Osaka, 2018/10/27 part 1
So continuing from last time, October 27, 2018, was a long day. A long and jubilant day. So my posts will be divided to several parts. Part (1) will be the trip to the airport to pick up the rest of my family until they arrived. Part (2) will be the things we did as we journey all the way to Tokyo directly after they landed.
Waking up at 5 was not usually easy, but at that particular day it was much easier. Could be the excitement that was accumulating over the days. At that moment I just admired my parents' resolve to wake up and started the travel. First order of business however was me deciding how to carry the stuff that were needed. There were 1 medium sized suitcase, 1 cabin-sized bag, 1 bagpack made of folded baby/child stroller, 1 mom's handbag and 1 dad's bagpack. That was a lot of stuff. See, there were 2 options to go to the airport from my place. Either through Kita-senri station which then require 1 time train change to go to the airport. Another is through monorail station which then require a change to a bus that goes to the airport. This is usually what happens in Japan if you do not have private transportation. You have an option for public transportation at various prices and convenience in terms of access and walking distance. At that time, walking distance was not the dilemma because it was equal both to Kita-senri or monorail. Convenience, however, was a different thing.
I considered several things, (1) walking method to the station. Walking to Kita-senri station would consist of around 30% inclined walking and 70% downhill walking. Meanwhile, walking to the monorail station would be 80% even walking and 20% uphill. Not much difference because in our case we were not chased by time. Slow walking was fine and so the terrain was not much of a thought. (2) Monorail trains come at less times per hour compared to the trains from Kita-senri station. So in a way, it was kinda more relaxing to the mind to go with the trains from Kita-senri. In addition, (3) The transfer buses also comes at less times per hour compared to the transfer trains.
When I am going out with my parents, I often focus on relaxed timing rather than swiftness or price. This is because they are on a holiday, and I should tried to be on a holiday too! The travel process should be somewhat relaxing and with as less pressure as possible. I consider if in the middle of the road, they were feeling peckish and wanted to buy food. A more flexible transport schedule would allow for that to go easily. In terms of price, it is interesting to note that there exists many day-passes that will decrease your travel cost by quite a margin if used correctly. Kansai day pass for example can be bought from any train station master office and will enable you to use the train the whole day without any extra cost (unless you enter a different region of course). However, I found the purchase will require another item to hold (with risk of missing it for people who are not used to keeping these kind of tickets) and extra time to look and calculate for. So I chose to just purchase these ICOCA cards. It can be more expensive if used wrongly, but I think that it is worth the price for the convenience it gives. Sure sure, call me lazy and lousy at maths. It was "holidays"! might as well use less brain than more.
Even more interestingly it started raining! that triggered my anxiety a tiny bit. But luckily most of our bags were waterproof and umbrellas were available to use. The rain was not that bad either, so I let the rain wash away my anxiety too. I have to say, it was a really euphoric feeling to have a trip with my parents like this. In general, despite my overthinking, I do like traveling. Exploring places and showing them to people I know and sharing how amazed I am with those places were something that I gained enjoyment from.
When we finally reached the train station, it was quite empty. There was a middle-aged man standing in front of the escalator greeting us and I greeted him back. The escalator was off and so I looked for an elevator. But somehow, the elevator was blocked for maintenance! Fortunately, the middle-aged man offered to help to take some of our luggage. I expressed my gratitude promptly and asked him kindly to help my father instead. He did so with quite a gusto in his movement. I truly admire some of these people's positive pro-active reaction. It was...a refreshing and encouraging sight for the travel to come.
The train took about 1 hour to reach the terminal station on which we had to transfer to another train. Luckily, the ICOCA card can be used to pay on the next station entrance gates too. In Japan, there are different train companies operating in the country (competition breed innovation...I guess...?). Sometimes there are more than one company in a particular city! Apparently, several years ago, access to those different train company stations can require different ticket purchases. Technology kinda caught up and now IC card (of which ICOCA is one of them) can be used in almost all train stations. Yay!
But anyway, we reached the airport with no problems at all. We waited for some time in Kansai International Airport. Their plane was delayed by about 1 hour, but no worries, there was a Starbucks shop nearby with perfect line of sight to the arrival gates.
Waking up at 5 was not usually easy, but at that particular day it was much easier. Could be the excitement that was accumulating over the days. At that moment I just admired my parents' resolve to wake up and started the travel. First order of business however was me deciding how to carry the stuff that were needed. There were 1 medium sized suitcase, 1 cabin-sized bag, 1 bagpack made of folded baby/child stroller, 1 mom's handbag and 1 dad's bagpack. That was a lot of stuff. See, there were 2 options to go to the airport from my place. Either through Kita-senri station which then require 1 time train change to go to the airport. Another is through monorail station which then require a change to a bus that goes to the airport. This is usually what happens in Japan if you do not have private transportation. You have an option for public transportation at various prices and convenience in terms of access and walking distance. At that time, walking distance was not the dilemma because it was equal both to Kita-senri or monorail. Convenience, however, was a different thing.
