Japan Trip Day 1 — Kansai Airport / Ashiya
On the 19th of July, I embarked on a total one week trip to the Kansai region of Japan as an extension of my initial two month summer vacation to South Korea.
Apparently, Korean people are going on vacation to Japan now more than ever for a multitude of reasons, including but not limited to the weakness of the Yen (advantage in exchange rates), and the rise in interest of Japanese culture among the youth population triggered partly by the breakthrough of Tanaka-san, an alter-ego of the Korean comedian Kim Hyung-wook who plays the role of a Japanese host.
On the day of the flight to Japan, I left my house at 5:00am which was painful on its own and arrived at Incheon Airport to huge lineups at both the currency exchange counter and the security checkpoint. In fact, I arrived just two minutes before the boarding started.
This time, I flew with Peach Aviations MM-012 to Kansai International Airport Terminal 2 scheduled for 7:30am.
Once I got on the plane, I was quite surprised with how small and packed the seats were with absolutely no leg room. I guess I shouldn’t have expected much from a LCC short-haul flight.
The good thing however is that the plane arrived at the destination 12 minutes earlier than the posted arrival time.
After some questioning, photographs, and fingerprints at immigration along with baggage claim where the bags were taken out of the conveyer belts and organized neatly by airport staffers (Can’t Canada learn anything from this?), I was able to exit the terminal with no problem.
I made a quick stop at Terminal 1 to buy a SoftBank prepaid sim-card before meeting with my friend and their family who were to house me for the week.
Around an hour later on the road, I arrived at my friend’s house located in Ashiya-city, Hyogo. After a few Google searches of this rather obscure city, I learned that it was a small but posh residential city located between Kobe and Nishinomiya. By the way, they raise a very cute Pomeranian named Apollo.
After eating Somen (そうめん) and napping for a few hours, I decided to go outside and take a walk around the town.
I headed to the JR Ashiya Station to go eye-shopping at their small but neat shopping mall. It was a pleasant surprise how MUJI seemed to have a lot more items for almost half the price compared to Vancouver, Canada. I decided to grab a “Soda Mikan” which was tasty but quite different from a traditional orange juice.
On my way home, I took a couple of pictures of the beautiful streets of Ashiya-city. As a Canadian, I was mesmerized seeing a road with almost no cracks, and streets with absolutely no litter or gum (I hope Vancouver can achieve half of what this city has done).
After returning home, I took a shower at their rather impressive washroom (huge bathtubs and shower area) and fell asleep almost immediately to the point where I have no memory. This concludes Day 1 of my trip to Kansai, Japan.
See you tomorrow~🍊
