My Little Princess and Prince: 9 Nov 2023 - Year-end Trip to Osaka/Kyoto (11 Days 10 nights Itinerary)

Once again, it's time for our year-end overseas trip. And it's none other than Japan, one of the most popular destinations among Singaporean. Out of 10 colleagues and friends whom I asked, at least 7-8 of them will tell me that they are going to Japan this school holiday. Our last trip to Japan was about 13 years ago. Ever since the Fukushima nuclear accident happened in 2011, we had never considered Japan as a potential holiday destination till now. Anyway, we all had enough of scenic drive trip and this time round, we wanted to make it a fun trip with great food. And Japan seems to match these criteria the best.

After checking in our luggage, we proceeded to the Changi Recommends counter to collect our Wifi router, which allows us to have unlimited mobile data for the duration of our stay in Japan. In addition, we also collected our Japanese yen from the counter via their foreign exchange service. As usual, before entering the departure gate, we took some photos of the nice decorations that Changi Airport put up every year.

As our flight's departure time was 1:30am, we had a bit of time to look around and had some snacks & drinks. We then visited the nearby Butterfly Gardens. As it was pretty late at night, we did not see any butterfly flying around. However, we did see a few butterflies and moths in a glass containment.

The flight time from Changi Airport to Kansai International Airport is about 6 hours. As Japan is 1 hour ahead of us, we landed at Kansai International Airport at about 8:30am.

After collecting our luggage, we walked towards the JR train terminal to catch a train ride to Kyoto. As we had already purchased our tickets prior to this trip, we went straight to the self-service kiosk, which is located next to the gate entrance, to collect the physical tickets. As there are many trains that go to Kyoto, we had to confirm with a station staff for the correct platform to wait for our train.