Our adventure to France begins!

We’ve decided that its worth coming to Japan just to experience the Shinkansen – Japan’s high speed rail system.  It’s so amazing.  You can “set your watch to it.”  When it stops at a station it is there for maybe a minute and then closes its doors and moves on.  W h o o  s h

The Shin

The signs at the stations are all good but if you have a reserved seat like we did, you need to be very careful to get on the right train at the right time.   If you don’t have reserved seats you can catch any train and if you miss one there will be another very soon.

Here are a few of the sights along the way.

Oh, and they come around with a cart like on the airlines so you can buy snacks and drinks while you are whisked along in comfort.

Sippin’ Suds on the Shin

A side note here:  When you take your bike on any train in Japan, you must put it into a bag.  The Japanese are all about cleanliness.

When you have time read more about the Shinkansen.  Here’s a good site to check out.  http://english.jr-central.co.jp/about/

Our trip to Osaka was great.  We spent the night at the Osaka airport hotel and had one more “last” Japanese dinner in Japan.

In the morning we walked across the breezeway from the hotel to the airport, picked up our tandem case – easy peasy –

checked in to Air France and were on our way.  Yea!

As we rounded the corner from the ticket counter we came upon quite the hoop-la.

It’s the 20th anniversary of the Osaka Kansai Airport.

Here are a few last images taken at the airport.  Just interesting signs that make you say “hmmmm.”

I’ve never flown on Air France before but after seeing this – I’m flying Air France from now on.

Our trip was very smooth yet very long – in fact it was the longest Thursday ever.  After 24 hours – it was still Thursday.  The flight from Osaka to Paris was 12 hours in the air.  Isn’t that amazing?  You can watch a lot of movies in that time.  Then two more 1+ hour flights from Paris to Bastia, Corsica.