lost or what?

New airport day

From Kyoto to Osaka to Sapporo by plane

Now I am in Sapporo, on the island of Hokkaido, near Russia and North Korea, famed for its bears, beer and potatoes.
I am writing both updates at once this evening, so chronologically this may not make sense, buy in the interests of symmetry, I must do 2 updates per day, otherwise the apple cart will be upset and I may never recover.

To go to Kansai airport, the airport in the Ocean that is sinking and therefore has another identical one along side it they will move to and then add more rocks to the one that has sunk, you must first go from Kyoto to Osaka on a train. This train then goes to the airport that is nowhere near Osaka, as is the Japanese tradition.
The train ticket was surprisingly cheap, but I almost missed out on cheap. I was going to take a bus that was about $30, but then I saw a deal for foreign passport holders to buy an ICOCA card and a $15 Haruka express train ticket to the airport, for $25. However if you already have an ICOCA card, I have 2, you can just get the $15 ticket. So that was the greatest deal ever.

It is about a 90 minute ride, at first very fast, then it does a lap around Osaka very slowly. Still its faster than the bus and half the price.

Once at Kansai airport, its kind of like 1/2 a new airport day. Because whilst I have been here twice before, I have never flown domestically. It turns out the domestic terminal is awesome, with about 73 restaurants to choose from, or you can have a convenience store $2 sandwich like I did.
My flight today was Jetstar, and about 2 hours, and completely uneventful. Left on time, arrived on time, I got row 2, they accepted my bags, no questions about carry on, just like a regular flight. Except for the lung cancer. My plane was full of lung cancer sufferers. It must have been. Bits of lung were being hacked up all over the place. I thought people might die. But thats just Japanese smokers who cant smoke for a period of time. They need more smoke to soothe their angry cancerous lungs.

Once you arrive in Sapporo, you are of course, nowhere near Sapporo, as is the Japanese tradition of placing airports in other cities. Instead you are in Chitose.
I bought my awesome value East South Hokkaido JR East Tokyo region including non JR lines for select location for use on 6 days of customer choice within a 14 day period pass, and got on the train to Sapporo.
This takes just over 30 minutes, no smoking here either, so lung expulsion continued. Then I just had a 40 minute walk to my hotel in the freezing air dragging my suitcase almost getting run over as I looked at what appears to be an awesome city, more on that shortly.