In the airport terminal, you're neither here nor there, held in some in-between land designed to disorient. Osaka, Japan's Kansai International Airport feels like a space station. All things within its curved ceilings come perfectly illuminated and uniformly cast in colored plastic.
The facility also contains many mini things like tiny hand dryers (for this small-handed nation) and astronaut-appropriate food sources.
On the Sunday afternoon after Thanksgiving, I stopped in the Detroit International Airport, where I have spent every Sunday after Thanksgiving for the past four years. The experience never changes from year to year--the same trilingual announcements (English, Japanese, Chinese), the same lazy people taking the tram to their departure gates, the same IN-HOUSE TIME WARP!
Except this year, my layover lasted for 3.5 hours, giving me enough time to walk past all 128 gates twice and buy $30 worth of American magazines, which seems extremely decadent when you realize that's about 1000 NTD.
Esquire Magazine, I hope you're worth it.
Look carefully at the corner of that shelf.JPG)
**ok, he was actually seen in Switzerland. But imagine if these things came together in the Osaka airport...
