8-Nov 2015 early morning 1:30 am departure from Bangalore, arrived at 6:30 pm at Kansai International Airport , Osaka.Flight Cathay Pacific. I had a slight problem on the day before i boarded the flight because the travel agent had misspelled my name in the airline flight booking. Found out during on-line check-in and they were able to correct this in-time. I had got a 15 days single entry visa for Japan.
Hong Kong is a beautiful airport.
One side has view of hills :
The other side has the ocean :
In Hong-Kong, they monitor the body temperature - Apparently there are many cases of travelers in transit with high risk fevers. Vegetarian is very difficult to get in all the restaurants at the airport. I found one pizza place which served Cheese Pizzas, but these run out quite fast due to Indians, so make sure you get one early.
Landed at evening at Kansai Airport. This Airport is in the Osaka bay and not exactly in Osaka. The immigration queues were really long, so it took quite some time to get out. Outside the airport there are 2 choices to reach Kobe - take the Shinkansen train or the airport limousine bus.
Bus - first go the automatic ticket machine. Thankfully, there was a lady helping out with tickets and gave me a ticket for 1900 JPY. Then stand in the queue , hand-over the bags and then board the bus. First dutiful experience where the elderly gentleman bowed after all done and the bus started at exact time.
After a good 1+ hour drive, bus reached to Kobe Sannomiya station . From there, i tried to find my way to the place where there's regular shuttle to Kobe Meriken park , after a good time and no help counters, i gave up and checked in to a taxi. IIt was only ~8 minutes from there to the Kobe Meriken Park Hotel - it was almost 11 pm by the time i got into the room. The taxi guy charged me < 1500 JPY.
( The other choice would have been to take the Shinkansen train from Kansai international airport to Shin-Kobe station. From Shin-kobe station, the hotel is ~10 minutes by taxi )
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9-Nov-2015
Business meet kickoff was in the evening and i decided to go around Kobe during the day. Kobe Meriken Park hotel.
View from the hotel room :
View of the hotel from just outside , in the beachfront park.
The park has very interesting structures based on the concept of recycling
This also houses the Kawasaki Maritime museum. This was closed on Monday, but still could see quite a few interesting exhibits on the outside.
Kobe Port tower is just next to the hotel.
Roamed around in Kobe and experience in the go-around Kobe bus. This starts at the Kobe Port tower , circles entire city and stops at various points. Most people in Kobe don't understand English and i had a very difficult English <-> Japanese conversation with the girl ticket collector trying to understand how this drop-on/drop-off bus works.
Got down at the Sannomiya and walked around the Kobe Sannomiya Center Street Mall.
I had very anxious moment in an ATM close-by. The ATM machine is the "gobble-card" type and the card came out before cash was dispensed. While i was searching what happened to cash, the machine swallowed the card again ! No card, No cash. I spent a good 1/2 hour on the phone and finally managed to reverse the transaction and get back my card. Apparently, the cash is dispensed in a closed box which opens only when we take out the card first. Lesson - first grab your card back , then worry about cash. Losing card is worse than losing cash..
Most people i saw getting down at a place which had a ropeway to a hill.
Excellent walkways in the surrounding area, had a very pleasant walk back to the hotel from the mall.
Cruise boat next to the hotel :
Evening - we had welcome drinks and dinner. Amazing sunset from the hotel restaurant :
View of Kobe Port/beachfront area in the night :
Kobe is close to other important places - Osaka Castle, the imperial Kyoto or Nara deer park. Surely need to consider these for my next tourist only trip ..
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10-Nov-2015
The restaurant at this hotel has a really wide spread, good stuff even for Veg-only folks like me. Here's where i constantly heard the attenders saying "Ohayo Gozaimasu" frequently to all guests.
Session all day and evening dinner was at a Sushi place. I "almost learnt" how to eat with chopsticks. we were bowled over by the hospitality of our Japanese colleagues - the concern, care and extent to which they go to ensure we feel comfortable is very distinctly an "Eastern" approach.
Excellent sauted vegetables, greens and Tofu :
Siva and I walked back to the Hotel.
Siva's room was on the other end of the hotel and we had a very different view of Kobe city :
The two most unique aspects of the Hotel room were in the bathroom :
* A commode with heated seat and automatic sprinkler with 4 different speed/patterns to wash the you-know-what.
