Kansai Airport Tour

There are approximately three things that first got me interested in Japan: Sony/consumer electronics [now completely irrelevant], Shinkansen (bullet train) and Kansai Airport.

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.

Osaka Urban Walks

This is a collection of pictures that I took while walking around in Osaka during my mini-Kansai trip in Sept. 2010.

For some reason after they selected the "Inukshuk" as the logo for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Canada, this symbol of the native Inuit peoples of Canada suddenly became one of the symbols of Canada?

Anyways I found in inside a subway station in Osaka, Japan. I think it has to do with the fact that intensive wood was used in the architectural design of this Keihan Railway station.

Kobe Walks: Chinatown, Waterfront

On Sept. 22, 2010, after I finished my morning visit to the Instant Ramen Museum, since I was already located west of Osaka, I decided to visit Kobe again (the cities of Kobe and Osaka are only 30 minutes or less by train away).

Kobe is one of my favorite cities in Japan because it has such a nice atmosphere. It is very compact (the model "compact city"?) yet does not feel overcrowded like Tokyo and the city is also blessed with many historical areas and buildings from the past due its interactions with the Western world during the modernization of Japan.

The Kansai region is unique in that the 3 major cities all have a distinct characteristic unlike the Kanto (Tokyo-Yokohama) metropolitan area where it is just uniform dense urban sprawl for as far as the eyes can see. Kobe is is quite clean and chic compared to the run-down and dirty Osaka, while Kyoto offers a glimpse of the idealized traditional "old Japan" of "samurai and ninja".

I have been to Kobe many times before, but I still like visiting Kobe whenever I am in the Kansai region because I like walking and wandering around to see what new and interesting thing I can bump into.

The view of the Kobe waterfront with the red coloured Kobe Port Tower in the background.

Instant Ramen Museum in Osaka (インスタントラーメン発明記念館)

On Sept. 22, 2010, I visited the Kansai region for a couple of days and one of the places that I always wanted to visit while I was an exchange student in Tokyo in 2005-06 but never had the chance to was the Instant Ramen Museum (インスタントラーメン発明記念館) built by the company that created instant ramen, Nissin Foods.

The instant ramen was invented by Momofuku Ando in Ikeda City in Osaka where this museum is located.

This is the original Instant Ramen Museum and has no entrance fee. In 2011, probably to cash in on tourists coming to the Tokyo area, a bigger and non-free museum (500 yen entrance fee), the Cup Noodles Museum (カップヌードルミュージアム), opened in Yokohama.

Outside of the museum is a statue of the inventor of the MSG laced, totally unhealthy instant ramen. I do admit that I am an instant ramen fan though!

Actually my favorite brand is "出前一丁" and interestingly I didn't know what those 4 words meant (it makes no sense in Chinese) until I learned of the Japanese reading. "出前" means "delivery" and "一丁" means one city block or one order.