and my vacation starts.......[laptop powers off] NOW.
not working until March, woo hoo!
checked in for my flights. fairly good seats, which is always a bonus.
Operation: put me in many different hot springs is a go.
Stage 1: locking the front door.
Choo choo! Train to the airport
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Butts are going into seats. Next stop, Munich.
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Hanging out at the lounge in Munich before my next flight.
Osaka bound, on what I think is the last flight of the day departing MUC
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More butts in more seats, for the long flight to KIX airport
See you in Japan!
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My suica card still works, and has money on it. Hooray!
Hitting up the #Osaka Aquarium, and they snuck in a nice snack bar partway through.
Food
Had the whale shark ice cream float, and it was a complete delight. Seasalt soda, and the ice cream is "japanese soda flavoured".
Ok, that's very cool.
So I have the JR Rail pass, and did some seat reservations online. When you pick up the seat ticket, you not only can do it at the reservation machine, but you can also pick and choose which reservations to pick up.
So, if you did safety reservations ahead of time, you could wait to print those tickets until the day of.
Why is that important? The system is smart and won't let you reserve seats during a time you already have reservations for. So once you print out the seat, you gotta go to the counter to get them changed.
Also, for some trains you *need* to use the seat reservation to enter the station, so better not lose them!
Food
Ran across a stall selling these utterly delicious Creme Brulee donuts.
Choo choo!
I'm on the Hello Kitty Shikansen heading south to Hakata.
Cool, cool. My leg tried to kill me.
Medical
So I have a case of cellulitis, a nice bacterial infection that can flare up by doing a lot of walking (which I did), and standing (which I also did).
Gross picts of my infected leg. Enjoy!
I may have made a tactical mistake by gatekeeping my morning antibiotic and painkiller behind "get dressed" and "go outside".
The antibiotics and painkillers are helping a _ton_. Infection is going right down, swelling is down, etc.
ok, done with the antibiotic course. Been able to walk around mostly normally the last 3 days, just needed to rest more than usual.
Heading to Tokyo tomorrow, for my last days in country. Looking forward to seeing a few of the usual haunts.
on the long train ride, I realized that DERP was doing a live stream, and I might as well as enjoy it while hanging out in my seat.
I bought this (https://pocket-tripod.com/collections/pro/products/universal-kit) folding phone tripod a while ago, and it's small enough to live in my standard travel kit. Today, I used it in anger for the first time! Not bad, certainly good enough for the seat tray.
Are there better phone tripods out there? yes, absolutely. Is this one _good enough_, while having a terrific storage footprint? yes, absolutely.
Just checked in to my Tokyo hotel, and I broke my streak of room numbers ending in XX08. Kinda amusing, 4 hotels in a row did that.
Food, coffee
Kanda Coffee time!
If you've been to AsiaBSDCon, this is the wonderful coffee place next to one of the speaker hotels.
The Bow Tie owner isn't here today, but the jazz is still on the playlist.
Time to start heading home
Monorail, monorail, monorail!
Flight LH717 HND-FRA is delayed, but I ought to be able to make my connection to get home on the last flight of the day.
Looking forward to being home.
The secret to travel, is applying butts to seats.
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There are a shitload of violin cases being brought as carry-on.
I have a great idea. Let's put a late 747-8 at a bus parking spot, and drive all over the airport to enter the building.
Did manage to make it in time for my last flight, so hurrah.
@phessler I assume from the type this was LH. Strange as it is a big base for them. Usually it is simply a cost thing (remote stands much lower cost) but on occasion there is a security policy (they prefer the a/c be difficult to reach)
@sullybiker yea, LH hardware into their main base. we were late by 50 minutes, so I bet something got screwed up there.
@sullybiker and this is at Frankfurt, an airport that presumably has space for large planes.