Flight - Arrival - Day 1

We took an Uber to the airport. We nerds were already there 3 hours before departure, randomly met Ramona's cousin, chatted a bit, collected our boarding passes, had an underground burger (I'll spare you the pictures), and then we were already on the plane.

The flight was only half booked and we had an entire three-seat row to ourselves!!

Regarding the flight; it was relatively cheap at just under €700 because a) it was not a direct flight and b) the flight path took us over Russia. The airline Air China isn’t the best - the plane was old, entertainment was mainly aimed at Chinese passengers (luckily we had downloaded series and movies on Prime and Netflix), and some flight attendants were quite unfriendly.

Upon arriving in Osaka, unfortunately, the entry via QR code did not work because the QR code had the wrong passport number embedded. This probably happened when taking a photo of the ID, and I foolishly didn’t double-check it. After a brief intervention from Ramona, we were able to proceed, as we only had to fill out a few papers. At the airport, we immediately withdrew some cash and got ourselves an ICOCA card – a handy prepaid card for public transport. This saves you the hassle of always digging for small change and getting tickets from the machines. Highly recommended!

The first metro ride was ahead of us, and yes, the trains are punctual 😃