Heading home after a week in Japan. Friday night I find my way to the Kansai Airport Washington Hotel in nearby Rinku Town (we had been to a meeting in the Osaka area, so it made sense to just stay in a hote here and fly back directly from Kansai Airport.

The hotel was OK. The rooms are very small, but everything is new and clean. The only downside to the hotel is that the free airport shuttle stops at 10:23am and doesn’t resume until after 3pm. That means that for me to catch my United Airlines flight departing at 3pm and I needed to catch the 10:23 bus. To make it worse, the UA checkin area doesn’t open until 12 noon.

Kansai airport is new, but as inefficient and confused as most at the moment. The gentleman in front of me had a tiny pair of nail scissors removed from his bag and placed in a large cardboard box by the UA security team. He then carried that box through airport security (where they x-rayed a box with just the scissors in it) without even a question.

On the plus side though I am connected wirelessly for free here at gate 17 waiting to board (SSID: kixmbl) – something even SFO cannot manage – the wireless there doesn’t make it out to the gate areas where most people would actually find it useful.

In about 12 hours I should be back in San Francisco ready to repeat Saturday.