Osaka

I said I would get excited about the trip to Japan only when I was through immigration, landside, in the Osaka Airport Hotel with a glass of wine in my hand.

Lindsey and I took the airport shuttle on Saturday afternoon. We ran across Julia (who works at the railway station), Travis and Little Henry while we were waiting for the bus. We had an uneventful trip to Tullamarine Airport and stayed in the Airport Hotel overnight.

Up at 3am, in the airport by 4 and on the early flight to Cairns. Also uneventful.

I was entirely unsurprised to land in Cairns, to find a message from Jetstar to say that our 12:30 flight to Osaka had been rescheduled to 16:00! It happened the last time we flew to Osaka, although that was in 2019. It happened going to and from Singapore. It's not really an issue unless you happen to be in some sort of hurry. We were not in a hurry but it does make for a very long day, mostly spent hanging around waiting for things

I suggested to Lindsey that we should check in and then head into Cairns for some brunch and a bit of a wander. No, no, said Lindsey. Let's go airside then I (Lindsey) can finish some paperwork that needs doing and we can have something to eat and drink there.

Allow me to suggest that, should you ever find yourself with 5 or 6 hours to kill at the Cairns Airport, you do not go airside in the international terminal and attempt to occupy yourself there.

There are two shops, a sandwich and coffee bar with a teeny tiny drinks bar attached, and that's pretty much it:

Lindsey had finished her paperwork inside an hour.

We should have gone into town!

And next time I think we will come up the day before. A hotel in Cairns wouldn't cost anything like as much as the Airport Hotel in Melbourne. And we would have known about the delay to the onward flight well before we got to the airport and could have found other things to do. Plus - no need to get up at 3am and then drink rubbish tea at the airport while waiting for the first flight.

Anyway, eventually we left Cairns and arrived in Osaka. The Japanese government has set up a website for registering to come in as a tourist, which made getting through immigration and customs a doddle (made all the easier by us being pretty much the only plane which arrived at that time) and then, here we were, in the hotel, glass of wine in hand, as required. We can now be excited!

We celebrated with breakfast in the hotel buffet, which is expensive (although there is a discount for Seniors) but lots of fun. I think you can get pretty much anything you might possibly want. I had a breakfast of two halves. Fairly standard Western breakfast ingredients such as eggs, ham, sausage. And then, because my diet has been very light on vegetables over the past couple of days, a second course of steamed vegetables, rice and sweet corn soup. This should set me up for the rest of the day. However, previous experience suggests that, much as I like the concept, in reality it doesn't work and I expect to be hungry again by around 1pm 😊🍽🍴