I considered several things, (1) walking method to the station. Walking to Kita-senri station would consist of around 30% inclined walking and 70% downhill walking. Meanwhile, walking to the monorail station would be 80% even walking and 20% uphill. Not much difference because in our case we were not chased by time. Slow walking was fine and so the terrain was not much of a thought. (2) Monorail trains come at less times per hour compared to the trains from Kita-senri station. So in a way, it was kinda more relaxing to the mind to go with the trains from Kita-senri. In addition, (3) The transfer buses also comes at less times per hour compared to the transfer trains.
When I am going out with my parents, I often focus on relaxed timing rather than swiftness or price. This is because they are on a holiday, and I should tried to be on a holiday too! The travel process should be somewhat relaxing and with as less pressure as possible. I consider if in the middle of the road, they were feeling peckish and wanted to buy food. A more flexible transport schedule would allow for that to go easily. In terms of price, it is interesting to note that there exists many day-passes that will decrease your travel cost by quite a margin if used correctly. Kansai day pass for example can be bought from any train station master office and will enable you to use the train the whole day without any extra cost (unless you enter a different region of course). However, I found the purchase will require another item to hold (with risk of missing it for people who are not used to keeping these kind of tickets) and extra time to look and calculate for. So I chose to just purchase these ICOCA cards. It can be more expensive if used wrongly, but I think that it is worth the price for the convenience it gives. Sure sure, call me lazy and lousy at maths. It was "holidays"! might as well use less brain than more.
Even more interestingly it started raining! that triggered my anxiety a tiny bit. But luckily most of our bags were waterproof and umbrellas were available to use. The rain was not that bad either, so I let the rain wash away my anxiety too. I have to say, it was a really euphoric feeling to have a trip with my parents like this. In general, despite my overthinking, I do like traveling. Exploring places and showing them to people I know and sharing how amazed I am with those places were something that I gained enjoyment from.
When we finally reached the train station, it was quite empty. There was a middle-aged man standing in front of the escalator greeting us and I greeted him back. The escalator was off and so I looked for an elevator. But somehow, the elevator was blocked for maintenance! Fortunately, the middle-aged man offered to help to take some of our luggage. I expressed my gratitude promptly and asked him kindly to help my father instead. He did so with quite a gusto in his movement. I truly admire some of these people's positive pro-active reaction. It was...a refreshing and encouraging sight for the travel to come.
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| In the train. We took pictures. It was empty, so it was fun to do so without disturbing others. |
The train was waiting on the platform. It was 6.30am, so naturally it was quite empty.
The train took about 1 hour to reach the terminal station on which we had to transfer to another train. Luckily, the ICOCA card can be used to pay on the next station entrance gates too. In Japan, there are different train companies operating in the country (competition breed innovation...I guess...?). Sometimes there are more than one company in a particular city! Apparently, several years ago, access to those different train company stations can require different ticket purchases. Technology kinda caught up and now IC card (of which ICOCA is one of them) can be used in almost all train stations. Yay!
Here is another "option" that exist in Japan. There are trains that are somehow faster than other trains. Even though sometimes they are at the same tracks! How do they manage that? those faster trains, dubbed Express or Rapid or something of that nature, stop at less stations. We were not really in a hurry, but it was interesting to explain to my parents about this. If you buy some extra tickets in the station (or outside if you planned to do so) to use these Express options, you can use those trains that comes at certain schedules. Here is where it gets confusing, they are usually on the same tracks! so people (tourists in general) gets really confused because there are more than one line of queue for the same train track. Then it gets interesting..some of the express trains makes you pay a premium of around 1000 yen, but actually, those express trains are only about 10-15 minutes faster than normal trains! I do not know about other people, but this means that these people appreciate time so much, that they can monetize its amount to around 100 yen, (which is about 0.90 USD at the time of I write this) per MINUTE!
Why is this important for me to write? because...In Indonesia, one of the unfortunate things people remember as a stereotype is how tardy we can be. Some meetings can be late to up to 2-3 hours! Now... I know it is not a direct comparison between travel time and waiting time for a meeting that could potentially lead to business deals or agreements... but it was interesting for me to realize that those times I had to wait for a late meeting for around 1 hour, that was 54 USD (which is about Rp 700.000,00 at the time of I write this) potentially lost to the flow of time.
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| This place had perfect line of sight to the arrival gates! So we had our nice hot drinks and just chat there while waiting |
So we waited there for around 1 hour. I had tall-hot-vanilla latte. Mom had the same thing. Dad drank matcha latte. As usual mom bought food and snacks which was appreciated considering that it was definitely time to refuel after that short journey. And there we were just waiting for the rest of my family to arrive!
As people started walking out the arrival gates, we started to notice Indonesians coming out and people with CGK (Airport) tags on their baggages. I felt so excited! First time for them to be in Japan! I could not wait to show them around.
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| YAaaaayyy! So excited! wooop woop! |
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