Digital Vortex A-Go-Go

Friday 24th October – departure

After weeks, nay, months of preparing, today is the big day. Yours truly is on his way to Japan. Konnichiwa, birches!

As I’m typing this, I’m on board of flight 270, en route to Hong Kong, an 11h trip. There I will take my connecting flight to Ōsaka, another 4 hours. Side note: I’m glad I have my phone charger with me and that there’s a socket available to keep my phone charged. Very handy!

Departure was around 13:15h at Schiphol airport, arrival in Hong Kong is scheduled around 7:20h, which is around 0:20h in the Netherlands. I will try and get some sleep before landing. My connecting flight is scheduled to depart at 8:55h, which is 1:55h in the Netherlands. That flight is scheduled to arrive in Ōsaka around 12:45h, which is 4:45h in the Netherlands. Huzzah for jetlags!

So far everything is looking well. But since I don’t fly very often, up until the plane took off, I was always wondering what I had forgotten to do/arrange/bring/etc. That in turn resulted in a continuous slight unease. Oh well, it can’t be helped anymore. I’m underway!

By extension, flying is a particularly exciting thing for me. Those moments that the plane starts taxiing or taking off? What a thrill! After that, well, there’s a lot of bright light and noise. And no, I don’t mean ‘splosions!

Fun fact: it was raining so badly at Schiphol airport that you couldn’t see for as much as a mile or so. I took great satisfaction in thinking “Booyah!” at the stupid rain clouds as I cut right through them, so they could worship me from below. Hehe.

After landing at Ōsaka, I will need to do a couple of things. Firstly, there should be a package waiting for me at the post office: a portable WiFi hotspot. I will get to that later. Secondly, I will need to exchange my vouchers for train tickets. These allow me to travel trough Japan via Japan Rail trains (note: there are many service providers, similar to in the Netherlands). Thirdly, I will need to arrange for transportation to Kōbe, where I will stay my first two nights. I heard from my kind host that a shuttle bus can take me to the right place.

Now, about that portable WiFi hotspot. It’s a nifty device which contains a sim-card and has a cellular data connection. In turn it also provides a WiFi signal which a smartphone can connect to. This way I can access the Internet on my smartphone to find information and maps, whenever I need. To me, that’s way more preferable than using the data connection on my smartphone and paying €2,50 per MB of data.

Thanks to my powerbank that I took with me, I should be able to use my phone, camera and WiFi hotspot without having to concern myself with how much charge there will be left in all of the above.

Side note: the powerbank I brought along is a waterproof Powermonkey with solar charger. I think it has a 10Wh capacity, but just look that up.

Anyways, about my trip. I will stay at various locations in Japan. I will stay in Kōbe, Hiroshima, Himeji, Ōsaka, Kyoto, Nagoya and Tōkyō. All stays are booked via Airbnb.com and are various in nature.

My first stay will be with a Japanese couple who live in an apartment in the tallest building in Kōbe. There they have a spare room, which they offer on Airbnb.com.

My second stay is in a small apartment in Hiroshima, which I will have to myself. Funny how I will need to get the key from a locker box myself.

The third stay will be in a hotel in Himeji, as it turned out. I was simply looking for a place to stay and this hotel appeared to offer their rooms on Airbnb.com. OK, fair enough.

Next up is a small but rather nice apartment in Ōsaka, which I will have to myself as well. Same deal as in Hiroshima (with the key, I mean).

After that I’ll be going to an apartment in Kyōto where I will have close contact with the proprietor, who lives upstairs. They offered to pick me up from the train station and were very helpful with suggestions for plans and such.

“computer pause!”

…..

“computer resume!”

The nice thing about this flight is that there’s an actual selection in meals. And as far as microwave meals go, this was pretty good. Nice! Add a little bread, a small desert and a drink and I’m good to go for another couple of hours. Nice dinner (current time in Hong Kong is 20:51h, presently).

Anyway, after visiting Kyōto, I will go to Nagoya and stay with a Spanish / Russian couple. It appears that I will be staying either with them or just in their apartment. I’m not yet sure, but will find out later.

Finally I will be staying in Tōkyō with a couple who have a spare room in their house. From the pictures I saw, it looks absolutely wonderful!

That’s it for now. More later. Sayonara!

(Posted via Hong Kong open WiFi)