An Escapade in Japan -- Part 2

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Nikko Hotel, Kansai Airport, Osaka

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For 19th Feb, when our Korean flight actually landed at Osaka’s International airport, I find this entry in my notes:
19-Feb-2009
Mumbai-Osaka flight (Korean) arriving at 8:55 PM
Stay the night in Airport hotel Nikko because ALL TRANSPORT IN JAPAN COMES TO A STANDSTILL AT 23:00 AT THE LATEST.
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(Airport code of Osaka airport is KIX and I remember it because it gave us quite a kick to realize that the airport is an artificial island in the Osaka Bay made specifically for this purpose.)

This nugget of wisdom did not come very easily to me. It came AFTER we had booked a ‘budget’ hotel for the night at Shin-Osaka, an hour’s drive away from the airport, taking it for granted that an International Airport like the Osaka Airport will have 24-hour transport service to and from the city.

We couldn’t be more wrong.

We had booked the hotel at Shin-Osaka because we wanted to leave early for Hiroshima the next day.
I started calculating the time we will reach our hotel after landing at Osaka at 8:55 PM and found, to my consternation, that the last bus or the last train to Shin-Osaka leaves at about 11:00 PM.

Taking a taxi was out of question because it would have been horrendously expensive.

If the flight landed at the right time and if our luggage came on the carousel early and if we managed to locate the Japan Railways office at the airport and if we managed to get our Japan Rail-Pass validated in time and if we could locate the train and reserved compartment in time and if we could lug our luggage to that reserved compartment in time, there was a thin chance that we MIGHT be able to take that last train to Shin-Osaka.

Have you counted how many ‘ifs’ are there in that sentence?

We are pretty optimistic people but we are also experienced travelers and so caution won over optimism and we decided to cancel our Shin-Osaka accommodation and decided to spend the night at the Airport Hotel Nikko.

168 USD for just one night’s peaceful sleep but we thought the price was worth it because it would give us peaceful, dreamless sleep without the nightmares of missed connections and being stranded nowhere in the middle of the night.

The hotels across the bridge over the main land were a bit cheaper, but they had shuttle service once every hour, and the idea of waiting for one hour in case we missed a shuttle narrowly, did not appeal.

Fortunately, the ‘budget’ hotel (‘Toyoko Inn’ is a chain of budget hotels all over Japan with extremely good service.) at Shin-Osaka had not charged us anything and so we could cancel our reservation easily.

Our 7-day ‘Japan Rail-Pass’ also got extended by one day because now we would get it validated on 20th Feb. instead of on 19th Feb.

So, we consoled ourselves that Airport Nikko Hotel, expensive though it was, was a good choice under the circumstances.

To our pleasure, we found that it really was a very good choice. It was like spending a night on the Elephanta Island of Mumbai but in five-star luxury. How many times in your life you get to do that?

Hotel Nikko sits exactly midway between the runways and the airport. As the flights descended on the runway, we saw it as a field full of blue and green lights with a smattering of red lights against the dark background of night. The distant horizons are all lit up with a prominent, well-lit, green Ferris Wheel. It looked more like a magical fairy ground rather than a prosaic, busy airport.

An underground train leads from the runways to the business end of the airport - customs, immigration, carousel, Transfers etc.

The hotel Nikko is so much an integral part of the Kansai Airport That we could even wheel the trolley loaded with our luggage right into our room and keep it there for the night so that it was much easier the next day to take it to the train station.

(What I have been calling Osaka Airport is actually Kansai Airport. It services three cities, Osaka, Kobe and Kyoto. The transfers between Kansai Airport and Kobe, are by means of a ferry service, which ALSO stops for the night at about 11:00 PM.)

Kobe has recently managed to get a small, domestic airport for itself amidst great political controversy. A good novel can be written about the struggle for the Kobe airport, with so many vested interests either supporting or opposing the airport.

Hotel Nikko is five-star hotel, so I was a bit shocked, literally and figuratively, when I actually got a mild shock when I pressed the button for the elevator. I thought it a stray occurrence till Avi also got a shock and complained about it. Later we found that this is a common problem throughout Japan due to static electricity, and some lifts provide a special button which you have to touch before using the elevator buttons to avoid the electric shock.

The room allotted to us at Nikko Hotel faced the airport but I wanted to see the view from the other side, so, I got our room changed to the opposite side and enjoyed the view.

The view consisted of a road, a canal, the ocean beyond ringed by the blue-lit runways at the horizon. It was beautiful.

However, I have learned a lesson and evolved a rule of thumb, namely,

1) Check the local transport before you book the hotels.

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