* A mirror with an electrically-back-heated-center such that it doesn't fog even after a hot bath :
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11-Nov-2015
Session all day and evening was Kobe beef. Skipped this and had food at Indian place. The Kulcha was very very thick and they used Egg inside this.
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12-Nov-2015
Session only until lunch. we had checked out earlier and then went to Shin Kobe station by taxi, boarded the fastest Shinkansen to Tokyo. The Shinkansen charges ~20,000 JPY from Shin-Kobe to ____ . This is the fastest Shinkansen and is operated by JR west.
Reached Tokyo and checked-in the Intercontinental Tokyo Bay. Amazing hotel I got a Regular floor ( 8-17) , Superior area ( 35 sqm) in non-smoking. They charged me 21600 JPY for one night. Upper deluxe rooms are not accessible by lower floor rooms ( I couldn't go to siva's room ! ) .
In evening Siva and I went to Asakusa temple by taxi and even saw a geisha. From Asakusa we again took a taxi to the Ruchi Restaurant. From there, we walked back to the Hotel.
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13-Nov-2015
I checked out in morning and went to Museum by Monorail. The hotel is at Takeshiba station and the monorail goes via the Daiba station ( which has an amazing 270 degree turn ) to Mirakan.
Miraikan entry + dome theatre cost me 620 JPY + 300 JPY.
In the Miraikan gift shop, Bought MIP robot for 16200 JPY, Asimo robot model for ~3200 JPY.
Came back in afternoon and went to Tokyo tower by walk. Tokyo tower i took a combo ticket for 1600 JPY which includes the taller observatory view also.
Came back by walk, collected bags and went to APA hotel Shinjuku-Kabukicho tower by taxi.They charged me 43000/- JPY for 2 nights. The room i got was on 25'th floor.
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14-Nov-2015
Went to Akihabara by JLR . I had not planned for anything in particular -
Bought a comics for ~400 JPY at a place called Comic Zin.
It started raining and my plan to go the garden went kaput. went to the station in evening and booked ticket for next day train to Narita. This cost be ~3200 JPY. This is operated by JR East. ( Note : The hotel had directed me to an Airport Limousine bus next to the Shinjuku station , but i didn't want to board a bus this time )
I bought stuff from 7-11 FamilyMart stores - water bottle, sweet buns, Banana. Generally costs anywhere under 1000 JPY.
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15-Nov-2015 . Walked from hotel to Shinjuku station and boarded the train to Narita. carefully made a note of which terminal to get down to . Mine was terminal-2 for Cathay Pacific.
Flight departed at 10:25 am from Tokyo Narita Airport via Hong-Kong to Bangalore , Cathay Pacific Airlines. Scheduled arrival was 9 pm, but arrived late morning due to flight delay. I had carried the nice umbrella, but they collected it at the airline entrance and i forgot to collect it back at Hong-Kong.
Tips :
* Always verify whether the ticketing agent has entered correct details of passport ( name, passport number) etc in the airline reservation system. Otherwise, this will create hassle at the counter when they cross check your passport with what's entered.
* If you handover your belonging at the Airline entrance( Coat, Umbrella or anything else) , make a mental or written note of this and don't forget to ask it back.
* Always take another SIM at the intermediate airport. The wifi nearly never works when you need it most, it drains battery and you are left wanting to call someone back home ( family, taxi driver ) - especially when your connecting flight gets delayed and you will be left ruing what to do.
* carry Universal adaptor. Found out that Hong-Kong Airport has the UK style adaptors at airport and couldn't charge. Thankfully, they also had USB outlets, but your USB cable is not reliable and the USB outlets will be occupied by others !
* Carry Umbrella in check-in bag. In Japan and UK , Umbrella is required at very odd times in a year.
* Note that the usual check-in time at all hotels is 3 pm and checkout is 12 noon. Now, they do give time usually until 12 am in case you are late for checkin. But it may be good to call the hotel and confirm how late checkin is allowed in advance. Plan your getaways around this in mind.
* Always scribble on the back of the receipt what that receipt was for. This will be entirely in Japanese and later you will struggle with various apps to understand Japanese.
* I made a mistake in not reading carefully that the Matrix SIM dial-in number from Japan to any india number needed a prefix. I forgot that and ended up paying more for my calls. Though i had got a good unlimited 3G plan for 2000 Rs !
* Google translate app was good, but my iphone 4s has a smaller screen, so didn't prove very useful.
* I should have carried my high capacity powerbank in the retrospective. THe phone charge drains fast with 3G maps.
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