I first learned about Kansai Airport in 1994 at the age of 11 when my dad told me about reading some magazine article on some "crazy" airport that was being built in Japan on an entirely man-made island. This got me really interested and I asked him to bring me the article so I could read it and the next day I received the article, ripped out of from the employee lounge's copy of Time magazine ^^
It would be until 2004 until I had the chance to visit the Renzo Piano-designed Kansai Airport for the first time. However this was a family trip using the Japan Rail Pass and we didn't have much time so I managed to convince the others to visit the airport at night since we didn't have to pay any extra fees as we had the rail pass.
Although I finally got the chance to visit the airport that I first got to know about in 1994, because we visited at night, I could not explore as much as I wanted, mainly I wanted to see the man-made island and the double-decker railway/road bridge.
Now upon gaining some (crappy) Japanese language ability as a result of my undergraduate student exchange and my current post-graduate studies, I found out that they offered tours of the airport so I scheduled a tour on my mini-trip to Kansai in Sept. 2010.
The Renzo Piano-designed international terminal building from the visitor's centre.
From Google Maps, you can gain a sense of the engineering marvel that is Kansai Airport. As far as I know, there are only 3 airports in the world that are built on man-made islands, Hong Kong International Airport, Chubu International Airport in Nagoya and Kansai International Airport in Osaka. Out of these 3, only the man-made islands for the Japanese airports were reclaimed from the sea from scratch.
View 2010-09-23 Kansai Airport Tour in a larger map
Boarding the train from Nankai Namba station in Osaka. I thought I could cheap out by taking a local train to the airport but then I realized that I would not make it in time for the scheduled tour so mid-way I had to change trains and take the pricey limited express train.
I had to change to this bizarre looking limited express train, the Nankai Rap:t. (Not my picture)
The interior of the train not quite as impressive as the exterior.
Arrival at the visitor's centre.
The original shape of the island.
In the visitor's centre, there was a shop full of (over-priced) aviation merchandise.
Ever wondered where you can buy that "Sky Time" drink that they serve exclusively on JAL? Well you can buy it here! (Or any other "exclusive" food that they serve onboard)
View of the island from the visitor's centre building.
Flight information screens in case you want to view some take offs.
The outdoor deck of the visitor's centre.
Another view of the terminal building.
A view of the double-decker rail/road bridge that connects the island to the mainland.
For your viewing pleasure.
Model of the original development.
For the actual "tour" portion, we got on a bus and drove around the island. Because of poor weather conditions, a portion of the originally scheduled tour was cancelled.
Here we drive by the airline catering operations.
The cargo terminals.
The most interesting thing is that the only thing preventing the sea from flooding the island are these concrete barriers or dikes.
The concrete wall is maybe only 3 meters high and the waves of the Inland Sea were quite rough so when the tour bus drove along this road, it would frequently get splashed with sea water.
Inside the actual terminal building.
The interesting thing is that I have never flown out of Kansai airport before. Every time I come to Japan, its always through the airport-too-far-from-everything known as Narita airport.
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