Osaka we began our descent to Kansai International Airport. This airport is located on a man made island that was the result of leveling two mountain tops. There is a long bridge that connects the airport to the out skirts of Osaka. When I made a reservation at the Odysis Suites Osaka Airport Hotel, I assumed it was close to the airport and there would be a hotel shuttle to the airport. Further inquiry was that, no there was not transportation by the hotel and we would need to use public transportation. Japans transportation is a marvel in itself and soon we were going to experience it.

Getting off the plane, we were routed to a single line of passengers who were getting their photo taken, temperature taken and then also doing a set of fingerprints. So far so good, there were no red flags and so it was time to get our backpacks. Our next line was going thur customs. We didn’t have anything to declare. They took our form, checked it off and we were free to go. it was a very simple and efficient process. Next task was finding an ATM machine to get money for the train. After several false leads, one was found and we soon had yen in hand. Yen that we needed to purchase a train ticket. We found the ticket machine and glad that it also had directions in Englich. Put the money in and out comes the ticket, easy enough! Now off to the train and hopefully our hotel. We had done quite a bit of research on getting to this hotel and some of the information was on YouYtube. We were relieved when everything fell in place. We made it to the lobby of the hotel and one of the employees spoke enough English to give us the basics of what we needed to know for the next couple of days.

Our room was on the 19th floor and what a room it was. It was a suite with a sitting room.

Bedroom with all of the controls at the head of the bed. Including buttons to open and close the drapes.

An of course the bathroom had a bidet, which we soon learned is a standard fixture in most bathrooms.

The Bidet with diagrams ( quite helpful)

The sight from our window was impressive.

We were too tired to enjoy it, so we just pushed the button to close the drapes and fell into a deep sleep.