I heard that the airport is the nearest gateway into Europa from Japan and lots of Japanese tourists uses it to visit European counties. But since I'm still living far from a major city, I once again had to waste my time to transfer to an international airport....
By the way, the round-trip airfare to Finland was 98,000yen and it was not so expensive. But the fuel surcharge and taxes cost 24,000yen. The total was 122,000yen! I got annoyed with the extra cost, 24,000yen!
Finnair
The aircraft into osaka was MD-11. It was an old model airframe and I heard that it was the only MD-11 in international service in Japan. Finnair was the last airline to offer it, in international service, in Japan.
left:
Japanese dish, Oyako-don(bowl of rice topped with chicken and eggs). It looked just like an ordinary Oyako-don, but it tasted strange.... It wasn't bad, however it was definitely not the Oyako-don!
center:
Finnish beer, Lapin Kulta. This was my first time to drink Finnish beer. It had a light and smooth taste and it was easy to drink.
right:
For the first time in a long while, I ate an in-flight meal with metal cutlery. It is really rare these days. I prefer metal cutlery to plastic knifes and forks.
My flight from Japan left at noon and I arrived at Helsinki-Vantaan Airport at 3:10p.m. There was a 7-hour time difference between Japan and Finland. I only had 1 hour to transfer to my domestic flight, so I had been anxious about my connecting flight. However, the international and domestic terminals were under one roof and both terminals were only a few hundred meters within each other. It wasn't big enough to lose my way and there were many easy-to-understand information. The airport was well-designed!
center:
To my surprise, a boarding pass didn't have a seat number. All seats on Finnair's domestic flight were unreserved seats. Lots of passengers were waiting in long line for window seats.
right:
Although it was only a 1 hour and a half flight, we were served an in-flight meal. I had just eaten an in-flight meal on my international flight 3 hours before....