Written by Dave

I’ve been thinking about “our first post from Japan” for over 3 years. I thought I’d write about big exciting things like temples and shrines, or maybe crazy busy cities. Or perhaps I’d focus on some amazing Japanese food or some weird “only in Japan” discovery.  Possibly it would be the traffic or how they drive on the left side of the road or their fascination with funky shirts with nonsensical English sayings.Nope, this is post is simply about traveling.We’ve only just reached Japan. There will be time for fun Japanese posts. Today, however,  I wanted to write how it feels to be travel rookies. It’s hard to call us rookies. We’ve been to nearly 50 countries on our bikes and something like 60 without them. I checked my mileage balance and on United Airlines alone I’ve flown over 1.2 million miles. Not counting “short” 5 month stays, Nancy herself has lived in four different countries on 4 different continents. Neither of us will feature in any travel rookie of the year votes, if there is such a thing.Yet at 4AM this morning, when Nancy’s sister dropped us off at Portland International Airport, we both had a distinct feeling that we were travelling for the very first time. The check-in counter was manned by mostly machines – how odd. The airport seemed to have had a couple new concourses built. TSA had completely taken over the food area of a once-inviting PDX entertainment district. Even though all my air miles qualify us for lifetime access to the United lounge, we forgot and bought brekkie at an airport coffee kiosk.  Former me would have never missed a chance to go to the lounge; free food and a chance to escape the travelling hordes, yet I clutched that one and completely forgot.

We didn’t make the lounge mistake again in SFO. Sadly, the SFO concourse G United lounge is 4 years more worn out than the last time we visited. It needs a retrofit. But at least the food and coffee were free and we didn’t make another rookie move and miss out.

Everyone knows that Covid killed travel but evidence of such in PDX and SFO was scant. Both airports were quite busy and we, with our masks on, we were definitely outliers. Even the flight attendants on both flights (PDX-SFO, SFO-KIX) to Osaka were more or less mask free. Most passengers, even the world’s great mask wearers from Asia, were mask free. Yes, even the toddler sitting front of us coughing with a cold was mask free. Wow. What pandemic you say.

Unfortunately, in our time away from travel, airline food did not miraculously improve. I had hopes that on a flight to Japan, United would serve up a delicious fresh bento box lunch – maybe some salmon sashimi or gyoza. Hopes dashed, we settled for a fairly bland and completely colorless Indian butter chicken.  I know, that’s what I thought, Indian food flying out of SFO on the way to Japan! (For the record, we normally really like Indian cuisine).

Both of our flights featured new and squeaky clean planes. At least the airlines got the Covid equals clean memo. Unfortunately on our 11-hour fight to Osaka the entire entertainment system was out. In the old days this happened to us and the airline gave us 10,000 air miles each as compensation. In today’s profit first focused world, I’m not expecting much more than a complimentary bag of pretzels – time will tell. It should also be noted that these modern airplane entertainment systems control overhead reading lights and call buttons. We travelled really old school with window shades up or down for light and a flailing arm to raise a flight attendant. I asked one flight attendant about the system and she gracefully suggested that I should have downloaded a movie to one of my devices before boarding, or that maybe I should have brought a book (never mind the no reading light part). Another rookie move by me I guess. Before someone asks, the front of plane business section entertainment systems were working – I was so very relieved when I learned about that – phew.We (mostly Nancy) were worried about getting our bikes from Kansai International to our hotel in Osaka. We needn’t have worried. Within an hour of landing we had cleared immigration, gathered our bags and bikes, cleared customs, picked up our pre-ordered SIM, got the phone working with said SIM, found a big taxi van and rode to our hotel. Do that in any major city where you don’t speak the local language.

We are in the Hatago Kansai Inn for two nights. It seems more than adequate. Somehow this arvo I mustered the energy to reassemble the bikes while Nancy managed to find an ATM and get us some JPY. Tomorrow we’ll be staying put as we have to sort out camp stove gas and really, to just rest up a bit. It’s now more than 24 hours since we got up and sleep is calling.

Yes, Osaka does seem busy and yes, there will be many strange new things to write about in the coming weeks. Today however was about waking up long dormant travel muscles. It’s good to be out on the road again, even if we make a few “rookie mistakes” along the way.