TacoCat’s Travels #87 (Japan 3.0): A Spontaneous Trip to Osaka! 🛫

Hey Hive/Steemit!

So if you didn't catch the last post, I recently finished writing about our Taiwan trip that we went on back at the end of 2016! It was the second new year we spent overseas together and although we didn't visit a lot of landmarks, it was still an interesting trip nonetheless.

Anyway, this week, we embark on another trip; this time back to our favourite country in the world - Japan! If I recall correctly, this was a very spur of the moment trip that we took. There was a sudden promotion held by Philippine Airlines. I think it was their pioneer flight from Singapore to Osaka and they were offering it for super cheap! We were in college at the time and we rarely take trips during the semester but it was such an unbelievable offer we couldn't pass it up.

And thankfully, the flight period fell exactly during our recess week (which was our mid-term break of sorts). And since it was just after Valentines' Day, we decided wthecc, let's treat ourselves and go celebrate in our favourite country!

16 Feb 2017. Thursday.

The flight we booked (only just weeks before) was a midnight flight, and I think we actually had classes in the day so it worked out. Also we didn't have class on Fridays which was why we could fly on a Thursday night. We went to the airport at around 10:30pm.

Changi Airport had some Pokemon displays out in the atrium, including some Snorlax plushies, and this giant inflatable Pikachu!

It was also just past Chinese New Year so there were still CNY decorations up. I guess it was a Pokemon-themed CNY installation.

On the way to our gate, we also came across this photobooth for Night Safari!

And Sean managed to get this cool-looking shot:

After that, we headed to Burger King to get some snacks before our flight since we weren't gonna be having food for a while. I think this was their new BBQ bacon cheeseburger or something. It was actually not too bad even though I'm not a big fan of BBQ sauce. The bacon was crispy though.

After that we took a nice leisurely stroll to our gate. I'm sure if you've been to Changi Terminal 1 before, you'd recognise this structure behind us:

This is The Social Tree! It's actually Changi Airport's largest interactive installation, at 9m tall! There are photo booths around it with HD 42-inch touchscreens where you can take, share and store photos into this virtual time capsule! The booths themselves have different animated backgrounds, so you can customise your photos before uploading them, which will then appear on the tree itself! (Cr: Changi Airport)

At about midnight, we headed to our gate and boarded the plane shortly after. It was thankfully not crowded at all and I only hoped there weren't gonna be any screaming babies.

Thankfully I think there were none. The flight was mostly filled with business travelers. And I think there were quite a few empty seats around us too. Granted, not as empty as the flight we took to Taiwan, but that was probably a rare occurrence.

At about 1am, we were served supper, which included a bread roll, some salad, and roast chicken, potatoes and vegetables. Other than the portions being a little small, it was actually not too bad!

They even gave sea salt caramel ice cream for dessert!

Now the only thing about this super cheap flight was that there was a super long layover. We arrived in Manila a couple hours later and were basically stuck in the lounge for about 10 hours or so. It wasn't that pleasant, and the seats weren't that comfortable, but we basically used that time to catch up on our course work and projects.

We tried to take a nap, even though it wasn't comfortable. But as a consolation, Philippine Airlines did give us a lot of meal vouchers we could use. I think we were quite hesitant to leave the lounge since we weren't sure where else we could go to get seats and there were quite a lot of people around.

When it got closer to our flight departure time, we did end up walking around though. And we managed to find a couple of food stalls and airport restaurants to use our meal vouchers. We ended up eating quite a lot and buying lots of snacks.

I think the second leg of our flight was maybe around 2:30pm or so. I was really exhausted since I didn't sleep properly that I pretty much conked out when we boarded. I only woke up when our "lunch" arrived at 4:15pm.

Since we were flying to Japan, there was a Japanese food option. I actually don't really like Japanese airplane food since they always come with small cups of cold food and salad. But this time the rice, fruits and dessert were good.

The sun was slowly setting as we flew.

And by the time we arrived it was about 7:45pm. After almost 20 hours, we finally arrived in Osaka! I think to this day, that was still the longest we were ever in transit between countries.

But the nap on the plane and the cool weather really helped to refresh us at least. And since we finished most of our work, we could now enjoy ourselves! They even had some leftover Christmas decorations!

I don't remember what this was, but I guess there was some pointillism art installations in Osaka airport at the time. They looked really cool!

We took the train to our Airbnb. Thankfully, Osaka is not as crowded as Tokyo so we didn't have much trouble even with our luggage.

And about an hour or so later, we arrived in our new apartment!

It's pretty much like most Japanese apartments; a tad small but cozy and comfortable nonetheless.

After settling down, we walked around our neighbourhood and found this random fast food katsu place and decided to have it for supper!

I think I ordered a mix of chicken and pork katsu:

And Sean ordered a full pork katsu:

Both sets came with a side of sliced cabbage, bowl of rice, miso soup and a piece of cold tofu, which I promptly put inside the miso soup. It actually tasted really good! Especially after all the airport/airline food we had the past day.

Overall, a really satisfying meal after a long day of being stuck in planes and airports.

Sorry for the lack of content, but you know how the first days always go. Tune in next week where we explore Osaka!

Thanks so much for reading!

To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!

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Check out my previous post in this series!

TacoCat’s Travels #86 (Taiwan): Ending on a High at 85 Sky Tower 🏙

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