A day of hurry up and wait to travel from Kyoto, Japan back to Seoul, Korea, as our plane did not leave Osaka Airport until 5 pm.
After breakfast we went back to the room and I went back through hundreds of photos, deleting the blurry and redundant, and freeing up more space on the photo card, while Miriam played games on her tablet for a couple hours. We had to “check out” by 11:00, so opted to hang out in the lobby for another two hours… At least there we had wifi.
Our pre-paid taxi to the airport picked us up promptly at 1:05. The trip to Terminal 1 took a little more than an hour and a half, and all of it seemed to be through industrial city outskirts. In other words, it was not a very scenic journey, and felt like a rather ugly and dirty end to our awesome week in beautiful Japan.
Osaka Airport’s code is KIX, because it’s actually Kansai International. Like Portland, PDX, there’s an X tacked on to complete its three-letter designation. Also like Portland, it is relatively small for the “international” designation, but it serves as a jumping off spot for a large area. It had only 6 or 8 airline counters all along one row, and only a half dozen security scanners.
Unlike Portland, the row of upscale shops was INSIDE security, the better to sell you things to take on the plane, I guess. There was a short “train” to the line of 16 gates, which had only one stop at each end. A gift shop, a few snack bars, a Tully’s Coffee, a smoking room, and a very classy restroom were all that were there, although one could have gone back and forth to the terminal easily, as there were no steps or escalators to navigate to the boarding platform.
Passengers boarded “all at once” at 4:30. No section designations on our tickets, just an easy walk-through. The Asiana plane was only about half full, the seats were comfortable, and there was plenty of leg room. We received a very nice meal with tea. The “entertainment” was also free, along with headphones, and I watched an episode of NCIS on the less than 2-hour flight.
In comparison to Osaka, Incheon Airport is gigantic! Immigration and customs forms, Index fingerprinting, facial scans, then the baggage carousels and heading out the “nothing to declare” exit, since we weren’t in need of quarantine or paying taxes.
Both Don and Chris met us there, and we got on the hour plus bus back to their apartment, babbling about our adventure all the way. Whew! Rather relieved to be surrounded by friendly English-speaking people again!