Arrival

Flying into Osaka was interesting. My plane landed just before 9:00 PM and it was night time so I couldn't see much. As we made our approach to the airport, a fireworks display was underway. It was quite a site to see from the plane. I had a window seat so was able to enjoy it all. It seemed as though Osaka was celebrating out arrival.

Throughout the flight the video monitors on the plane displayed the moving map showing our progress from Seoul to Osaka. Based on that map, it appeared as though we were landing in the middle of the water of Osaka Bay. Since it was dark out, I couldn't see anything of our approach - it was black below us. I could see the lights of the city on the shore, so it definitely felt like we were about to land in the bay. Then the runway lights appeared below and we were on the ground. This morning I pulled up the map of Osaka on Google Earth and Kansai International Airport actually is its own little island in the bay connected to the shoreline by one long bridge.

The host hotel for the Symposium in the Rihga Royal Hotel - connected directly to the Grand Cube Osaka, the convention center where the event activities will take place. The Rihga Royal is a beautiful hotel. I explored a bit this morning after my "American breakfast" and discovered several restaurants offering a variety of cuisines from traditional Japanese, to French, Italian, Chinese, etc. There are also several bars, a gourmet food shop (that I will have to check out later today), and a variety of high-end retail shops offering Hermes, Lalique, and the like. Also a pharmacy, a Panasonic store, a florist and more. In addition, there are several beautiful gardens around parts of the hotel that deserve some attention later in the trip.

My room is decent size. I love that they provide comfortable cotton kimono robes. I've included a couple of pictures of my room - the kimono is neatly folded on the bed (by housekeeping - not me).

I'll add some photos of the rest of the hotel area later today.

All for now. Please post any questions or suggestions of what you would like to hear about the trip in the comments.

Introduction - in transit

My first post comes to you from the Detroit airport. I have a 3- hour lay over before my flight to Seoul. I connect to Osaka from there. I finnally arrive in Osaka at 9 PM local time. Thankfully there is nothing on my schedule until Monday morning when I join representatives of the other countries that make-up the International Handbell Committee for our bi-annual meeting. More on that later.

I plan to spend much of my 13.5 hour flight from Detroit to Osaka reviewing the stack of documents and proposals that are on the agenda for that meeting - all from my Kindle (one of the cool things about Kindle is the ability to load personal documents as pdfs). I will also be reviewing the massed ringing music and rehearsal notes from the conductors.

As this journey continues I will share details of the event and sites of Japan, post photos and video, and answer questions from you. So let me know what you want hear about by commenting on this and subsequent posts. I promise future postings will be more interesting than this one!